(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.