I'm sure no expert on what kind of coach Blankenship will be but I do think he will give it all he's got. He obviously knows a lot of football and has some contacts in the football world which won't hurt. If he keeps pretty much the same offensive scheme and improves the defense, which I think he will he should be just fine for a long time....which should be something different. I don't see him another John Phillips at all.........he's alive that's the difference. Age has very little to do with coaching ability or recruiting and that's been proven in both football and basketball. From what I've seen of him he has some fire and desire to win......that's what counts............now we will see if he can coach at the college level. I'm more than willing to give him a chance!!
I know I'm a little more happy with him now than I was a couple of weeks ago, but I think there's a litmus test for him that won't appear until next recruiting season. And that is how well he recruits kids locally - next year. Now I'm not talking about those normally decent Union kids or the 2 stars we compete with that La Monroe or North Texas desperately want, but the top players in this entire area that normally go to OSU, K-State, Texas A@M or Arkansas. He doesn't even have to outrecruit OU IMO. If he is the kind of coach I hope, he'll win a lot of those battles himself. If not, I think we have a chance of going a little backwards because our out of area recruiting will probably be weaker IMO. Could he have enticed Tracy Moore or J Smith to come to TU instead of the aggies? In the future, that ought to be the case. I also want him to have a vision of where to go from here as far as facilities, scheduling and "program" are concerned. I want him to have a BCS Bowl plan of action. I agree, he'll give it his all, but he also needs to be honest with his assts about "results" like TG was. I don't want him to be too nice.
(02-10-2011 03:51 PM)rabidTU Wrote: [ -> ]I know I'm a little more happy with him now than I was a couple of weeks ago, but I think there's a litmus test for him that won't appear until next recruiting season. And that is how well he recruits kids locally - next year. Now I'm not talking about those normally decent Union kids or the 2 stars we compete with that La Monroe or North Texas desperately want, but the top players in this entire area that normally go to OSU, K-State, Texas A@M or Arkansas. He doesn't even have to outrecruit OU IMO. If he is the kind of coach I hope, he'll win a lot of those battles himself. If not, I think we have a chance of going a little backwards because our out of area recruiting will probably be weaker IMO. Could he have enticed Tracy Moore or J Smith to come to TU instead of the aggies? In the future, that ought to be the case. I also want him to have a vision of where to go from here as far as facilities, scheduling and "program" are concerned. I want him to have a BCS Bowl plan of action. I agree, he'll give it his all, but he also needs to be honest with his assts about "results" like TG was. I don't want him to be too nice.
I don't know about all of his assistants but I presume he has a mixture of ages, not all around 50. I like experience but a couple of younger coaches wouldn't hurt either. I agree about recruiting next year, if some how we can end up ranked, 2 years in a row, should help the recruiting. To make that possible, we need to beat a minimum of one bigger name team, OU OSU or Boise and play the other two fairly close. How good we are next year depends on how good our defense is........we can't afford any blow out losses even to OU. I think we will be very competitive with anyone in CUSA and there should be some very good teams in CUSA next year.