The fact of the matter is we haven't had a coach as good as Jackie until Sherrill came along. But that's part of the reason why he is so "revered" at MSU- all he had to do was be better than people like Croom, Shira, and Felker. That's some lofty competition there. Heck, he went about .500 and people treat him like he's Steve Spurrier.
And even when we were winning, it always felt like we were on the verge of spinning completely out of control, which eventually did happen. For all the great wins Sherrill had, he also had his share of embarassing losses- tied Arkansas State, which I consider as bad as a loss, lost to Northeast Louisiana, La Tech, Troy- spare me the tornado excuse, they had to play in the tornado to, a very sloppy win over Troy the next year, and Tulane. Also, we were guaranteed to be blown out by at least one team every year and just look completely unprepared like we didn't even practice that week- how the hell does our 1998 team lose to LSU by 35? How does our 1997 team lose to Georgia by over 40? And in pretty much every bowl we went to under him, we came out woefully flat and looked unprepared.
Even in our great seasons under Sherrill, we often underachieved. Like in 1999. Maybe we would have been a better offense playing Dontae and Dicenzo more and Chris Rainey less and we maybe pull off wins over Bama and Arkansas. Especially since our offense was pretty much have six fat guys up front and run behind them ad nauseum. Having post-Barnhill Dontae starting over Jerious Norwood, kicking to Derek Abney over and over, and the complete and utterly piss poor QB development- guess who burned Omarr Conner's redshirt during a 2-10 seasonnso he could take a few snaps at WR? Yep.
But the worst part was the stupid crap that we would do on the field. I'm talking about the personal fouls and not knowing where to line up and the incessant penalties. Honestly, I really don't miss Jackie that much.
I'm just glad that win or lose, Dan at least puts a respectable product on and off the field regardless of who the opponent is, at least to this point.