(01-04-2013 12:31 PM)Chappy Wrote:  Turner won 11 in the Big Ten.

But sucked pretty much every other year.

(01-04-2013 12:31 PM)Chappy Wrote:  Ellis Johnson could not win one game in C-USA. Turner won 11 in the Big Ten.

He went 0-11 in 1997 and 1-11 in 1-11.

Not EJ bad, but not very impressive. Of course, when you wait this long to mae a hire you're not going to get much. Maybe they could've gone after a good FCS coach or something.

(01-04-2013 06:50 AM)Chappy Wrote:  I may be in the minority, but I don't think it's a bad hire at all. We're talking about FIU, not Notre Dame here.
First of all, it's a guy with head coaching experience, not only at the FBS level at SJSU, but in the Big Ten at Illinois. How many times have schools in FIU's shoes gone for a young up-and-coming assistant (or even worse, a veteran assistant) with no head coaching experience and seen it blow up in their face?
He took an Illinois teams that was in shambles and went 0-11, 3-8, 8-4 his first three years, then followed that up with a 5-6 season and a 10-2 year with all of his own players in year 5. Not being an Illinois follower, I don't know how or why the wheels fell off after that, but he proved he can build a competitive team in the Big Ten. He is 8 years wiser now, and that should help him.
FIU is in a great recruiting area, Cristobal had the program on it's feet, and I think Turner will do great there. YMMV.

That's what I'm thinking. Once the shock wears off and we begin to see the philosphy during the Spring we'll have a better idea of what we've got.

Former HC with NFL experience and a bunch of key contacts should be able to recruit some athletes. Just depends on how things gel. But what you say above is what I'm looking forward to.

(01-04-2013 12:41 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 06:50 AM)Chappy Wrote:  I may be in the minority, but I don't think it's a bad hire at all. We're talking about FIU, not Notre Dame here.
First of all, it's a guy with head coaching experience, not only at the FBS level at SJSU, but in the Big Ten at Illinois. How many times have schools in FIU's shoes gone for a young up-and-coming assistant (or even worse, a veteran assistant) with no head coaching experience and seen it blow up in their face?
He took an Illinois teams that was in shambles and went 0-11, 3-8, 8-4 his first three years, then followed that up with a 5-6 season and a 10-2 year with all of his own players in year 5. Not being an Illinois follower, I don't know how or why the wheels fell off after that, but he proved he can build a competitive team in the Big Ten. He is 8 years wiser now, and that should help him.
FIU is in a great recruiting area, Cristobal had the program on it's feet, and I think Turner will do great there. YMMV.

That's what I'm thinking. Once the shock wears off and we begin to see the philosphy during the Spring we'll have a better idea of what we've got.

Former HC with NFL experience and a bunch of key contacts should be able to recruit some athletes. Just depends on how things gel. But what you say above is what I'm looking forward to.

Only time will tell if this is a good hire or not, but given all the previous predictions of Butch Davis heading down there to coach it does seem a little underwhelming. That doesn't mean it won't turn out to be a good hire though.

I must say as a Tampa Bay Bucs fan, I was not exactly impressed with his work with Josh Freeman. Then again, I wasn't impressed with any of Freeman's former QB coaches. Wait, maybe I'm seeing a trend here....

Turner has 3 winning seasons.

7-4 at San Jose State
8-4 and 10-2 at Illinois

He has 49 wins in 10 seasons 25 of those wins came in those 3 winning seaons. Turner also has one winless, one 1 win and two 3 win seasons. None of this would make me want to hire him.

Everyone can spin it the way they want. But this is a bad hire.

(01-04-2013 12:58 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  Turner has 3 winning seasons.
7-4 at San Jose State
8-4 and 10-2 at Illinois
He has 49 wins in 10 seasons 25 of those wins came in those 3 winning seaons. Turner also has one winless, one 1 win and two 3 win seasons. None of this would make me want to hire him.
Everyone can spin it the way they want. But this is a bad hire.

