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(10-18-2022 06:22 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  No I understand the long game and that sometimes, in context of things around you and other choices and circumstances, you make a safe hire (notice I didn’t say VIncent either) for the short term to build for the future because it is a smarter, more pragmatic choice than a riskier one that wins Twitter. Bill Clark was a *safe* hire, BTW. No one was beating down his door either and he took a 3 year contract

I disagree, Bill Clark was not a safe, he was the best coach we could hire/afford at the time. Fortunately and very good one too! This time we can afford much more and the candidate pool will be much better.

“After meeting with Coach Bryant Vincent, our team and staff over the last few days, and in consultation with President Ray Watts and the UA System Board of Trustees, we have asked Coach Vincent to serve as our Interim Head Coach. He is well-respected by our players and staff and has the full support of our athletics administration and university leadership. UAB will perform a national coaching search at the conclusion of the season, but right now our focus is on the present and getting this tremendous team ready to make another run at a Conference USA Championship.”

- Mark Ingram

(10-18-2022 06:22 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  No I understand the long game and that sometimes, in context of things around you and other choices and circumstances, you make a safe hire (notice I didn’t say VIncent either) for the short term to build for the future because it is a smarter, more pragmatic choice than a riskier one that wins Twitter. Bill Clark was a *safe* hire, BTW. No one was beating down his door either and he took a 3 year contract

I don't see Vincent as a safe hire. There are too many available candidates with better resumes. He's far too inexperienced as a head coach and doesn't even have a great track record as an OC. At least Clark had a year at Jax State and a playoff appearance under his belt.

We have too much going for us (AAC, new practice facility, new stadium) to settle. UAB needs a home run. Vincent would be like a bunt.

Notice again I didn’t say Vincent. One can make a *safe* hire to bridge a transition that isn’t sexy. This happens a lot.

We will have a national search, the AD has said that multiple times and he isn’t going to ask for or consult the opinion of any of us regular folk. Here is hoping he will make a great hire whether it is VIncent or someone else or whether it is a big name or a no name. Or even if it is Blazin :)

(10-18-2022 06:36 PM)ICB Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 06:22 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  No I understand the long game and that sometimes, in context of things around you and other choices and circumstances, you make a safe hire (notice I didn’t say VIncent either) for the short term to build for the future because it is a smarter, more pragmatic choice than a riskier one that wins Twitter. Bill Clark was a *safe* hire, BTW. No one was beating down his door either and he took a 3 year contract

I disagree, Bill Clark was not a safe, he was the best coach we could hire/afford at the time. Fortunately and very good one too! This time we can afford much more and the candidate pool will be much better.

I agree. Safe hire and hiring a UAB FC doesn't co-exist in the same universe

(10-19-2022 10:01 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 06:36 PM)ICB Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 06:22 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  No I understand the long game and that sometimes, in context of things around you and other choices and circumstances, you make a safe hire (notice I didn’t say VIncent either) for the short term to build for the future because it is a smarter, more pragmatic choice than a riskier one that wins Twitter. Bill Clark was a *safe* hire, BTW. No one was beating down his door either and he took a 3 year contract

I disagree, Bill Clark was not a safe, he was the best coach we could hire/afford at the time. Fortunately and very good one too! This time we can afford much more and the candidate pool will be much better.

I agree. Safe hire and hiring a UAB FC doesn't co-exist in the same universe

It does from the perspective of the person/people making the hire at the time they make it. Bill Clark was the ultimate *safe* hire back in 2013 by the people deciding. He was cheap and willing to do a 3 year, which Ray and PBJ loved because they were already calculating the cost of contract buyouts, and he had been a proven scrapper/winner which Mackin and his advisers loved during what they already knew was a win fast or die trying situation. He also didn’t come with a high powered agent who could make things messy when they screwed him over.

They all miscalculated but not for the reasons they expected, lol.

