What has happened to USM football?
Growing up, i watched you guys man handle Alabama and Auburn. At UAB, you guys destroyed us for the first decade of playing you. In the first few years of CUSA, You beat the power houses back then (TCU, Louisville, ECU) and laughed the rest of us off the field.

what was the turning point? what changed?

(09-22-2021 07:17 PM)Lou-A-B Wrote:  What has happened to USM football?
Growing up, i watched you guys man handle Alabama and Auburn. At UAB, you guys destroyed us for the first decade of playing you. In the first few years of CUSA, You beat the power houses back then (TCU, Louisville, ECU) and laughed the rest of us off the field.

what was the turning point? what changed?

A quick history lesson on our downward spiral. Jeff Bower was fired and we hired Fedora. This isn't the reason things went south, but it plays a part. Fedora went 12-2. Beat #7 Houston to win CUSA championship and things looked great. Fedora was hired by North Carolina and we hired ELoss Johnson. And AAC took everyone over us. This is the point that most of the fanbase can point to as our downfall. But it goes deeper. EJ took our 12 win team and promptly went 0-12. EJ was fired and we hired Todd Monken. He went 1-11 year one. 3-9 year two. Then 9-5 year three. He turned out program around. Then he was hired away by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A large portion of the fan base was upset at being stepping stones for coaches. They wanted another Bower. Somebody that was good and would be around long term. So we got Jay Flopson. He talked all about USM being the dream job and best of all he was cheap. He really kept us at mediocrity. Constantly being 1 to 2 games away from playing for conference championship. 2020 happened. We lost opening game to South Alabama and Flopson quit. Now the writing was on the wall. He was going to get fired. But still. The the interim coach Scotty Walden got hired away after 4 games. Then we finished the year on our third coach Tim Billings. Now we have Will Hall who I think will turn the program around. Again. But it won't be overnight. So yeah. That's it. But we've been mostly irrelevant for a decade. So we are having to rebuild the brand. The fanbase is still here though so that's reason we will be successful again.

TLDR- 2 bad coaching hires. We hired Eloss Johnson. Then over reacted to constantly losing coaches and hired Flopson. Decade gone.

(09-22-2021 10:55 PM)poEDicJustice Wrote:  

(09-22-2021 07:17 PM)Lou-A-B Wrote:  What has happened to USM football?
Growing up, i watched you guys man handle Alabama and Auburn. At UAB, you guys destroyed us for the first decade of playing you. In the first few years of CUSA, You beat the power houses back then (TCU, Louisville, ECU) and laughed the rest of us off the field.

what was the turning point? what changed?

A quick history lesson on our downward spiral. Jeff Bower was fired and we hired Fedora. This isn't the reason things went south, but it plays a part. Fedora went 12-2. Beat #7 Houston to win CUSA championship and things looked great. Fedora was hired by North Carolina and we hired ELoss Johnson. And AAC took everyone over us. This is the point that most of the fanbase can point to as our downfall. But it goes deeper. EJ took our 12 win team and promptly went 0-12. EJ was fired and we hired Todd Monken. He went 1-11 year one. 3-9 year two. Then 9-5 year three. He turned out program around. Then he was hired away by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A large portion of the fan base was upset at being stepping stones for coaches. They wanted another Bower. Somebody that was good and would be around long term. So we got Jay Flopson. He talked all about USM being the dream job and best of all he was cheap. He really kept us at mediocrity. Constantly being 1 to 2 games away from playing for conference championship. 2020 happened. We lost opening game to South Alabama and Flopson quit. Now the writing was on the wall. He was going to get fired. But still. The the interim coach Scotty Walden got hired away after 4 games. Then we finished the year on our third coach Tim Billings. Now we have Will Hall who I think will turn the program around. Again. But it won't be overnight. So yeah. That's it. But we've been mostly irrelevant for a decade. So we are having to rebuild the brand. The fanbase is still here though so that's reason we will be successful again.

TLDR- 2 bad coaching hires. We hired Eloss Johnson. Then over reacted to constantly losing coaches and hired Flopson. Decade gone.

A perfect response….Hall of Fame post…perfectly encapsulates what happened. How do I copy and paste to all the other boards I lurk in?

“People” need to understand successful coaches ARE replaceable, so wringing your hands over one leaving is dumb.

Now what you can’t do is try to replace them with the polar opposite of the guy who was successful, like we did twice in 4 years. Imagine for a second where we are today if we go straight from Fedora to Monken.

(09-23-2021 09:51 AM)HarborPointe Wrote:  “People” need to understand successful coaches ARE replaceable, so wringing your hands over one leaving is dumb.

