au302

With Freeze you have to separate personal feelings about his actions and ethics with objective concerns about his questionable judgement. Imho I'm not a fan of getting on high horses and throwing stones. My personal feelings is that Hugh does this with his weird preacher schtick, and I personally don't approve of his prior conduct; however, I try to set both those things aside and look at it from a judgement perspective. If you're a leader like Roberts or Cohen, your main concern should lie at the objective lapses of his judgement. Whether you care that he solicited hookers or not is a personal feeling, but the fact that he decided to solicit them via his school issue phone is objectively stupid. You can decide for yourself whether him direct messaging that young girl was appropriate, however, it is objectively stupid to contact the Plaintiff of a lawsuit against your employer. A fireable offense, really. You can decide for yourself about your personal feelings on if his alleged actions back at the HS in Tennessee were appropriate, but from my understanding it looks like a murky exercise of judgement, at best. His issue is that these lapses in judgement have occurred over a long period of time. It's not like he went through a bad 3 month stretch where he made some one off mistakes that were outliers to his overall record. His lapses in judgement have occurred over years. Hard for him to say he rehabbed his judgement for his lapses back in 2015 when he just committed another stupid mistake in the summer of 2022.

Never thought Rhule would be a possibility after learning Carolina paid him 40 mil. No sane person would want to go back to catering to 18 year olds right away after that. Take a few years to vacation or something, lol. But it sounds like legit buzz. On3 said he was making calls today and that Roberts really likes him, so there's mutual interest. Still hard to believe he'll be the guy, but not as far fetched as thought

Bedell went from possible interim to canned. Fabianich is shocking. Figured Schmedding would be the first one let go, but he it looks like he will remain on. That is crazy. In fact I think it's the craziest news of the day. Dude is staying on when we could have promoted Zac. Must've made friends these past two years

This is gonna be interesting folks. From all accounts, Cohen is a lot different than Jacobs/ADAG personality wise. He is an old school, tough, stubborn, SOB baseball coach type that doesn't take **** from anyone. State fans said when he got promoted to AD over there, he basically went Elon mode and had a ton of people clean out their offices. He may have also sparred with the boosters (allegedly). However, he's been successful in this league as a coach and AD to the extent one can at a school like State.

I am in agreement with your general thinking because I don't agree with the common thought that money men are all united. Seems like there are several factions of money men, and that's the main issue. No more days of all of them falling in line with Coach PD and Lowder. So you can't appease everyone. While one money group may like you, the next may be waiting to pounce once you screw up. You really do have to shoot your shot and pray you make it. If Gogue and Allen made there's, they'd be heroes. Same will happen with Roberts and Cohen in the next few weeks.

It's not ideal, but Hoke thinks that people will put their hurt feelings to the side and give this regime a shot. Let's pray he's not, because if they have to go against the grain they're screwed and we'll be back here in three years.

With Cohen I think you gotta reset the board a bit. Most of his hires at State were off the grid types. And he is apparently not one to get strong armed at all, so that makes it seem less likely that the typical candidates we hear about who the boosters like are hired. He could still hire Freeze or Grimes I guess, but it would probably be on his own doing since he doesn't like to get strong armed.

At first I hated the idea of Cohen. The more I looked into it I talked myself into it, but for sure not the strongest resume. I was big on the Nunez train, but oh well. The unfortunate part is that the sites are really hammering the narrative that there is a lot of blowback from prominent people on this. Latest updates from both On3 and Rivals as of 20 mins ago is that as of right now he is still the favorite. Hoke seems to think despite being spurned people will begrudgingly still get behind this regime and give them a fair shot. But regardless, this seems like another unideal situation, to put it lightly

The Hartwell situation has been so weird. Really curious on if the guy was ever even a serious candidate or just a smoke screen, like Jhead and co wondered

Seems like a systemic issue that has plagued us for a while now. Imo it all traces back up to the top: the Board of Trustees. They are the ones that blew the Leath hire. Leath hire sent us down a road of horrible extension, division with Pearl drama, and ultimately ADAG and Harsin. And look, I at least respect ADAG for shooting his shot. Just didn't work out. They then had to ask Gogue out of retirement after the Leath disaster. He was tired and checked out. Don't blame him. He didn't want to politic or play the game, and thus a firewall was built from the admin to the outside world. After this, they again went in-house and hired a guy who has been a Dean his whole life. Great Dean, but looks like he may be in over his head as President. Sort of like how some coaches are great in smaller conferences, but in over their heads in the SEC. All this to say everything in an organization traces to the top. I'm not sure how we can fix our BOT, but it has to happen. I'm not even advocating for specific members of the BOT to be removed. Just that on the whole we clearly need some new blood and fresh ideas in there

Interesting. On3 making it sound like a lot of people, including coaches and boosters, are very upset about a Cohen hire, which makes me think Roberts went rogue

This is what you're hearing or what you're hoping?

