Forgive me for my ignorance here. How does a program with the richest history in CUSA go from an 11-2 season (and 18 consecutive winning seasons), to 0-12, 1-11, 3-9 which would be the darkest era in Southern Miss football history (just looking at their previous records going back to 1912).

Better post for the off season, I know,...but I was just wondering exactly what happened.

Hope Southern Miss goes bowling this year. Like others have said, this conference needs Southern Miss to be Southern Miss.

One bad coaching hire. It happened to us in basketball.

Two words: Ellis and Johnson

USM gets more bang for its athletic buck than anybody in the country, but one bad hire quickly demonstrates how fragile it all is for us non-cartels.

Omfg. Another one of these threads. Ever heard of the "search" function?? There are a million threads detailing what happened after '11....geez.

(09-09-2015 06:47 PM)HERD1 Wrote:  Forgive me for my ignorance here. How does a program with the richest history in CUSA go from an 11-2 season (and 18 consecutive winning seasons), to 0-12, 1-11, 3-9 which would be the darkest era in Southern Miss football history (just looking at their previous records going back to 1912).

Better post for the off season, I know,...but I was just wondering exactly what happened.

Hope Southern Miss goes bowling this year. Like others have said, this conference needs Southern Miss to be Southern Miss.

We tried to put Lamborghini parts into a Ford Pinto, and realized rather quickly it wouldn't work.

Then we had to go to a junk yard and find a car worth fixing up.

It takes time.

same deal in Huntington with Mark Snyder and Kayo Marcum. Lost in the wilderness 2005-2009.

Perfect storm. So many things went wrong. My favorite is the offensive coordinator, just hired, goes to rehab for pills after Spring drills and gets demoted. Newly hired recruiting coordinator takes over as OC preseason and installs his blue-chip QB, who he just coached to a state title, but has the accuracy of a bottle-rocket. We had no passing game AT ALL.

(09-09-2015 07:21 PM)Jack Bauer Wrote:  One bad coaching hire. It happened to us in basketball.

It's much deeper than that. Someone could, and probably will, write a book on the demise of Southern Miss football.

Losing to lowly WKU from the Sun Belt in 2012 was the nail in the coffin. After losing at Nebraska and then losing a close game at home against ECU, next losing on the road at WKU was the last straw. It was basically like losing to a FCS school. After that, all hope and pride was gone.

(09-10-2015 10:52 AM)WKUApollo Wrote:  Losing to lowly WKU from the Sun Belt in 2012 was the nail in the coffin. After losing at Nebraska and then losing a close game at home against ECU, next losing on the road at WKU was the last straw. It was basically like losing to a FCS school. After that, all hope and pride was gone.

We have created quite a list of getting guys fired..

The Cajuns have us to thank leading to firing our their loser head coach before the stud they have now....Ark. St. fans have us to thank for the firing of mediocre Steve Roberts, Southern Miss fans can thank us, UK fans can thank us for getting JOker fired and finally Vandy might be thanking us after this season...I am sure I am forgetting a few more but basically a lot of fans of these programs owe WKU!

UTEP can take credit for being the final nail in the Mark Snyder coffin, and we are eternally grateful.

(09-10-2015 10:52 AM)WKUApollo Wrote:  Losing to lowly WKU from the Sun Belt in 2012 was the nail in the coffin. After losing at Nebraska and then losing a close game at home against ECU, next losing on the road at WKU was the last straw. It was basically like losing to a FCS school. After that, all hope and pride was gone.

Far from the nail in the coffin. I'd say that Nebraska game was the turning point personally. Johnson pulls a QB who has us tied 14-14 in favor of a true freshman, stating he wanted to split time (there were 3 QBs and this true freshman got 3 quarters to the others 1). We were down 10 at half and ending up losing pretty big. After the game, Johnson said "We weren't going to win after half anyway. The game was over." or something to that degree. Everyone realized very quickly this guy was (a) incompetent, (b) a loser, © and an idiot.

(09-10-2015 10:52 AM)WKUApollo Wrote:  Losing to lowly WKU from the Sun Belt in 2012 was the nail in the coffin. After losing at Nebraska and then losing a close game at home against ECU, next losing on the road at WKU was the last straw. It was basically like losing to a FCS school. After that, all hope and pride was gone.

No, losing to FIU at home (2013) a week after they lost to Bethune-Cookman by like 21 points was the final straw.

(09-10-2015 01:59 PM)EagNBran Wrote:  

(09-10-2015 10:52 AM)WKUApollo Wrote:  Losing to lowly WKU from the Sun Belt in 2012 was the nail in the coffin. After losing at Nebraska and then losing a close game at home against ECU, next losing on the road at WKU was the last straw. It was basically like losing to a FCS school. After that, all hope and pride was gone.

Far from the nail in the coffin. I'd say that Nebraska game was the turning point personally. Johnson pulls a QB who has us tied 14-14 in favor of a true freshman, stating he wanted to split time (there were 3 QBs and this true freshman got 3 quarters to the others 1). We were down 10 at half and ending up losing pretty big. After the game, Johnson said "We weren't going to win after half anyway. The game was over." or something to that degree. Everyone realized very quickly this guy was (a) incompetent, (b) a loser, © and an idiot.

