Didn’t Rays article state that booster numbers were up during the dynasty era? More boosters “generally” equates to increased contributions. No?

He had to fire Willie Martinez or be fired himself.

He’s on the hot seat this year

Coaches that have good personalities, are active in the community, and go to church are harder to toss to the curb than asshole coaches. He probably bought himself 1-2 years buffer for that alone.

And on coming back to UGA, the team was preseason #1 two years ago so this is more about winning big games. And while Richt hasn’t done it (neither did Bobby for more than a decade) the fanbase, cash-ola, and history show that they are a big football school.

Who will have better coaches at the end of the day?

At the end of the day I wonder which one is more important…. Even if that is what he has concentrated on the he has done a good job with football wouldnt you say he has done a good Job with UGA since 2000?

I’ve always been told it is.
1) God
2) Family
3) Football

Anywho good article man.
P.S
I Sure as heck miss the 1990’s Better music, Better TV, Better Football

Perhaps he does underachieve, but you are not taking into account the finite amount of success out there. Not everyone can win, especially when you have programs like UF and Alabama that outspend even UGA.

I do agree that Richt needs to do more with the talent he has. He’s pulled some really great classes in his time at UGA, with mixed results.

In my post 2 up—not the one you directly replied to—I said

It also plays a factor in recruiting, but a lesser factor because the kids aren’t receiving salaries. What kid doesn’t like a good game room or a nice locker? But those things are not nearly as important to kids (and their parents) as:

location (probably more important for a kid to stay within driving distance of his family than get a neat locker or game room)

1. players sent to the league
   W-L record
   academics (yes some do want to get a degree, and many parents would like that too)
   relationships with coaches
   women
   family legacies & tradition of dynasty greatness
   support staff (nutritionists, doctors, S&C, academic tutors, mental health, etc.)
   playing time / opportunity to make an impact
   and gameday environment

All of those things seem to be things that recruits should consider more important than how nice the film room is or how nice the game room or their lockers are. It’s not like we use an unconditioned warehouse for a locker room, so we are talking matters of degree.

By gameday environment, I meant the atmosphere from the kids charging out of the tunnel to the final gun. So we would include the flaming spear throw down, crowd noise, A/C benches for players, turf condition, etc.

There had been some prior discussion in another thread about replacing the big drape thing with a muraled wall, adding extras seats or doing other things to Doak to trap the sound to make it louder. Obviously, physical improvements to the stadium cost $$$ and can help the gameday enironment if the acoustics reverberate the sound.

Some people got off on hey, if we had money to spend, we should improve the concourse, i.e. have better hot dog stands and put flat screens up so the fans don’t miss the action while waiting for food or peeing or whatever. Those type of improvements cost $$$ but don’t produce a lot of bang for the buck for the players gameday environment or recruiting IMO. So at best, there is an indirect relationship to making improvements to Doak, to generating increased crowd noise and a mo better gameday experience (yes, players’ gameday experience would be improved with a nicer scoreboard, a wall instead of a big sheet, etc.) Extra seats don’t produce too much extra noise unless they are filled with cheering fans. Then you have to ask how much noise is from the fans and how much is from the acoustics. The acoustics would be the thing to seperate the very top from the rest. I just don’t think that the amount of money spent on scoreboards, concourse improvements, etc. are directly responsible for filling the stadium and making fans go bonkers.

I guess one of the things I left off the list was practice facilities, i.e., indoor practice field, weight room, how nice are the blocking and tackling dummies, film rooms, etc. I think how nice the practice facilities are would be one factor among the many I listed. Still, $$$ have a limited role in recruiting unless we are talking about bags of money.

Now I ask you, how many kids go to a different school because of how nice the film room is?
How many would heavily weigh how nice a weight room is if the school with the lesser weight room delivers top notch S&C and sends tons of guys to the league?
How many teams have an indoor practice facility? According to LSU, only a handful. I think LSU, Auburn, Ole Miss, Utah, Texas A&M, and Arizona State are among them. According to Cincinati, every team in the Big East except it and USF have one, so maybe the list has grown.

If everything else is equal, then I agree the team with the more $$$ will win the recruit. But there are so many factors recruits consider that are not directly related to $$$, that the recruiting advantages of the “elite” are not something that preclude FSU from being in the MNC hunt just as often as UF.

