TheTastyGreek

Lifer will be taking a one week vacation. No politics, no exceptions.

It was. Everything I liked about him 5 and a half years ago still applies. And now, he has almost half a decade in our institution, leading that office, connected to everyone and everything relevant to our program. If Wren Baker goes somewhere else tomorrow, we're fine. We don't even need to pay for a moving van to replace him. An ideal replacement has been training on the job for years, right here. ...and hopefully, in 5-8 years when Mosley earns a shot at a major step up, we'll have already hired and developed someone ready to take over for him, too. That's how a program turns a good run under one person into an institutional legacy of success.

I remember when people here thought he hung the moon. And I DO remember when he had interviews elsewhere, supposedly as a finalist at East Carolina and New Mexico, and including when it looked like he might take the same job at Louisiana-Lafayette and this place melted down like the #4 reactor at Chernobyl. I can't find that thread (I think it got VERY heated and probably memory-holed permanently), but here's some choice quotes from a few threads right after, and a follow up when the DRC wrote an article quelling those rumors: All of those quotes are from just after Year 5 of RV's tenure here. Not a comprehensive sample, but a snapshot from the two threads I found while looking for the ULL interest thread and coming up empty. Wren Baker has been here 4 and a half years. The honeymoon phase is always nice. But when the new wears off and the bills and consequences of some of the less awesome choices and decisions start to hit... I suspect you'll see the tone shift the same way some of the people quoted above started talking about RV a few years later on in his tenure.

No. We will have to carry over the same discussions at each step of the poaching process, from Tennessee to UCF, on and on until we get to some D3 school or private high school that loses an administrator and Baker gets included on their rumored interest list. And after that, when someone needs help managing their fantasy football team. In that spirit... - - - - - - - - - - Baker is fine. If he stays, that's fine. If he goes, that's fine, too. He'll leave eventually. If he doesn't, inevitably his flaws will overwhelm his appeal and the fan base will flip focus to hammer one side while ignoring the other, complaining that he's still around and criticizing him as subpar because he never got hired away. He hired some good coaches, but he throws money for extensions and raises around like a drunk at a strip club. Take the good with the bad. He's signed some good series in football, but made some baffling or outright dumb choices on that front, too (Liberty, Army). Better overall than not, but definitely not without his share of mistakes or bad choices. If he goes, his COO was one of the guys I'd have been thrilled to see get the job when Baker was originally hired. We have an ideal replacement, already well established in our area and at our institution, primed and ready to go with no interruption or disruption in performance. He might even do some things a little better. So, if he stays, swell. If he leaves, no worries. No raises just because of an interview, though. If the department is well run and well staffed, Mosley can slide over a desk and we should be in just as good shape as we are today. Maybe better. Interview or not, leave or stay... We'll be about as well off as we already are now.

Locked, but no suspensions or anything here. If we're going to keep politics out of here, we've got to police it pretty tightly. I think it's been a miracle and a godsend given the past few weeks, to say nothing of the past few months, that we haven't had any of the usual political infighting we saw for the past 12 years on GMG.com. I don't think anyone is trying to advance or object to a political point or philosophy here. But, the guy is a mascot/boogeyman in the political world. When the door opens a crack, it doesn't take much justifying to open it up more and more. I'd like to keep arguing over coaches and schemes, and not see the return of the rancor and unpleasantness that's sprung from even segregated and contained political arguments on the forum. So, locked. And let's please try to keep political memes, references, analogies, and everything of that stripe contained to the other corners of the internet.

Baker is fine. If he stays, that's fine. If he goes, that's fine, too. He'll leave eventually. If he doesn't, inevitably his flaws will overwhelm his appeal and the fan base will flip focus to hammer one side while ignoring the other, complaining that he's still around and criticizing him as subpar because he never got hired away. He hired some good coaches, but he throws money for extensions and raises around like a drunk at a strip club. Take the good with the bad. He's signed some good series in football, but made some baffling or outright dumb choices on that front, too (Liberty, Army). Better overall than not, but definitely not without his share of mistakes or bad choices. If he goes, his COO was one of the guys I'd have been thrilled to see get the job when Baker was originally hired. We have an ideal replacement, already well established in our area and at our institution, primed and ready to go with no interruption or disruption in performance. He might even do some things a little better. So, if he stays, swell. If he leaves, no worries. No raises just because of an interview, though. If the department is well run and well staffed, Mosley can slide over a desk and we should be in just as good shape as we are today. Maybe better. Interview or not, leave or stay... We'll be about as well off as we already are now.