You might be right, however, he hasn't coached in college for 8 years and has spent the bulk of those seasons in the NFL. Would you expect him to be a better coach given the last 8 years or worse? It's not like we're pulling him out of a vacuum from 8 years ago....would you say you're smarter than you were 8 years ago? and he's facing C-USA competition not Big 10; so I'd say the trend here is positive.

Bad hire

Firing Cristobal to hire Ron Turner is hilarious.

North Texas most successful coach in the NCAA's modern era came to Denton from SMU with a 49-66-1 record while at the Hilltop. Had there been as many bowl games back then as the present, 5 of 6 Hayden Fry-coached Mean Green football teams would have been bowl elgible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_Fry

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)usmbacker Wrote:  Firing Cristobal to hire Ron Turner is hilarious.

Really? and what makes Cristobal such a great coach? I don't see a lot of programs banging his door down; sure he'll end up being hired again as a o-line coach/recruiting coordinator. But after T.Y. left, he showed what kind of coach he was, turning his most experienced team ever into a 3-8 team with wins over Akron, S. Alabama and FAU

Now are we disappointed we couldn't reel-in Butch? sure, but Turner comes highly recommended (Schiano, Pagano, Davis, Manning, etc.), HC in the Big 10 and multiple stints in the NFL....not a bad resume if you ask me.

(01-04-2013 05:48 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 04:44 PM)usmbacker Wrote:  Firing Cristobal to hire Ron Turner is hilarious.

Really? and what makes Cristobal such a great coach? I don't see a lot of programs banging his door down;

His name also came up during the Tech coach search.

At first i thought this was a bad hire, but not every coach is good enough to coach at big time programs. We've seen it before good coaches with great records at smaller schools can't hang at AQ schools. They didn't forget how to coach they just maybe can't compete for recruits to keep up with the bigger programs in conference. He did good even though it was one year, at a smaller school in San Jose state. That's not an easy school to win at if you look at their record.

(01-04-2013 01:38 AM)HerdZoned Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 01:26 AM)BlazerUnit Wrote:  Not the 'sexy name' that was allegedly going to be sought out. But with so much time put in the NFL, Turner is bound to have picked up some fresh tricks to go along with his own offensive mantras. Of course, you've got to recruit good talent to run that stuff...

One can only call it a bad hire based upon his past head coaching record, a stint that saw its end two presidential terms ago. He's not a marquee hire, he's a wild card with some negatives.

And if this hire would have been Watson Brown, what would you have said.....Both Brown and Turner had about the same sucess in the same amount of time.

I think it should be noted that I was with the chorus of folks wondering why Mario Cristobal was fired...I still haven't heard a convincing explanation for that being necessary.

Is Ron Turner an improvement? Of course not, mostly because its way too soon to tell. That he's had a longer record of losing doesn't make him look good on paper, on air, on mud, or whatever. And he's not Butch Davis. What I'm not willing to do is make grand assumptions of what he will or won't do simply on his past W/L record, because his experience in college coaching isn't fresh. I'm also an admitted optimist...I hoped like hell for Neil Callaway to surprise the CFB world. And never once did I figure Ellis Johnson to be an 0-12 head coach.

"Ron Turner...good hire or bad hire?" is just a throwaway topic for sports radio or Around The Horn. Some people may be proven true eventually, but its a cheap debate right now.

(01-05-2013 01:37 AM)BlazerUnit Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 01:38 AM)HerdZoned Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 01:26 AM)BlazerUnit Wrote:  Not the 'sexy name' that was allegedly going to be sought out. But with so much time put in the NFL, Turner is bound to have picked up some fresh tricks to go along with his own offensive mantras. Of course, you've got to recruit good talent to run that stuff...

One can only call it a bad hire based upon his past head coaching record, a stint that saw its end two presidential terms ago. He's not a marquee hire, he's a wild card with some negatives.

And if this hire would have been Watson Brown, what would you have said.....Both Brown and Turner had about the same sucess in the same amount of time.

I think it should be noted that I was with the chorus of folks wondering why Mario Cristobal was fired...I still haven't heard a convincing explanation for that being necessary.

