"I love being in Athens. I love this team. To be able to stay here and lead a program like this it would be an honor."

Ben Stevens
@BenScottStevens
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Currently, ONLY five (5) FBS programs have won 10+ games in each of the last three seasons (since 2022):

• Georgia
• Ohio
• Ohio State
• Oregon
• Penn State

The Bobcats just won their 1st MAC 🏆 since 1968.

Tim Albin has done a MASTERFUL job at Ohio.

If only the Bobcat administration realized what was said above!!!

Thanks for posting the interview. You are right that he is much better at the "talking game" than Albin was, but maybe not as good as Solich. He's obviously, given the results this year, an excellent OC. Will he make a good head coach. My gut says, "yes." But, my gut has often been wrong in the past. The best case in point would be the letter I wrote to the AD urging the hiring of Cleve Bryant. To his credit the AD did not listen to me and recommended hiring another candidate, but President Ping, who was otherwise an excellent president, overruled the AD and told him to hire Cleve. The rest as they say is history. In this case, I hope that the ones making the decisions are folks with a good understanding of football and what it takes to make a good head coach, not some folks who are just fans and know next to nothing about the inner workings of a football program. [Do I recall correctly that Cromer's husband was a football player in college?]

You never know how someone will do as a head coach until they're a head coach. While I know D1 schools prefer someone with hc experience at some level, Brian seems like someone with the right amount of experience to step right in and do well. He's also been a journeyman and the stability of the Ohio job if he does well might be very appealing to him at this time. Even if not, a lot of assistants, probably underpaid, sure, might have had dollar signs in their eyes thinking about where Albin's (and his coattails) next stop would be... then reacted the same way we all did: "Charlotte?! M***er***king charlotte?" Maybe wishful thinking but I hope we have a good opportunity to keep multiple members of the staff here if Brian Smith is the guy.

The part I complement him on was saying "unfortunately the guys didn't get to celebrate the win as they would have liked to with the change as soon as it happened". Classy way to word it without mentioning Albin.

The more I think on it, the more I hope we can keep pillars of our coaching staff and move forward. What i'm concerned with is preserving the culture Solich and Albin help build. If we get a brand-new HC and lose the coaches we have, that culture will depend upon some returning players and may be lost ultimately.

I wish Solich could have won one of those championships but whatever else you might say Solich started a culture that works at Ohio. If Smith is HC i hope he presses hard to keep as many defensive coaches as possible. Faanes, Hauser, Maddix, Scott and smith have been really good the past few years and are getting recruits. If he can keep offensive coaches too, great.

Great spokesman for the school and team.

100% make him the next h.c.

I'm sold on Brian Smith at the moment. He's qualified for the job, is a solid communicator and would likely keep part of the culture in place.

You never know how it's going to work out but he's my leader in the clubhouse and hope he gets his shot.

The reason is that I'm impressed with him, and with the job he did. For example, in addition to his prior offensive tutors, he picked up the Albin-Solich concepts, and used them in his arsenal. His play calling totally destroyed Miami. What were they going to do when Ohio was scoring every time they got the ball, and taking 8-18 minutes to do so? I think he can pick up when Albin left off, and make Ohio even better. But, the problem with that is that it will quickly attract attention. As a lot younger coach than Albin, and as a better spokesman, the P4 will be all over him in no time, if he wins.

Note, also, that there are no players in the portal, and no assistants have left. That's proof that the program can continue just fine under Smith. Hire him.

I think this makes it important that we have the heir apparent in place as new Associate Head Coach whether we find that person inside our outside of the program. And naturally, if Brian is hired as head coach, he should have a lot of say in deciding on who would be the best candidate because they have to be able to have good working chemistry with the other coaches and work well within the current culture at OHIO as well.

I found Brian's profile on Wikipedia. He is 44. Fairly young, but I don't know how that compares to the median age of coaches in the MAC and other conferences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Smith_(long_snapper )
(The URL is a little broken for some reason, so click on "Brian Smith (long snapper)" again after clicking the link.)

This sentence in his Wikipedia profile caught my attention in particular.

"In his first season with the Bobcats Smith coached running back Sieh Bangura to Freshman All-American honors and MAC Freshman of the Year honors while improving the Ohio passing attack to 23rd nationally, up from 108th in previous season."

Also, Albin wants him back as the Associate HC/OC at Charlotte now. That's proof that the confidence in him from the coaching staff extends/extended all the way up to the head coach.

Looks like the man for the job barring some extraordinary candidate we don't know about yet.

I think it speaks volumes that we/some consider it a problem to have a young successful head coach that won't stay for an extended amount of time. Look, we all love Athens. But from a job standpoint, it's a historically low-level (and low budget) program in a low-level conference. The reality of the situation is that for young up-and-coming coaches, Ohio is likely to be viewed as a springboard to the next job. Me, I'm ok with that. Personally, I'd never view it as a problem to have a talented and ambitious young coach that we all know won't stay here for a decade. Keeping the program successful and relevant at the price of replacing the head coach every 3-5 years is an acceptable and positive "problem" to have, IMO. Having to replace a coach that jumped up to a higher level job tells me that good things have been happening here.

Yes, I know he played football and now that you remind me I remember he had some coaching gig, at the d3 level, I believe. However, he still made a bad choice in overriding the AD's choice of Glen Mason, who withdrew from consideration when it was clear that OHIO was "going in a different direction." Mason then became the head coach Kent State the following year. I didn't mean to include Ping in the "just fans" reference, but simply that I hope that the people making the decision this time are more astute then Ping was in his decision to hire Bryant. It was people like me, "mere fans" that shouldn't be listened to!

https://x.com/_agent49/status/1867276239431467468?s=46&t=...

Official contract for Timmy and Charlotte