Btw, you are actually right that there isn’t a *safe* hire. Any hire comes with risk/reward at any school and it is always more than just W-L.

Definitely a weird time to start campaigning for Vincent after struggling with Charlotte. We need to prove we can a win a road game first.

I agree with an earlier comment about the timing. Probably means some people have heard behind the scenes that the search is getting more serious.

(10-19-2022 10:11 AM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  

(10-19-2022 10:01 AM)HiddenDragon Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 06:36 PM)ICB Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 06:22 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  No I understand the long game and that sometimes, in context of things around you and other choices and circumstances, you make a safe hire (notice I didn’t say VIncent either) for the short term to build for the future because it is a smarter, more pragmatic choice than a riskier one that wins Twitter. Bill Clark was a *safe* hire, BTW. No one was beating down his door either and he took a 3 year contract

I disagree, Bill Clark was not a safe, he was the best coach we could hire/afford at the time. Fortunately and very good one too! This time we can afford much more and the candidate pool will be much better.

I agree. Safe hire and hiring a UAB FC doesn't co-exist in the same universe

It does from the perspective of the person/people making the hire at the time they make it. Bill Clark was the ultimate *safe* hire back in 2013 by the people deciding. He was cheap and willing to do a 3 year, which Ray and PBJ loved.......

And UAB could have found any number of coaches willing to take the deal Clark took. UAB Football was dead in the water and the BOT was already planning to kill it. Clark was an affordable hire with what the BOT had planned but by no means was he a safe hire.

Besides, a safe would have been hiring a coach with minimal success, not someone with the resume Clark had when he was hired.

(10-18-2022 11:19 AM)grendelson138 Wrote:  Fan support wise, the crowd didn't look great on TV either. Just saying...

Our crowd is not going to look good on TV when both AU and UA are playing in the same time slot, let alone when it's UA and UT and both are undefeated. That's just reality. Add that we were playing one of the worst teams on our home schedule.

The 22k announced was actually better than I thought it would be.

Hell, the more I think about it the clearer it becomes that Clark was actually a risky hire for the BOT. They knew they were going to kill the program but the BOT didn't want to draw suspicion from the wrong people about their intentions.

So instead of doing a questionable hire, the BOT instead chose to hire someone with a strong resume while being able to get him on the cheap. The hire comforts UAB supporters while keeping the BOT and Prez hidden agenda under wrap. Welp, it backfired on the BOT and the Prez.

LOL

(10-18-2022 05:26 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  Oh BS. I have not even said Vincent should be the choice. There should be a national search and if he proves to be it, so be it. If not, fine too. All I know for sure is that that there is no one in the fan bases and especially on this board with a clue who that will be or a say in it at all.

Anyone expecting UAB (or anyone else similar) to become some national power is delusional. It rarely happens for longer than brief periods. It won’t happen for UCF or Cincinnati either. Over the long hall, all return to the mean. For programs with similar resources, uab would be far ahead of curve to consistently be an 8-win kind of team with the occasional outlier. We will be fortunate to enjoy several of those kinds of outlier seasons in our lifetimes, reality is more like we will be fortunate to experience a couple.

That isn’t low expectations because I expect uab to always pursue it but reality and wishing are different worlds.

No. I disagree. That is not fine, and that may be something that will cause me to cancel my season tickets in the future. We may hire a new coach, and he may completely flop, but at least we tried. I don't want to go into every season with our most talented team ever and then finish 8-4(6-2) maybe in the conference championship game.

The board was sensitive to how the Callaway situation was received. They let Mackin pick someone that on paper would look ok to UAB people with no Bama ties that could be thrown back at them and rile up the blazer base before the hammer fell. So no, they didn’t think it was risky. They didn’t respect Bill or UAB potential to turn things around after all they had done to kneecap the situation. It actually was, or course, but not from their perspective.

All coaching changes are risky. None are actually *safe.* But rarely would those things be known until hindsight. Scott Frost would have been the safest hire Nebraska ever could have made, for example, until he wasn’t.

