RE: USM vs MSU
We can make excuses all day about the changing college landscape, but the reality is that there are still plenty of athletes out there that can be swayed to come to Southern Miss. Fedora recruited players no one thought we’d ever have a chance at. And while that version of CUSA was definitely better, let’s not pretend it had some great perception. Everyone wanted out. And yet we recruited to it. The right coach can still recruit players to Southern Miss.
Year 4 of Hopson and it’s been a long, boring stretch. Bad offense, average defense, SWAC talent, SWAC coaching. Administration thinks things are fine apparently. Leadership loves their Hop hop to the top. Remember, these are the same people who hired Ladner over better, more successful options. The same Ladner who accomplished zero at Southeastern Louisiana, a school with similar basketball resources to our own. And why? Because he’s a nice, Southern Miss guy who won’t leave us if he has success. The President and many big donors who control the school are perfectly content being average in the worst conference in the country as long as they keep their power.
And we actually wonder why people don’t come to games. Who wants to support this? Alumni don’t owe this school anything, and casual fans with no degree certainly don’t. You have to make it worth our time and money to come out, especially time. You can give free tickets, but if people believe the product is awful, many will pass. Heck, look at the student section. When I was there just seven years ago, in an 0-12 year, we were filling the bottom two sections and stretching toward filling the top two. Now the school has to use the excuse of ‘family fun zone’ to throw the band back over there so our student section doesn’t look as embarrassing as it actually is. Can’t even fill up one section with students, and I can promise you it’ll be even emptier against UTEP. And quite frankly, I hope the rest of the stands are too. Until the University sees financial issues with the current product by low attendance numbers, they’re content with average. I mean, isn’t this why we fired Bower? Because of complacent mediocrity?
Our fans aren’t stupid. They know the product we put out on the field would get slaughtered by some FCS schools. We may get bowl eligibility only because of how bad our conference is, but with 1-3 looking us in the face and UNT, UAB, FAU, and La Tech on the schedule, it’s suddenly looking grim. And that should be the only statement needed for McClain to make a change. The fact that any of those games are even in question is an indictment on this program and it’s leadership.
That’s my rant for tonight. I’m sure I could say a lot more, but I have work in the morning. All I know is I can’t support the product I’m seeing, not because I don’t love my school, but because I care too much to support this garbage. And you can say that staying at home doesn’t solve the problem, but I can promise you sitting in the stands isn’t either. The school doesn’t care about our opinions (unless you’re a top donor) and won’t listen to fan concerns. They refuse to even address our conference situation and are embarrassed at the idea of saying we wanna get out of this league. I want an AD like East Carolina had who whores himself out to conferences and makes it abundantly clear that this is not what we want; that we want better.
But many of you in here are correct. We are where we are and we won’t do better. That’s the mindset Giannini had, the mindset McGillis had, and the mindset Gilbert had. The only one who didn’t was fired for breaking the status quo and expecting more from our school (Hammond). Where McClain falls, I don’t know, but he was under Giannini, so I wouldn’t be shocked if that mindset is in him as well.
(This post was last modified: 09-08-2019 11:06 PM by EagNBran.)
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