Now what you can’t do is try to replace them with the polar opposite of the guy who was successful, like we did twice in 4 years. Imagine for a second where we are today if we go straight from Fedora to Monken.

Spot on. Or if we hadn't hired Flopson. Ultimately I think that did more damage than Eloss. We turned things around relatively quickly after EJ. We still had potential recruits that remembered us being great. But 5 years of Flopson doing nothing has greatly damaged our image. We are recruiting athletes that have no memory of us being relevant.

(09-23-2021 04:33 PM)poEDicJustice Wrote:  

(09-23-2021 09:51 AM)HarborPointe Wrote:  “People” need to understand successful coaches ARE replaceable, so wringing your hands over one leaving is dumb.

Now what you can’t do is try to replace them with the polar opposite of the guy who was successful, like we did twice in 4 years. Imagine for a second where we are today if we go straight from Fedora to Monken.

Spot on. Or if we hadn't hired Flopson. Ultimately I think that did more damage than Eloss. We turned things around relatively quickly after EJ. We still had potential recruits that remembered us being great. But 5 years of Flopson doing nothing has greatly damaged our image. We are recruiting athletes that have no memory of us being relevant.

Or better yet, had we hired Blake Anderson after Fedora.

(09-23-2021 04:33 PM)poEDicJustice Wrote:  Ultimately I think that did more damage than Eloss. We turned things around relatively quickly after EJ. We still had potential recruits that remembered us being great. But 5 years of Flopson doing nothing has greatly damaged our image. We are recruiting athletes that have no memory of us being relevant.

Truth. EJ just blew the whole thing up at once. Hopson presided over a slow burn. Half a decade with not a sniff of a division title, a 1-2 bowl record, and butt-kickings at the hands of numerous never-wases took out a lot of steam. Doing it in CUSA has left us practically invisible.

I totally believe Hall is capable of turning it around, but like Fedora, he can’t just show up and make everything right again as his talk would lead you to believe. That’s one thing I appreciate about Monken in retrospect: he was a straight shooter and never looked past today as far as telling you where things stood. Not that I have a problem with “We’re gonna ___,” but he was more, “We gotta ___ first if we’re gonna ___.”

I think everyone misses the big picture. Its not just southern miss that sucks, it is just that we used to play at power5 level as a "small guy". Now we are simply playing like the rest of the small guys.

Two issues with us small schools and why i think it is over

1.POWER5 crap. We could go undefeated and still not even be considered for the playoffs. So what do we have to pull for? A CUSA championship? Does anyone really care about that because I don't? That's why we have such a big baseball fanbase. No, we probably wont' win a national championship, but every year we have a realistic path to do that and we can't ever say that for football.

2. Young kinds don't watch sports anymore. They are gamers. So ever year, the ball watching population declines more and more. Eventually it dwindles down to mainly banwagon fans (which is nearly where we are as only about 20% of SEC fan bases actually went to the school they are so die hard for). I would put money that at least 30% of Ole Miss and State fans are actually southern miss people but its just way more fun to tailgate and watch those SEC games.

(09-22-2021 07:17 PM)Lou-A-B Wrote:  What has happened to USM football?
Growing up, i watched you guys man handle Alabama and Auburn. At UAB, you guys destroyed us for the first decade of playing you. In the first few years of CUSA, You beat the power houses back then (TCU, Louisville, ECU) and laughed the rest of us off the field.

what was the turning point? what changed?

Simply: Southern Miss folks couldn’t understand that we aren’t a destination job. They wanted a “one of us type” who’d stay forever. This has led to a cycle of hiring young competent coaches, followed by
A coach who has USM ties, followed by a competent coach to fix the mess. Wash, rinse, repeat for a decade.

(09-28-2021 09:55 PM)cyc46 Wrote:  

(09-22-2021 07:17 PM)Lou-A-B Wrote:  What has happened to USM football?
Growing up, i watched you guys man handle Alabama and Auburn. At UAB, you guys destroyed us for the first decade of playing you. In the first few years of CUSA, You beat the power houses back then (TCU, Louisville, ECU) and laughed the rest of us off the field.

what was the turning point? what changed?

Simply: Southern Miss folks couldn’t understand that we aren’t a destination job. They wanted a “one of us type” who’d stay forever. This has led to a cycle of hiring young competent coaches, followed by
A coach who has USM ties, followed by a competent coach to fix the mess. Wash, rinse, repeat for a decade.

This. Plus we had a musical chairs of AD's.