You see this happen a lot, Coach O being a a prime example. I'm still amazed at how Saban keep his fire burning so long after so many titles.
Did keeping Lemonis too long have a silver lining?
- Thread starter thekimmer
- Start date
D
Don't think OConner would have left UVA had our job not been open. Maybe a LSU or Arky job, but very few, if any others would have beaten us out for him. Sort of glad we got him before UTK departed with TonyTemperTantrum, although I'm not sure UTK would have beaten us out for him even on a level time line.
I didn’t have a huge issue with giving Lemonis a long leash. It was clearly time for us to move on by 2025 at the latest, and strong case for doing it two years sooner. But I also get why a new AD (as Selmon was in 2023) would give the benefit of the doubt for another year or two to our only National title winning coach in any sport.
It happened the way it was supposed to. 2022 and 2023 were miserable seasons. ‘24 and ‘25 had some enjoyable moments in the middle of underachieving. And now we have Oak.
It happened the way it was supposed to. 2022 and 2023 were miserable seasons. ‘24 and ‘25 had some enjoyable moments in the middle of underachieving. And now we have Oak.
Lemonis is the Larry Coker of college baseball
If the adults in the room had Lemonis’s 2-yr stretch of ineptitude staring them in the face, and their decision was that they couldn’t come up with a way to do better, then we had the wrong adults in the room.
I am completely fine with giving Selmon and our baseball booster club kudos for bringing O’Connor here, but to pretend that a single one of them foresaw something like happening 2 years back is ridiculous
If you know what you're doing, you're not going to make a mediocre hire. If your mindset is that the only hire you can make is a mediocre one, you're a loser. You either act like a big time program or you don't. Big time programs don't make mediocre hires. It's high time that our fans stop thinking we're a mediocre program.
This goes for football and basketball too. You don't keep a coach just because "we won't be able to hire anyone good." No, you fire your shltty coach, and you go put on your big boy pants and you go pay for and hire a good coach.
Now this is a genuine possibility. I don't think it's a stretch to think that Selmon had some powerful voices telling him two years ago that they wanted a new coach, and Selmon said right back to them that they better come up with them money to do it
So who would you have hired at the end of 2023 and/or 2024? It was about a 1% chance you hire BOC either of those years so who you got?
Exactly. If you're going to make a mediocre hire, especially in baseball, you need a new athletic director.
You guys who play the "we wouldn't have been able to hire anyone" card always go to "who would you have hired" next. It's a sign that you've lost the argument. Just about anyone would have been better.
You don't know whether we'd have been able to pull Oak or not. And it's not my job to identify candidates. That's what we pay an AD for. His job is to find good ones and hire them. With our baseball resources, it will never be difficult to go pull a good coach if you really want him and are committed to it.
Write this down and store it for future reference: anytime you keep a coach because you think you can't hire a better one, you're a loser. That's currently what we're doing right now with our football coach. It's defeatist. It's a cancer that we've got to cut out of this fanbase and administration.
So......you are saying there was a silver lining around that bucket Lemonis was keeping warm for O'Connor?
Selmon didn't do shlt. Well, except come up with the concert and social media shlt around the hire.
The baseball people decided last year they wanted to do it big, and did it. They weren't going to do that in 2023.
Orgerson and Chizik are a long damn way from Saban. More going on there than just fire burning out.
They straight up got lucky being in the right place and right time and not 17ing it up. Once they got a little power after their luck-stained natties, they did put their hands on the situation, both of them, and they indeed 17ed it up.
You have such a petty agenda. O’Connor literally credited Selmon as a reason for coming. Sorry your idol Cohen could never run a successful search in football or baseball once in his tenure here
Corch O 100% checked out after his natty, i followed a lot of that on tiger droppings, he was on great situation and could have built a dynasty.
Of course he did, why wouldn't he? Having a good relationship with the athletic director is assuredly a good thing.
Some of you have no idea how things work in the real world.
I believe greenbeans point was "O" was a one and done, he got lazy. That was my point w/ Chizik and Lemonis anyway.
And I disagree with that.
I think they were average coaches who got extremely lucky in their situation. Maybe they did get lazy, maybe they got power hungry, but they weren't great college coaches to begin with.
I do think most of them can assume a 'role' that can help be the most successful they can be. For O, it's probably more of the CEO. For Chizik, probably more defense. For Lemonis, the in game management. They all just got away from their strengths once they had that success and ignored the things that got them there.
I think the timing for hiring BO was critical and fortuitous. I think the season VA had in 2025 motivated him to leave. His team was #3 preseason and they shockingly finished unranked and out of the tournament. I think that made him consider that he might be getting a bit stale at VA prompting him to look for a change. I don't think he seriously considers leaving prior to 2025.
Agreed. I think both were in over their heads from a HC standpoint. But in addition, O just decided to punch out and phone it in.
You or i could build a dynasty in BR, all it takes is hiring great assistants and not doing anything stupid. Money, cheating, etc., is not a limfac down there, just don’t be stupid. He was there on the cusp of NIL, any halfway competent coach could have set them up to be coming off back to back to back natty’s. Obviously Special Ed is no competent, but all he had to do was hire great assistants, a GM and get out of the way.
The amount of cheating those f’ers do would make Barry Switzer (RIP) blush. They stole from a children’s hospital.
They have the perfect coach now.
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