You pretty much summed it up. I remember too about Eloss saying the Nebraska game was basically over at halftime so he wanted to see what others could do even though it was a 14 point game. To me that was the nail in the coffin.

The game that still sticks in my mind was midway through the season at UCF and late in the 4th quarter (from what I think happened, or at least this is how it feels).....we had just driven down the field and scored with ease and are now down 3. The defense gets a stop and gets us the ball back. We drive just past midfield with ease and all of a sudden it's like Eloss was thinking "screw going for the win...let's just get in FG range and go for OT." I could have accepted that had it been an offensive struggle but we had just drove on them for 1 1/2 possessions straight at will and then all of a sudden it's like he got scared we might win.

So you guys had the talent in 2012? It wasn't a "cupboard being bare" kind of thing where Fadora left you in bad shape. What I am getting is that you had the talent but Ellis was just that bad of a coach?

(09-10-2015 04:11 PM)HERD1 Wrote:  So you guys had the talent in 2012? It wasn't a "cupboard being bare" kind of thing where Fadora left you in bad shape. What I am getting is that you had the talent but Ellis was just that bad of a coach?

Remimber this guy?
Tracey Lampley, the mvp of the 2011 championship game. He hardly touched the ball outside of kick returns. LFed had him all over the field making him get as many touches as possible.

Also consider this. Three starters on that 0-12 defense are on nfl rosters right now.

Before the ej hire was made a poster on the rivals board mentioned the high school coach. He had told his superintendent that the only way he ever left was to go back to southern miss. He also told them it was likely ellis would get the job and if it happened he would be leaving. When i heard that at least a week before he was hired i knew then it would be a disaster. BUT it was actually worse than i thought.
We had a kid who was not a qb crammed down the squad's throat in much the same manner as a recent supreme court decision......

The players referred to it as Daddy football.

Ellis Johnson, the worst head coach in NCAA Football history....bar none...

(09-10-2015 08:53 AM)southernmiss4ever Wrote:  

(09-09-2015 06:47 PM)HERD1 Wrote:  Forgive me for my ignorance here. How does a program with the richest history in CUSA go from an 11-2 season (and 18 consecutive winning seasons), to 0-12, 1-11, 3-9 which would be the darkest era in Southern Miss football history (just looking at their previous records going back to 1912).

Better post for the off season, I know,...but I was just wondering exactly what happened.

Hope Southern Miss goes bowling this year. Like others have said, this conference needs Southern Miss to be Southern Miss.

We tried to put Lamborghini parts into a Ford Pinto, and realized rather quickly it wouldn't work.

Then we had to go to a junk yard and find a car worth fixing up.

It takes time.

Funny You should say that. Last week at a local car show, there was a Contach cruising the show and revving the v12 up, but We were all saying it sounded more like a 4 cyl Pinto / Vega than say a v10 Viper.

(09-10-2015 04:11 PM)HERD1 Wrote:  So you guys had the talent in 2012? It wasn't a "cupboard being bare" kind of thing where Fadora left you in bad shape. What I am getting is that you had the talent but Ellis was just that bad of a coach?

There was plenty enough talent post-Fedora to compete. The whole "Fedora didn't leave anything" is a myth people still upset about Bower being pushed out use to throw stink on Fedora (of course, these same people never mention that we were about a dozen scholarship players short when Fedora took over). If the purposeful, calculated lack of recruiting was really a thing, why in the world would Blake Anderson have applied to take Fedora's place knowing the bottom was about to fall out?

Contending for the championship in 2012 with a new QB would've been a tall order, no doubt, but no way was the talent scarce enough to explain going 0-12. Look up the box score from the 2011 championship game. Plenty of underclassmen other than Lampley contributed to the victory. The real issue there was by the time Johnson fudged everything up and we changed coaches again 12 months later, Monken was left with a lot of holes from all the turnover, and HE very arguably had a talent issue.

So how did we get there? Putting it as succinctly as possible, it was a combination of:

1. A bat-s*** crazy, egomaniacal president who was rubbed the wrong way by Fedora's celebrity and some of his behavior

2. A vacuum in the athletic director's position due to the former AD "retiring" and an interim AD not wanting to jeopardize his chances of becoming the permanent hire

3. Influential old-timers who wanted to go back to defense-first, ball-control, old-school "footbawl" as opposed to what Johnson himself referred to as "soccer with helmets" when he was DC at South Carolina

It was a perfect storm of face-palmery.

Warning to all other schools: If you ever hire a coach, and the only school official who speaks at the press conference is your president, don't waste any time. Start a riot right then.

I think the worst part is that later on, some people went to The Citadel football board to talk about it. That was his only other head coaching job he had had years ago. Apparently, he was trying to schedule games the week that playoffs started in FCS or whatever division they're in. He had no faith that he could ever get them to playoffs, so he wanted to schedule games during those weekends. Talk about a man with a vision.

The worst part? This was all public knowledge. It shows that the committee who hired him did absolutely no research.