If you love what you're analyzing, can you honestly call it "work"?

Not me... Newspapers, kickoff times, etc. We should only play OOC games on the east coast, or maybe at a neutral site in London like the NFL does.

Seth Littrell's first season as our head coach was 2016. UAB restarted their football program after two years of nothing in 2017. Since then, they have two conference championships and a bowl win (with another obviously possible in the next few weeks). We have zero of either. UAB head coach Bill Clark will get a raise to $1.15 Million in 2022. Seth Littrell made almost $700,000 more than that this past season.

We don't need resigners.

I think that Baker, upon hearing App State won 8 games and made a bowl, is trying to figure out a way to double their coach's salary and extend his contract by 5 years. It's like a reflex, I suppose.

Can one of them coach defense for less than $350,000 a year? They don't have to be good at it, believe me. We'll still pay them.

Our coach gets all-you-can-eat airplane rides. I hope your inevitable double digit bowl victory turns to ashes in your mouth when your coach has to drive himself around in a car like a common peasant.

If any or all of them need new homes, please share our contact information: https://president.unt.edu/people/wren-baker The people of North Texas can, should, and must do their part to help others in this challenging time.

Say what you will about... Well, anything to do with them or their school. BUT! I wouldn't mind trading trophy cases with them, that's for sure. They've done as much or more in 5 years of D-1 football as we've managed in the past 25. Take Dickey out of it, and it's not even an argument. It's probably going to be an ugly, ugly game for us to boot.

Is this an early prediction? That's a pretty savage burn, if it is.

15 years ago, our head football coach was among the lowest paid in the Sun Belt, and our assistants were so poorly paid that they were leaving for high school assistant jobs that paid more money. That was bad. But, there's a big difference between losing a bidding war against notoriously overpaid (checks notes) public high school teachers and what we're doing now. If we cut Littrell's pay by $300,000 per year (more than we paid Todd Dodge in any single season, and that was only 10 years ago), he would STILL be the highest paid coach in our conference. It's great we aren't losing critical coaches to teaching social studies (no disrespect to the teachers out there that make the world work) anymore. Doesn't mean we have to throw money around like a terminally ill drunk in a strip club every time a coach manages to put a winning season together.

McCarney deserved his, and 15 months later he was fired. Dickey got extended in 2005. Seth Littrell was flying even higher, no pun intended, when he got his money and years. No salary or term is going to keep a coach here when bigger opportunities open up. When you put 5 or 6 years on a coach, all you're doing is making sure that if they bomb two straight years, you'd have to pay out another 3 or 4 to get away from them early. Which, of course, we won't ever want to do. I don't think McCasland is going to collapse and bottom out... But nobody thought it was coming with any of those guys. Yet we keep not learning the lesson. If McCasland wants to move to a power conference and gets an opening? He's gone. And that's exactly what we ought to be hoping for... The sort of success that opens those doors for him. This extension isn't keeping him around one minute longer than his opportunities afford. What it MIGHT do, as it has done repeatedly in the past, is make it prohibitively difficult to move on from him if results drop off for an extended period of time. Hopefully, all continues and we don't spend any future years regretting this. I hope we see that happen. It would definitely be a first for us.

JFK Jr., Steve Irwin, Nelson Rockefeller, and Seth Littrell.

Leaving this open because I know we have several Texas-based people in the legal profession here on the forum. If you have guidance or information that can help out, please send it via PM and feel free to share in this thread that there's information waiting to be seen. If you have hot political opinions to share, prepare to be violently suspended.