Odds are exceptional that Ohio will hire a coach after Solich who is not as good as Solich. Hiring a coach that is better than Solich would be a statistical unlikelihood, I would guess, by a rather large margin.

L.C you are out to lunch on this completely. You are right that it starts up front and the amount of athletic 300 pound lineman available these days is unprecedented when compared to 20 years ago. Solich to his credit has been able to take advantage and load up on the lines but there is so much more quality out there these days. Secondly, when I first started following Ohio the question I used to get was is the MAC a 1-A or 1-AA conference? It was a borderline FCS conference in the eyes of some with a lower ceiling and couldn't compete in the living room with CUSA and the Big East. The MAC today is perceived more like the AAC particularly as you get to the top programs and Ohio is the most popular school in the MAC. The case is strong for Ohio as the best academic school in the MAC but in terms of overall popularity there is no question. Solich himself has said the goal is to be in the Top 25 with regularity so even he knows he is underachieving.

this post is somewhat outlandish. Solich is a great coach, who has somewhat underachieved at Ohio. His achilles heel has been the QB position, he has put numberous players in the NFL and coached up a lot of players, but he has lost way more big games than he has won. He has finally started to address the Albin situation, albeit Albin is still here, Solich has callled out the play-calling. If we can land a good QB and play to win instead of playing not to lose than the sky is the limit. Solich has coached in a national championship game at Nebraska and been here for 12 years, so he should have the best recruiting classes. I like the incoming class, but years previous, we signed a lot of afterthoughts and along with some headliners that had no chance of qualifying, they could be called the all head fake team.

Under Solich, Ohio Football has become a brand, and that brand needs to continue to be sold on a National Level. Ohio does not need a fly-by-night, row-your-boat opportunist, or someone who is going to suddenly change the direction of the program overnight. Ohio, as an institution, has been around long enough to have formed their own identity. As a Fan, I like to think of our sports programs as tough, relentless, and dangerous. We may not win them all, but you know that you have been in a Hell of a Cat fight when you play us. I would like to see Ohio continue to build upon their conditioning and weight training programs and recruit athletes who are durable, passionate, and who love nothing more than putting a helmet on someone. I am not interested in innovative offensive and defensive schemes, but team oriented players who continue to identify with our own unique brand of Athleticism that has been on display through out the years from wresting to Volleyball to even Hockey. The Attack Cat needs to become a national monument that evokes both a blend of respect and terror through out the NCAA. The Brand, known as a Ohio, needs to be at center stage and not an individual coach or athlete that is only around temporarily and then gone. I hated it when ESPN used to call us the "Fighting Franks." We are so much more than that.

Sorry, but Solich is not a great coach. Look at the facts at OHIO and no other conclusion makes sense. Those same facts strongly indicate that there will be no MACC under his tenure.

The next coach may not win a MACC. Who can know. But it's very unlikely that we'll descend to the horrid that we were for so many years. Certainly, those who point to how the program and facilities have been vastly improved under Solich would say that the next coach has a base for success.


Certainly, fear that the next coach may not do so well is no reason not to hire a new coach.



Why don't we have a thread about who should be our next coach?!

I can't argue with this Monroe. Solich is a good coach. What was I thinking, you can't just bestow greatness on anybody, greatness is earned. I have been medi'd. You have to admit though, we lost all of our running backs and db's and three qb's and almost won the MAC last year. Solich did a great job last year.

"The MAC today is perceived more like the AAC"? I have disagree, at least as to football. I think the MAC, if it hasn't been already, is about to be eclipsed by the Sun Belt Conference. Going 0-6 this last bowl season didn't help the MAC's cause.

In the context of program ceiling I would say yes. At its apex Ohio could have a short run like WVU, Boise, NIU, Houston with a couple years of in or almost into a New Year's Bowl. Both Isaiah Cox and Papi White we recruited over Southern Miss. That would be unthinkable 20 years ago and now we're regularly beating them on the trail. We are on national Tv more than a lot of AAC and ACC programs. It doesn't matter too much how the MAC finishes; Boise State was a one program show in the terrible WAC and was ranked #3 in the country.

I did not intend anything to be sarcastic, and I apologize if you interpreted it. After I ran out reasons that I could think of for believing things would be better, I did include a humorous answer (Nostradamous), but it was not intended to detract from the serious answers. Some of the answers were rather short because of the limitations of a poll format, and I apologize for that. To clarify what I intended some of the answers to mean:
2. History doesn't repeat - I meant this to mean that the past has no bearing on the future, so there is no reason to believe that just because Ohio struggled in the past that they will struggle at any particular point in the future.
3. there were no structural reasons - I meant this to mean that Ohio's failures of the past were due solely to the coaches who were hired in the past, and that there is no limitations on how good Ohio might have been with different coaches (based on Monroe's comments, I believe this would be his answer)
4. Solich has repaired structural problems - I meant this to mean that in the past there were some things that made success at Ohio much more difficult, particularly things like the lack of a summer school program allowing students to remain on campus during the summer, and poor facilities, including the lack of an IPF. Solich has improved those things, and thus, in the future the next coach won't have these limitations (I would have guessed this to be your answer, Wes)
Others: "It's all random luck" and "I have no particular reason" were meant to fill space, and to provide catch-all answers for those who didn't want to put much thought into the poll. "Nostradamous" was intended for humor only. The final answer was intended to give people who disagree with the premise of the poll, that Ohio will improve in the future, an answer they could choose.

Had I thought of your answer, Wes, I would have included it, and dropped one of the others such as "It's all random luck" or "Nostradamous".

Sounds like Ryan Day's day should be this fall.