Again Jai, thanks for allowing me to post here. This blog needs my sane insight, LOL.
A lot has been discussed about Brian Kelly this week. His ability to coach and recruit are being debated non-stop. Here are my rambling nuggets on this subject
There is a difference between being a bad recruiter, and being an unproven recruiter….Kelly is the latter. Urban Meyer was an unproven recruiter before he got to Florida. He was a guy who developed players and won games with his system. If you are looking at signs to be able to tell you whether or not Kelly is going to be able to recruit at Tennessee, stop. Because Mike Hamilton will have a better idea of whether or not he can after 1=2 hours of interview than we will ever be able to gather from his track record. We know he can evaluate, and that is a big part of all this. Whether or not he can sell Tennessee, we dont know yet. But stop saying he can’t recruit. I am a Leach guy, but we gotta give Kelly a fair trial.
Bottom line? Kelly is every bit as qualified as Les Miles was when LSU hired him, i would argue more. Miles was 7-5 his last year in stillwater, which is a program with more money and tradition than Cincy. Kelly is currently 8-2 in his second year at cincy, and coming of a 10-3 year in his first. If you go simply on college experience, he is equally as qualified as Saban when LSU hired him.
When it comes to recruiting, we dont know…Almost every proven HC recruiter in the country, was at one time and unproven recruiting HC
Are you using Les “Falling like a Rock” Miles as a shining example of what to look for in a coach????
Dude, this guy was behind the Troy Donahues 31-3 before making a run late. Give Miles 2 more years at most and he is a goner.
I think UT is still a good job despite my jokes at other posts. I don’t know about Kelly. I think other schools would be scared more by Leach although he has some problem areas as well.
Bottom line: it ain’t a buyer’s market out there. UT is looking for a new coach at the worst possible time. It may be impossible to match up against Saban amd Meyers and COULD be impossible to even find a Richt.
Brian Kelly is the man.
Any job in the SEC is a good job. Unlike other conferences, if you can field a good team and catch Bama and UF in a “rebuilding year” (9-3 or 8-4) you could catapult yourself into the National Championship picture. That’s essentially how Fulmer was able to stick around so long. The UT brand is a bit tarnished, but there are still kids that want to go there, so I’m sure Kelly would be fine.
NYC -
You want to compare Kelly to Miles? Fine. I can dig that.
You want to compare Kelly to Saban? Not even close. Saban was a proven comodity at Michigan State. I lived in Big 10 country at the time, and he was much more highly thought of than Kelly. Everyone knew that he would not only leave the Spartans for another, better program, but that he would coach in the NFL one day. He had Michigan State competing for the Big 10 championship when Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa, and Penn State were all very strong (basically when the Big 10 wasn’t the joke that it has been the past few years).
I’m not a Kelly guy (Leach looks like a difference maker to me, with Kiffin surrounded by a top staff being a good alternative), for the record.
Cheers,
Rob
I like Brian Kelly, but I think Mark Dantonio deserves more credit for turning the Cincinnati program into a winner. He was a great recruiter at Cincy during his 3-year tenure, before being hired by Michigan State. Kelly has only had one year of D-I recruiting, so how are we to know how the Bearcats will look 2-3 years from now, with a stable full of his own recruits?