Bobcat 110.....
Like me you too make some valid points.
The real question is are we willing to accept something less than NCAA appearances each year?
Have we have taken the stance that any good coach that is moving up uses a mid-major to school as a stepping stone? I don't disagree here.
Maybe, just maybe, we need to go in the direction that a previous AD did with the Solich hire.
I believe we would all agree that was a great hire.
Our BB program was never as bad as the FB program has been.
Thoughts?
GO BOBCATS
We've appeared in the NCAA tournament 13 times in the 53 years since 1960. Since 1990, we've been 4 times. Why is it that people here seem to think that we've suddenly earned the right to be an NCAA tournament team every year, and anything less is failure? Dayton, who unquestionably has a better program than we do, didn't make the tournament this year and has only made 4 appearances since 2000. Georgia Tech has been 5 times since 2000. Maryland, a recent national champion, hasn't been in 3 years. Virginia has been 3 times since 2000. Programs like Vanderbilt, Purdue, Iowa, Arizona State, Stanford, USC, Utah, Washington, St. Johns, Providence, UNLV, Wake Forest, Temple, and St. Joes don't even have expectations of an NCAA tournament every year. Instead, they expect to field competitive teams who are in the running regularly and are competitive within their conference. We're not even close to a point where it's reasonably to expect an NCAA tournament appearance every year, and setting that standard (and holding coaches and players to that standard) would be a disservice to the program, and ultimately be counter productive to growth.
As for your Solich point, I'm not entirely clear what you mean. Solich is a really unique case because he's a guy who had success at the highest levels of college football and was unfairly let go, and seemed to be looking for a situation where he could settle down and build a program with less pressure than he faced at Nebraska. He looked seriously at the Army job, and ultimately took the Ohio job and has done a great job and hasn't shown any interest in other programs (though, in fairness, due to his age it's not like big programs have come knocking much). So if you're proposing we go and find a formerly top-flight coach who wants to spend the rest of his career in Athens, sure, that's a good idea in theory. But who is that, and how do you find him? You can't just snap your fingers and make that person appear.
And lastly, I sort of think Jim Christian is a Solich hire. He's a guy that's been very successful in the MAC, and left a Big 12 team to come to Athens because he felt it was a better situation for him and a situation that he saw himself in longterm. I'm not convinced that an NCAA run in the next couple of years results in Christian accepting an offer at Iowa or wherever. I think he's our coach for a long time to come, and I think that continuity will go a very long way towards putting us where we all want to be.