Hahaha you are asking a whole lot out of the mouth breather.
I like Cohen as a baseball coach not as a AD. He has no business being an AD which is totally a Mark Keenum screw up.
I do think those personalities do fit each school better.
He is the 2nd worst AD we have ever had. The way he left our NIL situation should be criminal.
What's criminal is that he said one reason he was leaving was State couldn't raise significant NIL money. I mean, wasn't that part of his job?
Yup. He probably would have been ok in an environment roughly like the one he coached in. He completely 17ed up on the most significant development in college sports under his watch. And it wasn't like it took a lot of foresight to see that NIL would completely upend college sports. We had somebody basically head up our NIL on a part time basis because it was so clear Cohen wasn't doing ****.
He is unfairly maligned about this by so many of you. I will grant you that he is not the best fundraiser in the world, but he did not "completely 17ed up" the situation. The situation was always going to be bad for MSU. It's just the typical MSU thing to do - find someone to blame when bad things happen. And NIL is probably the worst thing to happen to MSU sports (football at least) in 50 years. Think about it.....we had finally figured out the old system and were having marginal success and BAM, they drop unlimited pay for play which is the one area we've ALWAYS been behind in.
I’m sure he’ll do that right after he posts that list of third year defensive lineman who break out.
We are blaming the guy who didn’t fundraise at all when fundraising was the main thing an AD should be doing. That is literally what anyone would do. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Fundraising is the primary function of an AD.
It's important. But if it was so primary, why does ours' and Florida's ADs suck at the moment?
The situation was going to be bad regardless, but that doesn't mean you just approach it without a strategy. How many P4 schools were relying on essentially volunteers to head up their NIL efforts as long as State did?
The football program was headed for the shlts anyway. Those years of shltty recruiting tend to catch up with a program. Plus, Leach had told some folks he was going to retire after the next season so we would've been in a similar situation anyway, just a year delayed.
Probably a lot.
And THAT is the issue. It’s not a matter of Cohen struggling with it. It’s a matter of the 17er not even trying.
I know those rumors were there and I also know why our fans love to bag on the "shltty recruiting" to make themselves feel better. But the facts are, Leach's classes were all in the mid-20s and he also hit well in the portal. So let's say he did retire after 2023, most likely going 8-4 or so.
The first things coaches ask when they interview for a job is what does your NIL situation look like. We were hiring a coach when ours was dog sh*t because Cohen left us in a hole it took years to get out of financially.
Just more blame. We hired Lebby in 2023, Selmon had been there for a year.
It takes more than a year to get from having nearly zero NIL budget to being able to field a roster with 30 million dollars like we do now. Particularly at Mississippi State where fans did not want to embrace NIL to start with. But nuance obviously is not your thing. Leach was dog sh*t his first year here too. He had to get his players in and get rolling. It takes time for wholesale changes when an entire department has been run by a baseball coach.
I don't think we spend nearly that much. I doubt we get there across all our sports. My understanding is that the big boys are spending $20-$25M on football. I've never heard a reliable number for ours, but our reported expenses were $134M a year ago I think. It was 105M in 2022, before a lot of the inflation had really hit, so we haven't increased spending much on an inflation adjusted basis. Not sure how much if any NIL shows on our books, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if we have $25M to spend across all our sports. If NIL is hitting our books, for us to have $30M to spend would mean we basically cut everything else by 20% in real terms and dedicated the rest of it to NIL. If it's not hitting our books, we basically increased spending with inflation and found another 25% in new revenues to fund that much.
We have 30 million dollars to spend on football this year.
It’s hard to motivate people to donate to anything when the guy asking is a giant A Hole. His personality was not a fit for the job.
Good to know. You mean for the upcoming year? I'm really hoping we didn't spend $30M on this roster.
We didn’t get our moneys worth then.
I’m aware, Goat. It was not a flex. I was telling the guy the answer to his question.
Becoming? He was terrible here and he is terrible there. He was/is in no way whatsoever qualified to be an AD.
Um… no, fundraising is not what a coach should be worried about in 2026 college athletics.
