Lemonis fired at Miss. St.
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I guess a program that averages 11,000 for home games doesn't have a lot of patience. The way the NIL environment has exploded in college baseball, they seem like the liklier program to go get a young guy who's good at building through the poach-for-play...er NIL system.
This can’t be emphasized enough. UofL couldn’t fill it stadium for 4th ranked FSU. No real in-town advertising. No real promotion of the team in general.
Yeah, pretty rough. After winning the NC in 2021, Chris was under .500 in 2022, 1 game over .500 in 2023 but did get back to the round of 64 in 2024. MSU was 25-19 this year but only 7-14 in SEC play. Luckily the early projections for who would replace Chris, the list doesn't include Dan. Skylar Meade, however, did make the list.
I mean we can't really compare our program to Miss State.
Mississippi State baseball is a tradition down there. They've been attending for decades and have had a lot of success. We didn't even make our first tournament until 2002 and we didn't win our first regional until 2007. College Baseball isn't that popular and expecting us to get big crowds for a non-traditional program in an urban area is a tall task. Considering what Dan has built, the success we've had is amazing. But expecting us to compete with those big state schools with tradition and have the same support. Like it's a big deal in college sports circles that FSU is #4, but casual fans probably have no clue who is ranked what in baseball.
Our support has grown exponentially over the last 20 years, but that doesn't mean we can magically expect support. Our basketball program built it's support over decades the same way and that's why we can still stay close to top 10 in attendance even after so many years of losing. Support comes from tradition.
Yes, traditionally Miss St baseball has been on the top tier, 11 SEC Championships, 34 Regionals, 12 CWS appearances. Yet with all that history, they had never won a NC until Lemonis in 2021. Guys like Will Clark, Rafael Palmeiro. Head Coach Ron Polk and yet never a championship. To me, this smells like a knee jerk reaction, they smelled the success and now are greedy for more. I would think there has to be some difference in philosophy between Lemonis and the AD. More than likely influential boosters also may have become frustrated with Chris. Lemonis was fired in the middle of the season with still a possibility of turning things around but they decided not to give him that chance. That tells me things had gotten sour. I think some program wherever Lemonis ends us will be getting a heck of a coach.
I can’t recall exactly the issue, but the year after Lemonis won the CWS, Cowbell fans soured on him quickly. Managing style, personal and alumni interactions, I think he just didn’t jive down there. He wasn’t a “Mississippi State man,” but, then again, who would want to be?
Well at least Cohen was a baseball guy, the AD at Miss St is definitely a football guy, related to the Selmon brothers who used to dominate at OU.
I was surprised to hear that Chris Burke believes the kitties will be in the tournament. They are currently 25-20 overall and 10-14 in the almighty SEC...
Florida got in at 28-27 last year and 13-17 in SEC play. So the committee has shown they’ll give a bid to a bad SEC record.