RaysnNoles article is what got me thinking this way. As I read through the article, I saw explanation after explanation of why x team excelled or not. Like Bama and LSU—depended upon where Saban was, not the $$$. Maybe blame Mich & ND on academics, but what you’re really talking about is recruiting—players on the field. Call Miami an out-lier and blame its recent faltering on coaching, but it has been in the hunt under guys like Butch Davis (or what Coker inherited from Davis) because it sits in a hotbed of recruiting talent. Look at the top money schools like UF, Tex, USC, OSU, and they are all in talented recruiting states where they pull most of their talent locally. If they have a good coach, like Caroll, they win, if not (like Zook) they are mortal. Simply because a school has $$$ doesn’t mean that they will succeed at picking a good college coach, see ND, Zook, and the three guys at Bama before Saban. Teams like VT, BSU, Oregon, may have good coaching at times but they are limited by their recruiting base. Thus, I concluded that what makes the team great or “elite” depends upon coaching and recruiting because thos eare the guys that play the game.

So then you ask the underlying question of whether $$$ is the determining factor in those two areas or how much the $$$ really has an impact. You notice that the “elite” programs are old schools from highly popuated states that have good recruiting bases. The very way that some people define “elite” often depends upon whether a school is in a hotbed of recruiting or has the ability to “lockdown” it’s state. So some may make Bama and Auburn teir two schools as their ability to “lockdown” the state in recruitng depended upon where Saban was coaching, not $$$. I take others’ classification of “elite” to incorporate two factors: (1) $$$ and (2) being in a hotbed of recruiting. However, $$$ wasted on a bad coach does you no good. $$$ with a bad coach on the sideline will not produce on-field results. Ex., no matter how much we paid BB, the result was not going to change. Give us all the $$$ of UF with BB, Amato, and Allen on the sidelines and the on-field results would not be different. Thus, I believe coaching is a bigger factor than $$$ to determining a program’s success. It’s not how much $$$ you have but what you do with it. This article agreed with me:

there are 2 critical factors into having a consistently successful program, (1) a leadership group that understands what it takes to run a football program and (2) a substantial amount of income.

The leadership group who knows what it takes would presumably hire the right coach and how to recruit. We’re back to coaches and players. The leadership group who knows what it takes also knows how to schedule. If you take two identical clubs as far as coaching and players are concerned and give one a schedule with a top 5 SoS and the other who knows how to cream puff the OOC, the team with the weaker schedule is more likely to be successful. That’s why I added a 3rd element to my list. I made quality coaching the top criteria because a quality coach like Beamer can get lesser athletes to perform, whereas quality players who are not coached wind up 7-6.

But let’s go back to leadership group who knows what it takes and test the second principle that you also need a substantial amount of $$$, i.e., schools with say $100M+ will always kill schools that only have 10’s of millions. That’s what I’m challenging by asking what the $$$ is spent on and how much of a factor that plays in getting the good coaches and recruits, how much it enhances their performance, and whether there are factors other than mere $$$ that also have a substantial impact.

Knowledge without $$$ does not get you a good coach. You’ve gotta have some $$$. But the biggest direct impact of the $$$ is in salary. The differences in coaching salary between FSU and other schools are not measured in the 10’s of millions. Nice facilities in which to work are a factor for coaching candidates, but play a lesser role. If a school has nicer stuff, they are also probably paying a higher salary. The coach also has to think about prestige, academics, geography, whether the school is in a talent rich area, etc. I am certain UT could have matched the salary USC is paying Kifflin, but there are factors other than money $$$ for a coach to consider. Hell, Jimbo said he had a handful of better offers but decided to take OC at FSU. I agree $$$ plays a role in getting good coaches, but the disparity comes in a coach’s salary, not in overall revenue or endowment. The disparity between coach’s salaries is on a much smaller scale and not one that is insurmountable for FSU. There is also an underlying assumption that $$$ will get you the best coach. Ask ND about Weis. How many people work somewhere where the highest paid guy is not the best or brightest? Compare BB & Jimbo. The insurmountable arguement also presumes that there is a very limited supply of top-notch coaches and that they are all at the schools with the most $$$ with a direct correlation between the quality of the coach and the $$$ of the school. That is not the reality IMO. You made a graph with the quality of coach on one axis and the $$$ of the school on another, you will not get a perfectly straight line. There may be an upward trend, but it is a scatter plot. The most significant role of $$$ as it relates to coaching is the ability of a school to overcome a bad coaching choice. For ex., FSU probably would not have been able to buyout Weis, whereas ND could. Still, it took ND several years to come to the conclusion that it needed to yank the chain on Weis. Obviously, the wisdom of entering into a very long term contract for gross sums of money plays a factor, and FSU can overcome some of the disparity in the ability to correct bad hire mistakes by being smarter in negotiating the contract to begin with.

