there are a lot of people that sat idly by while Polk was recruiting out of the camp and fagging around. There were people that were MSU fans like myself that were waving their arms and screaming and warning people, but it was always "Wait until Polk gets his guys in here in six years"- Polk wrote a book- what book have you written? I've been sitting in the stands for 50 years, Ron Polk knows more about baseball than you have forgotten.
There were many people calling out Russ McNickle, but a lot of people swept it under the rug and chose to not believe it.
These people are still a problem because many of them believe that the sole reason why we aren't winning is because the players are getting cussed at.
They're either too stupid, or are in denial, about the fact that Ron Polk would bring in players that aren't any good. I mean, he wrote a book.
And yes, LT let things get bad, but if the fans put enough pressure on LT to get rid of Polk it would have happened. And I will freely admit that it's hard to get rid of a coach that is taking your team to postseason play. Still, you could look at our recruiting rankings during Polk's last few years and compare it to the rest of the SEC, and you could see that we were going down. If you don't buy into recruiting rankings, look at the offers that our recruits were getting- people like Samford and Jacksonville State in general. The signs were there.
If there is something encouraging to me it's this- and I'm going to use your points, which were excellent by the way.
1. Talent- How do you fix that? Bring in better players. At least Cohen is doing this if nothing else.
2. Cohen's coaching style- Well, bring in players that fit this style. Again, I believe that he is doing that from having studied our signees.
3. Player's mentality- I think getting rid of Polk's boys will fix this as well.
One thing people need to remember here- what's happening to Cohen right now is what Polk WANTED to happen to him. I'm not going to go all black helicopters here, because I can't buy that Polk would be talking to the current players and try to sabotage the team. But I'm just saying this- and I don't know that it will happen since Polk is no longer part of the team- but you better believe that Polk is hoping that Cohen fails miserably and that Good Ol' MSU comes back to him and says "Ron! What do we do? Save us Ron!" and what Polk will probably say is either hire Raffo- which means he will be back in the dugout as a volunteer assistant and potentially running things behind closed doors, OR we could be looking at Polk III (IV).
Despite what I said last night about firing Cohen- it was a rant people- probably the thing that's in our best interests right now is to let the old players leave, let the new players come in and see how they develop. Because I have yet to meet anybody that has seen our team and knows remotely anything about baseball that thinks that we have good players. It's obvious that we don't. Some people point to the seniors being the best hitters- well, they SHOULD be. They also haven't figured out how to play defense in four years either and are a bunch of pussies- what a bunch of stellar leaders. Will the freshmen struggle some at the plate next year? Yes. Will we hit worse than this year? Probably. Would I trade a few points off of the team batting average for better defense and speed right now? Hell yes. Where our freshmen will struggle will be on offense most likely, but they should come in and play adequate defense. Heck- look at Sam Frost. He is already better than most of the seniors on defense and he is a guy that should be RS. And as far as Cohen and fundamentals- one thing people fail to mention is that most of the guys he has brought in- Jaron, Ogden, Thigpen, Frost- and even guys like Trey Johnson can play adequate defense. The worst one is Vickerson, and he will probably be moved somewhere where he won't be exposed so much, and at least he can hit. And as far as the pitchers that we brought in- I really want to see how they develop.
Now, if the players do not develop- and yes, there is a possibility that they won't respond to Cohen, but I really like Cohen's odds in an arena with his own recruits- then by all means, let's try someone else. As I have said, and I meant it- I like John on a personal level, but I love MSU baseball more than I like John. If he gets a fair chance with his players, I think he will win. I still believe that. But if I'm wrong, by all means bring in someone else. But heed my warning- if we fire Cohen, we must NOT hire anyone with any ties to Polk. O'Conner would be great. There are also many, many other good coaches out there besides O'Conner as well. And the reason I say that we must not hire anyone with ties to Polk is because we can NOT afford to bring him back- even if there is the smallest of chances. Polk is a BIG reason why we are where we are now, and bringing him back would ruin any progress that has been made. We must keep that in mind should we have to get another coach.