Is Ron Turner an improvement? Of course not, mostly because its way too soon to tell. That he's had a longer record of losing doesn't make him look good on paper, on air, on mud, or whatever. And he's not Butch Davis. What I'm not willing to do is make grand assumptions of what he will or won't do simply on his past W/L record, because his experience in college coaching isn't fresh. I'm also an admitted optimist...I hoped like hell for Neil Callaway to surprise the CFB world. And never once did I figure Ellis Johnson to be an 0-12 head coach.

"Ron Turner...good hire or bad hire?" is just a throwaway topic for sports radio or Around The Horn. Some people may be proven true eventually, but its a cheap debate right now.

Good post, Blazer Unit. As for myself, all we have to do as FIU fans is to welcome Coach Turner to the FIU Family and hope he is a very successful coach here.

(01-04-2013 08:30 AM)OwlFamily Wrote:  On behalf of FAU fans, I would like to thank Pete Garcia for making this a complete circus, getting the FIU faithful hopes up for Butch Davis, and then crushing what loyal fan base they have with this underwhelming hire.

Yes he had head coaching experience, but its LOSING experience.

FIU fans thought they were going to get to sleep with Anglenia Jolie and wound up in bed with Rossanne Barr.

....was thinking more along the lines of this....beulah balbricker

(01-04-2013 12:35 PM)LR Eagle Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 12:31 PM)Chappy Wrote:  Ellis Johnson could not win one game in C-USA. Turner won 11 in the Big Ten.

He went 0-11 in 1997 and 1-11 in 1-11.

Not EJ bad, but not very impressive. Of course, when you wait this long to mae a hire you're not going to get much. Maybe they could've gone after a good FCS coach or something.

....waiting is only good for the Heinz family (arcane ref to the old 'anticipation' ketchup commercial)...letting Fedora coach our bowl game is why we hired EJ

(01-04-2013 12:30 PM)Lee Moses Wrote:  

(01-04-2013 08:40 AM)shiftyeagle Wrote:  Sounds almost like an Ellis Johnson-type hire. Y'all best hope not.

I don't think anybody could be that bad. But I have my doubts that RT will ever have FIU competing for a C-USA title. I guess we'll see.

Ron Turner is light years better than Ellis Johnson; Hell Ron might be better than Norv.

I don't know if it was mentioned in this thread, but Ron Turner was the Bear's offensive coordinator when the Bears went to the Superbowl in 2006. He was able to get turrible Rex Grossman and journeyman Kyle Orton to play like pros. Ron had actually been the Bears offensive coordinator twice; during his first go round I seem to recall him having either Erik Kraemer or Jim Miller at quarteback. Kraemer and Miller were journeymen before they got to the Bears, but one of them did really good under Turner; in fact if it was Kraemer, then I seem to recall him making the pro bowl one season. And let's be honest; Chicago is not a quarterback friendly pro team. In fact Sid Luckman still owns a lot of the Bears passing records and that was from like 60 or 70 years ago.

I think that Ron Turner is going to do real good at FIU, because Florida has better football recruiting grounds than Illinois. No one can recruit at Illinois, because any kid that is any good in the State of Illinois will either end up at Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State or in the MAC.

(01-05-2013 11:39 AM)PirateMarv Wrote:  Ron Turner is light years better than Ellis Johnson; Hell Ron might be better than Norv.

Thats not saying much

(01-05-2013 11:46 AM)HerdZoned Wrote:  

(01-05-2013 11:39 AM)PirateMarv Wrote:  Ron Turner is light years better than Ellis Johnson; Hell Ron might be better than Norv.

Thats not saying much

He was the offensive coordinator of a Superbowl team; and Rex Grossman was the quarterback. Now that is saying a lot.

I must admit, the hire is growing on me, but I can't figure out if it because of my blind faith in FIU or because it may actually be a good hire. The positives for the hire vs. Cristobal is experience. Everyone's biggest knock on Cristobal is that he would continually have moments on game day where you would just sit there and wonder: what. was. that. I'm excited that we may finally have a coaching staff that can DEVELOP players rather than just bring in raw talent and win with that. That strategy helped us beat our Sun Belt foes until they started to recruit better. Last year it was obvious it wouldn't work anymore.

We will go into our first season in C-USA with a ton of question marks, but I guess that will make it all the more fun.