Next, you have to break down recruiting and identify a whole list of factors that influence player decisions on where to attend school to see how much influence $$$ has on the final decision. Again, I am not arguing that $$$ doesn’t play a role. I am just challenging the size of the role $$$ plays, the premise that a school needs a substantial amount of $$$, and the theory that FSU will consistently play second fiddle to schools who have vastly more amounts of $$$. I’ve sufficiently outlined a number of factors that are likely to be importnant to kids and their parents when selecting a school and commented on the role $$$ plays in each factor. I’ve tried to be fair. I’ve acknowledged that $$$ plays a role in certain factors like practice facilities, support staff, and perks (game rooms, nice lockers, etc.). However, other factors like location are unaffected by $$$, unless we are talking about bags of cash (C.Smith to NM?). No matter how much $$$ BSU has, it is highly unlikley to ever land a better class than FSU simply due to location. The factors I listed are all things we’ve discussed during recruiting season.

You could daisy chain the $$$ to say that $$$ has a role in many of the factors. For ex., you could say $+$ = better support staff + better practice facilities = more players sent to the league + better W-L record = big influence on recruiting. Then you are compounding the effects of $$$ and making unsupported assumptions. FSU and Miami have sent tremendous numbers of players to the league without the support staff and practice facilities of schools who have sent fewer players. Also, the number of players sent to the league and W-L records are historical numbers that $$$ doesn’t change. They may change over time due to $$$, however future predictions about how the factors may change have limited impact and are not the easiest sells to recruits. Luckily for us, our current recruits are basing their decisions on what they think FSU will do over the next few years. As I have described above, gross amounts of $$$ can only directly enhance some of the many important factors that potential players consider. Even then, you have to spend gross amounts of $$$ to gain a marginal advantage in those few factors. Elite schools have their advantages, but they are not insurmountable.

As it is, the elite schools do not compete with FSU too often for recruits. I can think of C.Jones & UF/USC; Luc & UF; Joyner & OSU. There are probably others where FSU was on the short end of the stick. When we do compete with the elite, it is usually over in-state kids like the ones I named. In those cases, FSU has advantages in location and relationships since our coaches are likely to have seen the kids far more often and know their coaches better. The elite schools are in talent-rich highly populated areas and do not need to reach to Florida very often for recruits. When they do, they are often competeing with FSU and UF. So schools like USC, Tex., OSU will not constantly suppress FSU’s dynasty efforts as far as getting quality recruits go.

UF would be the last road block to an FSU sustainable dynasty effort. Schools get 85 schollies. Over 4 classes, it equates to about 22 players per class. Assume UF and FSU took all their recruits from Fla. Further assume that all other recruiting factors are equal except those that directly benefit from gross amounts of $$$, with UF having the recruiting advantage in those factors. All of the top recruits should chose UF because of the $$$ advantages. But notice that 22 players is exactly the number of a full offense and defense. So let’s say both UF and FSU each take a full offense and defense each recruiting cycle. UF would have the No. 1 Fla. kid at each position and FSU would have the No. 2. That is over simplying things because there are non-monetary factors that will not be equal at times, such as legacy kids like C.Jones. FSU will win some of those battles. FSU also plays ACC whereas UF has to compete in the SEC, so FSU (with smart scheduling) may also have advantages in W-L record. Relationships with coaches in recruiting are personal, so there will again be differences, some of which FSU will win. There are enough quality kids in Fla. that FSU and UF would have a helluva competitive game each year if the two schools took the top 44 each year and they were split such that FSU had some of the top kids and UF had some of the top even if a majority of the No. 1s at each position went to UF and a the majority of No. 2s at each position wound up at FSU. Coaching and development will change these kids from their HS rankings with some No. 2s overtaking some No. 1s. There are injuries and attrition, but basically you have two schools that are pretty even. So there is little reason to think FSU could not be as consistenly good as UF when FSU plays in the weaker conference.

Neither school will take all of its recruits from in-state. The point of the above thought experiment is that there is enough talent to go around. A successful program has (1) good coaching; (2) good recruiting; and (3) smart scheduling. $$$ plays a role, but even gross differences in $$$ between the elite schools and FSU will not prevent another FSU dynasty or prevent FSU from consistently being on UF’s level on the field. In the end, UF, USC, Tex., OSU and whomever else you may consider “elite” even with all of their money do not present an imposible barrier to another FSU dynasty.

IT’S ON