Agreed. Here is my hope. If Roberts/Cohen are doing their own thing, the people in power won't actually be making the hire or reaching out to candidates. They'll just need a majority of the BOT to sign off. Feel like that's a better chance because it'd look horrible if the BOT voted no. But yea, if it's up to the actual boosters, hard to see it happening for sure. Preparing for Charles Kelly

Cohen just doesn't seem like a pushover puppet type. Dude is a type A head coach that is used to being the man in charge and winning. In terms of outside the box, just look at his hires. Canizzaro, Howland, Moorhead, Lemonis, Jans, and Leach. Only one of those was an SEC guy from the south (Canizzaro). He likes to go national for HC's.

Agreed. I think the issue is that at the end of the day all these decisions come down to the President. And Gogue, Leath, Gogue 2.0, and now Roberts don't talk to anyone. Plus they do their own thing. Back in the day when Lowder and co were in control, I'd imagine second hand info leaking out was a lot more credible because Lowder was calling shots, and a lot more people were in his circle and getting said info. PAM seems to legitimately know several power brokers, however, that ain't saying much nowadays since they've all been cut off themselves.

The question is if the PTB's will support this hire. Was Cohen their guy, or did Roberts do this all on his own

Great guy and coach. He'll keep us out of the news and probably get us back to winning games. However, out of all the names I've seen, he seems like he'd have the lowest ceiling. Jmo

All I know is that it is not the time to play it safe. Play it safe and we'll keep standing by while our rivals win, but hey at least we'll go 8-4 again. No, now is the time to risk it and take drastic action to try and make a move, even if it comes with more risk

If so, good for him. He probably coaches again though. I doubt he does Saban rehab because he's not in the SEC clique. It's not like Chad Morris hoping to become an SEC coordinator after his tenure, or Muschamp hoping for another head job. He's in the MWC clique. And due to his great success in that conference, he can probably get an OC or HC gig in the MWC

This sucks. Eku is an absolute monster and a true warrior. He's been a fantastic addition. He just explodes off the edge. Hope he gets healthy soon and has a great NFL career

Becoming intrigued with going a non-traditional route. Hear me out. Fabianich was saying in an interview today that with the way the game's changing, you gotta almost run college teams like pro-organizations. He's an impressive individual and apparently may be here for the long haul regardless of CBH. Anyways, restructure things and basically have Fabianich as your true GM and running the "front office", i.e. the support staff. Bring in Dan Quinn as HC. He'd crawl over glass for it. Joe Whitt Jr as DC. Fabianich and Quinn use their NFL contacts to hire some young genius from the McVay/Shanahan/Lafleur tree. Don't care if he's currently an offensive intern. That tree is golden. Plus it keeps your offense fresh versus having a stubborn offensive minded HC stuck in his ways like Gus and Harsin. That gives you a true alignment within the program, as Fabianich and Quinn and Whitt Jr. are all Cowboys guys and know each other. Quinn has SEC experience, and Whitt Jr. is an Auburn guy. It would be untraditional for sure, but high upside. And tbh we may have to get creative here to make a dent. Hard to beat UGA and Bama playing their game.

Controversial take, but our LB corps has always struggled with stopping downhill running attacks, even when they were "good". Remember them getting gashed against Minnesota in 2019, and the announcer explaining that Steele recruited undersized linebackers that are meant for speed to stop horizontal attacks versus downhill. Twill apparently wanted to recruit guys like him. Guys who are short, undersized, but fast. From what many have said, this can work if you hit a home run with a guy like Zakoby. But the line between that and guys like Pappoe and Steiner, who have no business out there, is super thin. Because the lack of measurables gets them exposed unfortunately. Many say we need to recruit more traditional sized linebackers to help stop these running attacks. I tend to agree, but I don't know. I really blame both staff's for this mess. How this staff didn't realize we needed to get a MIKE in place of Pappoe and Steiner is beyond me. Horrible

The team isn't untalented on the whole, but the OL, QB, and LB rooms are literally so untalented that is has dragged down the rest of the team. Finally we saw some good QB and OL play last night. LB though is horrible. New coach can quickly turn it around if he can convince these WR's to stay and cut everyone in the LB room and start over. OL is what it is, but Council played the best center I have seen since 2017. What this shows is that having a good center can make the rest of the OL look better. Get a good one in the portal and maybe it won't be so bad

No one from the Gus/Hars Arkansas State tree. Freeze's offense is still gimmicky and HS, but just more polished than Gus. Better route trees versus Gus' running game. These simplistic systems usually do well against inferior competition, but then get exposed by better competition because the coordinators don't have to plan for much. Lane yesterday. Only 22 points against Kentucky, who had equal talent. The "pro-style" we currently have isn't working, but I still hate those gimmicky offenses.

That's why I'm so excited. 330 passing yards with so many mistakes, so raw. Missed several easy throws. He's got so much room to grow, but can pass downfield. The ceiling is HIGH