(11-30-2018 10:21 AM)DukedoG06 Wrote:  

(11-30-2018 09:24 AM)Dukester Wrote:  

(11-29-2018 11:22 PM)KickItToScotty Wrote:  Like a lot of others have said, I’m not worried about JMU dropping off significantly. JMU was already attractive enough as an FCS school for Withers to be pretty damn successful until the playoffs came around, and now we’re pretty much THE FCS team if you’re not gonna go to NDSU.

A really good hire will mean we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we probably at least go to Frisco next year, and the FCS is still the NDSU and JMU show... Maybe eventually not in that order. A bad hire will probably mean we’re still really good and are still a top CAA team and playoff team even if we probably don’t do much in the playoffs.

My only worry really is that if we make the wrong hire, we take too long to move on. The standards should be really high right off the bat barring a ton of injuries or something like that.

I think JMU's history shows we will offer a 5 year contract, and unless something were to happen off the filed the coach is safe 4 years, and a 5th year if the team is around middle of the pack.

JMU has hired 2 football head football coaches the last 2 years. I don't think either was a bad selection/hire. One panned out big time, the other could not win a big game.

Personally I think this is a 50-50 proposition for us. Best guess we hire someone in between Withers and Houston which means we will contend on certain years. Under Withers we would of never contended for a NC. Under Houstonit appears we would of been a contender just about every year. If we hire another Withers it will be 4-5 years of underachieving. JMU should make it to the final 8 in the FCS at least every other year with a half way decent coach.

Spoiled or unrealistic. But with JMU's resources and position....we need to make the playoffs every year. Advance to the quarters/semis every year. It's Frisco every four years (at minimum) for me. That is how high the expectations now are. If not, what is the difference between low G5 Bowl game and a first round playoff game exit against Colgate or Liberty?

Getting shafted by the committee and then having Houston leave, pushes me a lot further in the direction of wanting to move up. Just being honest.

Definitely agree with a lot of what both of you said. I don't think Withers was a bad hire and he definitely left JMU in a better position than we were before him. I don't think he was a good coach though and while he was solid for what we needed then, a coach of his caliber is not what we need now.

I think the standards for keeping this job more than two or three years should be extremely high and shouldn't really follow what it's been historically at JMU. If we hire another Withers and he's gone in two years we can recover just fine. If he's around for four or five years, it might set us back quite a bit. In my eyes, a good coach should be capable of making a trip to Frisco most years with the program he'll be inheriting. If we're losing more than a few CAA games every couple years and we aren't going deep in the playoffs, then I'd feel it's JMU and everything previous coaches built making a bad coach look good.

I also very strongly agree that this makes me want to move up even more. With good coaching hires we're definitely capable of remaining an FCS powerhouse for a long time, but it's unrealistic to think you're never going to miss and staying FCS there's not much of anywhere to go but down eventually. If we're able to move to the right FBS conference at the right time, I think we could make a lot out of the momentum JMU football has right now. The next HC hire or two is huge though.