Leaving so soon? Erickson headed to ASU

So does John L. go back to the Vandals or will he be an assistant at Ariz State next year?

 

The latter. Trust me, Idaho is a problem John L. wants no part of.

 

This is a ridiculous hire. All the possible options out there and the AD comes up with a twice failed NFL coach whose Miami tenure was so tainted it got them hammered by the NCAA after he bailed out. ASU's had discipline problems - who better to handle them than a guy with massive character issues of his own and a history of looking th other way and recruiting thugs?

 

When you consider that Idaho is probably the worst D-I program in the country, and that it would really be better off in 1-AA, that's probably correct.

 

A I-AA team is, in fact, a D-I program. Or used to be, before guys like you kept getting it wrong often enough so that the NCAA decided to give them some ridiculous new category names.[/bitterI-aaguy]

 

Meh. I-AA isn't the same --- and Idaho (not the missing moderator) should never have tried to move up. At least the Vandals aren't playing home games across the border at Wazzou's stadium anymore.

 

I agree I-AA isn't the same as I-A and that Idaho shouldn't have tried to make the jump. As for the rest, I'm too tired to care.

Actually, I'm too tired to care about all of it.

 

This could be the final nail in the coffin for them on that front. They put an awful lot of eggs in Erickson's basket only to see them scrambled. Yup, they shoulda known better ...

Yup, the move was all part of the arm's race -- supress your snickers, please -- with Boise State. They went in with no real plan or, seemingly, any idea how to do the things they would need to do to compete at that level.

 

Dennis Erickson is 149-64-1 as a college head coach, Take away Miami, the only real power school Erickson has ever coached at, and he's still 86-55 at Idaho, Wyoming, Wazzu and Oregon State. That's not bad. In fact, it's very impressive.

Miami was a serial cheater long before Erickson arrived there. It still has major problems today, more than a decade after he left. Maybe he didn't do anything to stop it at Miami. But it's interesting to note that no other school he has coached at has had any problems with the NCAA whatsoever.

Is he a job-hopper? Most certainly. But if you follow his career track, every job he's taken has been a step up from his current situation. (He didn't go from the NFL to Oregon State and Idaho. He went from unemployment to becoming a Division I-A head coach.)

Job-hoppers aren't unique to college football. But college football coaches get more publicity than sports reporters who do the exact same thing. Many on this board have worked at numerous newspapers. Some have wished for new jobs less than a year after taking their current one. Some people are just wired that way.

Lisa Love (ASU AD) was at USC when the Trojans tried to hire Erickson after firing Paul Hackett. No surprise she'd chase him again.

I thought ASU had a perfectly capable coach in Koetter. Erickson will win there. But he'd better hire a damn good recruiting coordinator (like Matt Lubick his first two years at Oregon State) to keep the thing going after the first two years when Dennis loses interest in recruiting.

And after all the threads I've read on this board about newspapers cutting jobs and eliminating long-time employees willy-nilly, I'm surprised that there's so much criticism over an employee who actually has some leverage and isn't afraid/scared to use it to his benefit.

PS: Koetter could even end up at Idaho. He did go to high school in Poky when his dad coached at Idaho State, and Dirk coached at Boise State. Why not hit the trifecta? Even Idaho beats beig unemployed.

And Idaho has more bowl wins than Notre Dame in the past decade.

 

So Idaho doesn't play in that small dome anymore? I remember about 15 or so years ago, when they played BU in a I-AA Championship Subdivision playoff game there, and I was amazed such a small school would have an indoor stadium.

 

Idaho still plays in the Kibbie Dome. For several years after joining I-A it played at Martin Stadium at Wazzu (about seven miles away) but it has since returned to Moscow for home games.

 

I think that John L. Smith would do a great job at Idaho. I think he has something to prove to some people after the MSU job. I don't know if any other schools would want him.