It took Steve Spurier 6 years to have an 8-4 regular season

QuaoarsKing

All-Conference
Mar 11, 2008
5,404
1,702
113
Dan Mullen has done it twice in 4 years.

And Lou Holtz left South Carolina in much better shape than Croom left us in.
 

Railin Jemmye

Redshirt
Oct 29, 2012
1,937
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and along the way, he lost to Clemson. it's really not the end of the world here. we were bound to lose to them eventually. we'll beat them next year. we're doing just fine. after the emotion wears off over the next few days, people will become realistic again.
 

baseballnerd

Redshirt
Feb 6, 2011
185
14
18
2 New Year's Day bowls in 3 years. Not bad.

Sure, who didn't want to win the egg bowl, but 8-4 and a new year's bowl is pretty dang good at State.
 

drt7891

Redshirt
Dec 6, 2010
6,727
0
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I don't think anyone is upset at the record...

An 8-4 season is nice, but I don't think anyone is pissed about that. This is what I'm pissed about:

We beat:
A 6-4 SWAC team big
2 Mediocre Sun Belt Teams (a VERY close win against the number 7 Sun Belt Team)
A HORRID Sun Belt Team
4 SEC teams that have won a combined 3 Conference games (this, we really couldn't help)

BUT... We got beat by a combined score 156-61 and outgained 2,026 offensive yards by opponents to our measly 1,250 in 4 games... that's PATHETIC. OM lost to two of those same teams by a combined 14 points. Where's the fire? Where's the swagger? Where's the underdog mentality? Where's the willingness to give RELENTLESS EFFORT to win games? I haven't seen it all year.

We beat the teams we were supposed to beat. The others were anything from tossups to bad underdogs... but it's easy to see, just by those numbers, how badly we were outplayed. We were outscored almost 3 fold and outgained almost two fold.
 

SPMT

Redshirt
Aug 25, 2012
187
0
0
I've repeatedly tried to point this fact out regarding Spurrier, yet we still have idiots who want to fire Mullen.
 

drt7891

Redshirt
Dec 6, 2010
6,727
0
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There are idiots that want to fire Mullen now, I'm not one of them, but unless he can light a fire in this team again, we will be looking at our version of Houston Nutt and we will see something similar to a 4-8 season next year and something even worse the next year. I HOPE that doesn't happen to us. Mullen gets another chance, though, because he has raised our expectations tremendously and has delivered only one losing season, thus far.

The problems I've seen are not talent or potential related... they are emotional, heart, and passion related. The first two years, these teams fully bought into what Mullen wanted to do. We played extremely hard, and were a few close plays away from being a 7 win team that first year. We beat the ever living piss out of OM in 2009. We peaked in 2010, and since Auburn '11, we have become less and less passionate. The only team we remotely showed up for this year was Tennessee, and we showed signs of it against LSU.
 

LawDawg97

Redshirt
Sep 7, 2012
1,138
0
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I completely agree. And for those complaining about "catching" Auburn, Arky, UT

in down years to get to 8-4? Isn't that better than BEING in the same position as those teams? While Arky had little control over their coach's dismissal, Auburn and Tennessee kicked out consistent winners in their programs and look where it got them. It is simply too damn hard to win consistently in the NCAA these days to ***** about 8-4 seasons. Look at Texas, Miami, USC. Perennial powers that are scratching out 7 or 8 wins because the competition is too fierce to go out and blow everyone out like they did 10 years ago. Hugh Freeze just did the same thing Mullen did in 2009 and some people are on here wanting to switch coaches. Optimistically, Mullen will get better at recruiting, our teams will get more talent and we'll stay at the 7/8/9 win level with a chance to jump into a 10 win program at some point. I'm just thankful he got us into relevancy so quickly.
 

Todd4State

Redshirt
Mar 3, 2008
17,411
1
0
I agree with you

There are idiots that want to fire Mullen now, I'm not one of them, but unless he can light a fire in this team again, we will be looking at our version of Houston Nutt and we will see something similar to a 4-8 season next year and something even worse the next year. I HOPE that doesn't happen to us. Mullen gets another chance, though, because he has raised our expectations tremendously and has delivered only one losing season, thus far.

The problems I've seen are not talent or potential related... they are emotional, heart, and passion related. The first two years, these teams fully bought into what Mullen wanted to do. We played extremely hard, and were a few close plays away from being a 7 win team that first year. We beat the ever living piss out of OM in 2009. We peaked in 2010, and since Auburn '11, we have become less and less passionate. The only team we remotely showed up for this year was Tennessee, and we showed signs of it against LSU.

Dan has certainly earned the right to try to fix our current problems. So, the question is now will he do what it takes in the offseason to fix those problems? At a minimum, Chris Wilson should be gone. If I were him, I might fire Les and bring in Scott Loeffler since he is a pro-style guy- and that way we could have Dan as the spread guy and Scott working together based on the talent of our players. If people actually looked at a pro-style playbook and a spread playbook I think they would be surprised at the similarities as far as the actual plays themselves.

What worries me right now more than anything is I'm concerned that Dan has become comfortable at MSU and that he has some sacred cows on the coaching staff- namely Wilson. Time will tell on that though- but if he doesn't make any changes this offseason, he should be gone next year unless the team makes marked improvement on both sides of the ball and also in the effort department.

I'm OK with losing as long as the team gives 100%. I didn't see that at times this year from the team or the coaching staff.