It is risky to stick with Vincent, it is risky to go a different direction. The balance between pragmatic and bold doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Sometimes depending on many factors you take the pragmatic choice and kick the can down the road.

Jax State fan here. Clark did a great job for y'all and saved your program. He had a good season in his one year here. We went 11-4 and made the QF of the playoffs. But he had some lucky breaks.

First, the SEC had to juggle their schedule due to expansion and our game against Auburn got canceled. They finished second in the country that season. So instead we played non-scholarship Jacksonville and won.

We also had to go to overtime to beat 0-12 Georgia State. We beat Alabama State by two and D2 UNA in overtime. So instead of a 4-0 OOC record we could have easily been 0-4. At 9-3 and third in the OVC we were lucky to get an at large bid to the playoffs. The committee might have overlooked losing to Auburn but any of the other three and we are staying home. Instead we beat Samford in the first round and then win the next game on the road and lose in the QF at Eastern Washington.

I don't think UAB takes a serious look at him if he goes 5-7 in one season at Jax State with losses to a D2, an HBCU, and a 1-11 team.

He certainly proved himself to be a good head coach but the fickle finger of fate certainly was kind to his bank account.

(10-19-2022 11:33 AM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  The board was sensitive to how the Callaway situation was received. They let Mackin pick someone that on paper would look ok to UAB people with no Bama ties that could be thrown back at them and rile up the blazer base before the hammer fell. So no, they didn’t think it was risky. They didn’t respect Bill or UAB potential to turn things around after all they had done to kneecap the situation. It actually was, or course, but not from their perspective.

All coaching changes are risky. None are actually *safe.* But rarely would those things be known until hindsight. Scott Frost would have been the safest hire Nebraska ever could have made, for example, until he wasn’t.

It is risky to stick with Vincent, it is risky to go a different direction. The balance between pragmatic and bold doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Sometimes depending on many factors you take the pragmatic choice and kick the can down the road.

Jesus dude.

Glad no one here is making the decision......

(10-19-2022 12:09 PM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  Glad no one here is making the decision......

Here’s hoping some on here don’t make decisions vital to the livelihood of others. If they do, ?

(10-18-2022 07:36 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  We will have a national search, the AD has said that multiple times and he isn’t going to ask for or consult the opinion of any of us regular folk.

Re-frame your headline product in the utter absence of customer input.

There's a winning strategy.

(10-19-2022 02:29 PM)58-56 Wrote:  

(10-18-2022 07:36 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  We will have a national search, the AD has said that multiple times and he isn’t going to ask for or consult the opinion of any of us regular folk.

Re-frame your headline product in the utter absence of customer input.

There's a winning strategy.

Not listening to message boards and Facebook groups populated by morons (and I'm not calling you a moron here- I'm just painting the general picture of people online) spouting opinions which they aren't qualified to give doesn't necessarily equal an "absence of customer input." I know you don't like Ingram, but you've got to agree that an AD can't just be a windsock. He can't just do whatever the 51% of people on blazertalk are yelling at him to do. A good executive is going to gather information and opinions form the best people possible, use external sources of information (think search firms), talk to the stakeholders who have the most skin in the game, and make a decision based on that. This is true whether we're talking about the UAB athletics department or JP Morgan.

I get that there's a lot of anger and resentment still floating around. And I can understand, I've been involved in UAB for nearly 25 years. I was right here in 2014. But as some point you've got to shift out of 2nd gear, you've got to start moving on from the past. People tie the events of 2014 to Ingram, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. I just ask you to do this- take a step back, and objectively compare where our athletic department was when Ingram arrived, and where it is now. I'm not saying it is perfect, and we could all find things that could be done better. But I've got a feeling we're going to get this coaching hire right. I really do think Ingram is going to get it done. So I think maybe we all need to just take a breath, watch some football games, and lets try not to act like a bunch of Auburn fans.