Here was an interesting comment from the article: http://www.espn.com/college-footbal...an-alabama-crimson-tide-future-coaching-plans "The way I look at it is, as long as I'm healthy and as long as I feel that I can do a good job, I want to keep doing it because I enjoy doing it," Saban said. "What I don't want to do is just stay forever, forever and forever and ride the program down where I'm not creating value. I would never want to do that, and I think I'm a long ways from doing that. I don't want to talk about anybody else, but there have been a couple of coaches where their legacy was tarnished by them maybe doing it longer than they should have. That won't be me." Could he have been thinking about Mack Brown?
Mack Brown, Phil Fulmer, Bobby Bowden... I'm sure there's even more to the list of coaches who've bunkered up at the ends of their careers. I tell ya, Saban looks great and he's clearly got a machine that just reloads itself every year.... even with all the staff turnover he's had. It's impressive. I, too, can see him doing this into his 70's no problem.
To be determined. Successful people have trouble walking away from what made them successful until it is to late to prevent some tarnishment. What is probably true is Alabama will be the last stop on the Saban train (unless of course aggy throws $100M + guaranteed for two years at him in a couple of years).
Then Saban has to start thinking of retirement. 'longer than they should have' is determined after it happens.
He just won another title two months ago and will likely bring back a legit contender for 2018. If he has an off year or two then maybe.
What's an off year for him? As much as he wins, I'm not sure normal interpretation for an off year will apply. Bama fans are just like Texas fans when it comes to unrealistic expectations year in and year out. You get spoiled to getting 10-11 wins every year and for them a national championship every other year......anything less is complete failure.
Mack Brown is one of 2 coaches who won a National Championship in Football at Texas. He's not been the coach for more than 4 years now. I suggest you refocus your hatred on Coach Herman, who has yet to win a Natty, despite having more than one year to do so.
You sure are over the top. Hatred? Really? Saban knows that UT was coming after him. It's obvious Mack stayed too long. He ran the program into the ground. If you want to get emotional about it that's your problem. I'm dealing with reality.
Well, for me it doesn't have to be either extreme. In my opinion, we let Mack Brown go at the right time. He first fell below his own ridiculously high set standard, and then below even the normal expectation for UT, so it was "obvious" that it was time to change, but not because he ran the program into the ground for staying too long. Didn't he leave us off at 8-5 or so? A tad better than DKR left Akers with. I don't think you have to time it so perfectly as to quit after a championship year or a winning streak to maintain your legacy.
Mack Brown had a lot of success at first. His strategy was to recruit a lot of talent, and the. Having the players compete it out for roster spots. This worked really well when Texas high schools ran I formation/WCO variations. He was able to identify the best prospects. Then, the Spread revolution came. Brown and Davis were imitators, not innovators. They weren’t able to identify the top prospects as before. They couldn’t tell if a HS OL was dominating because he was a great prospect, or because he was set up to succeed by scheme and formation. Brown still recruited well on defense, but his offensive player recruiting plummeted and he had no clue as to why. That’s most of the story about what went wrong. Sure, he got complacent and comfortable, but mostly the game changed and got away from him.
i like guys who stay past their prime. They love what they do. They love the sports. They've done it their whole life. They lose a step, and they want to see if they can regain it. It's only one step, so maybe then can still succeed after losing a step. They try to depend more on their experience and to trust the rest of the team. They lose another step. THEN THEY RETIRE. The only thing I see there is a man who loves what he does and wants to keep doing it if he can figure out a new way to be successful. Guys with rings/trophies deserve to try imo, if they really love what they're doing. If other guys want to go out on top and leave them wanting more like George Costanza, that's fine too. But I don't fault a guy for trying to continue doing what he loves if he can figure it out.
Thanks, Sangre. For support, I offer the huge number of NFL players we produced from 1998-2008. After that, we dropped off terribly on offense. From the 2010 to 2016 drafts, I think Iowa State had more offensive guys drafted than us. Mack Brown left some talent for Charlie Strong, but I think it compares much more closely to what Akers left for McWilliams than what Royal left for Akers.
And yet a Mack Brown coached team played in the 2010 Natty game and were a dropped int away from playing for the 2009 Natty. I guess the game got away from him after 2009?
Yep. It did. That 2009 team had 5th year senior McCoy, 6th year senior Shipley, Fozzy Whitaker and Marquise Goodwin for elite offensive talent. The real talent was on defense, where Brown was hands off.
Sorry, but thanks to little Billie Powers, Mack Brown was "let go" two weeks too late, a fact that set the program back 10-20 years. Such is and should be "The Grand Legacy of Billie Powers"
Okay, I can accept that--minus the hyperbole. Very believable that Powers botched the actual switch, but I was just saying that it was basically the right year to pull the plug on Mack Brown. Might have been better one year earlier, but with such a successful and established coach, you are always going to be a little slower to give him the axe. I was mainly disputing the narrative that Mack Brown was an example of a coach that just hung on and on way past his prime such as what Saban was alluding to.
