12-25 in his first 3 seasons
3 losing records
Two 3 win seasons
Much easier schedule.
Guess the coach.
3 losing records
Two 3 win seasons
Much easier schedule.
Guess the coach.
What if WSU had the same mentality as some of you?
- Thread starter paindonthurt
- Start date
...and had 10 years of head coaching experience with an 84-43 record.
Correct
So he should have been way better starting out there right?
This is exactly the difference. He had already proven himself able to build a program out of a historic non-contender.
The environment is also completely different now. The portal means coaches get a chance to quickly fill in gaps versus having to spend years building up a recruiting pipeline or recruit JUCOs (who count against your limit on recruiting out of high school). Even now a proven head coach probably only gets three years to put together a winning season.
Pullman, Washington is also a lot harder to recruit to than Starkville. It's a beautiful part of the country, but it's far more remote and your family probably isn't going to be making it to many games. The nearest big city is Seattle, which is about as far away from Pullman as Atlanta is from Starkville.
I admittedly didn't follow WSU football back then so I can't say.
What I can say with certainty is that he had a proven track record of head coaching. That has a ton of value.
That was a different era. If Leach would have had the ability to flip the roster yearly as coaches do now, he would not have needed 3 years to get his players in and would have succeeded year 1. Hopefully Lebby will finally hire a competent DC and now has the quarterback to run his offense, but these 2 situations are not the same at all.
Leach got to a bowl in his 2nd year there, Washington State was in much worse shape when he arrived than we ever have been in, and he had a long tenure of success at his previous job.
Terrible, terrible comparison.
Terrible, terrible comparison.
In the four years prior to Leach arriving, Washington State was 9-40. They were legitimately the worst Power 5 team in the country. I’m sure they understood Leach needed time to build the program and were going to give him at least four years to do it. He also had a proven track record of winning at a place off the beaten path.
How are some of you so blind to not see how bad of shape we were in when Lebby arrived? Especially on defense, we were less talented than most Sunbelt teams
Of course they aren’t the same. And of course leach shouldn’t have been fired.
but objectively speaking leach taking over WSU in the pac 12 should have been way easier than Lebby taking over MSU in the SEC.
My point is a lack of patience is a sign of an idiot.
He also won more games in those three years than the five years prior (14 wins) to him arriving there. For reference, we won 31 games in the five years prior to Lebby showing up. Lebby would have to win 11 games next year just to have about the same average number of wins over his three years compared to the average from the five years before he got here.
Lebby took over the worst talented team in Mississippi state history.
For reference, Lebby took over a team that didn’t have an NFL practice squad player on it. Not one.
Look up Washington State from 2008 to 2011. It's much, much worse than we ever have been.
So let me get this straight.
it’s easier for a guy with no head coaching experience to take over in the SEC with a team with the worst talent in school history than it is for a coach with a proven track record to take over a team in the pac 12.
Is that your logic?
2024 team is the worst talent we’ve ever had and we play in the 17ing SEC not the pac 12.
WSU doesn't play an SEC schedule. Pointing that out their recruiting rankings is like comparing Tupelo High to Eupora
No...
My "logic" is that Washington State fans knew they probably had a good coach because of his prior tenure.
Similarly, if Lebby had been a successful head coach for 10 years at another power conference school before coming here, he wouldn't have a supermajority of our fans wishing we could fire him right now.
Add to that that Wulff's Washington State teams likely would have lost to all of Croom, Arnett, and Lebby's teams here, and you see what a gargantuan task Leach had to deal with up there.
Of course we would have fired him after those first three years. Let me remind you what we literally had people who wanted to fire him during his nine (9) win season here.
Leach went 6-6 his second year at WSU and made it to a bowl game that he lost.
I don't disagree with your point. Lebby may work out fine. There have been some promising things this year along with some concerning things. As bad as some of the game endings have been, I haven't seen anything that makes me think he can't win. That's still a pretty small sample in the grand scheme of things.
My biggest concern is that while the portal has made it easier to flip a team, it has made momentum a lot more important. If we had players that were mostly going to stick around, he'd have the opportunity to slowly build momentum. But with significant turnover happening every year and having to sell the program to his existing players and to players in the portal, at some point it probably becomes hard to get transfers to come to stop reversing your momentum. If you're signign a one year deal as a player, you probably want that year to be one where you are winning. Three seasons in a row without a bowl and I worry players will lose faith that you can make it happen.
And my point is patience in this era should be much shorter because of the ability to flip rosters yearly. I would give him year 3 because he came in after the first portal period and signing day was over in his first year, but year 3 is going to be it if he doesn't win 7 games or more and it should be.
One other caveat, that was in the time that you built your team over 3 - 4 years and it was understood that you couldn't just get all the people you wanted in year 1. NIL/portal changes a lot of that. Right or wrong, if you can't re-load and compete annually, you likely will not last long.
fake news
Whatever lack of talent that team had, he contributed to, along with Arnett. And he also made them worse than they really were.
and we are STILL in bad shape after 2 SEASONS of Lebby and the transfer portal. 1 conference win, 7 total and all against these "Sunbelt" type teams you referred to
A better comparison would be Clark Lea at Vanderbilt. His first three seasons, Vandy went 2-10, 5-7, 2-10. He then got Diego Pavia and went 7-6 last year and now 10-2 this year. SixPack would melt down if Lea was here and put up those records his first three seasons.
The smart *** response would be that all we need is a generational talent at QB and a new offensive coordinator and we can make a crappy bowl in two years.
But I do think that's actually a good comparison. You could take two plays from the ASU and ARK game and change them and Lebby would be fired right now. You could take two plays from the UTex and UF or UT games and people would be wanting to lock Lebby down for as long as we can. It's really not crazy to think that he's going to be ok or that he's going to be terrible. It's just a small sample size when the margins for error are that slim.
So your logic is it’s easier to win at msu in the sec than at WSU?
Got it
What lebby took over in 2024 compared to his competition was just as bad or worse than wat leach took over compared to his competition
This is my entire point.
FANS are dumb AF. This message board has a lot of dumb fans.
To be clear my point isn’t anti leach.
It’s be patient.
and flipping a team works both ways.
Lebby started at -10 on day 1
If Lebby goes 6-6 next year he isn’t getting fired and shouldn’t.
you can be dumb if you want
One other caveat Lebby took over at time where you could lose everyone in 3 months
he did.
he started from scratch and showed a ton of improvement this year
he has to hit the portal hard this offseason
Horseshlt, Lebby took an AZ defense giving up 350 yds / game and took it to dead 17ing last in the conference at 456.4 yds/ game. This year Lebby put some sprinkles on the turd improving to 405.8 yds / game.
certainly feels like a time that is hard to measure pre-portal/NIL to post-portal/NIL. Maybe not quite as watershed as the invention of the forward pass, but certainly an inflection point for CFB
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He will 100 % be fired if he goes 6-6 next year. I will bet you whatever you'd like on that.