(09-10-2013 05:28 PM)TulsaEye Wrote: USM #1 in the bottom ten ouch!! How did you guys get so bad so quickly! LOL man.
The Southern Miss blueprint:
Step 1: Piss off the better-established schools in the state by outperforming them in athletics and doing everything you can to claim the top enrollment figure.
Step 2: Hire an autocratic jerk as President. If you can find someone who wants to make professors punch a time clock / take drug tests, that's the man you want leading you to the bottom. This strategy will enable you to permanently fall at least 30 spots in the USNWR rankings. That way, anyone who graduates from your institution will immediately rush to Wal Mart and buy a "Bama" T-Shirt, out of sheer embarrassment.
Step 3: Fire your head coach for only winning 7 games.
Step 4: Expend a bunch of money, effort, and political capital on expanding your stadium... but make sure the first digit of the capacity number doesn't change.
Step 5: If the conference negotiates a "no Southern Miss" clause with its #1 bowl tie in, make sure to kiss the commissioners a** even more at next year's meetings. Hell, give him a raise. $900,000 per year is about right.
Step 6: If you're offered a choice of bowl slots, choose the one in Hawaii against a WAC team. If any fans actually try and go, slash their tires on the morning of their flight.
Step 7: If you stumble somehow onto a brilliant head coach, encourage him to leave for a job that pays $700,000 per year more. You'll lose far more than that in the form of unsold tickets and missed realignment opportunities after he leaves.
Step 8: When you're hiring your next head coach, make sure and look for guys who have never done it before and/or express a willingness to take less than the last guy in salary.
Step 9: Hire a man as AD whose principal area of expertise is blowing things to smithereens. You don't want a "builder".
Step 10: Schedule some "money" games. I mean, you wouldn't want your leader to have to scrimp around for cash to pay his buddies' "Associate AD" salaries, would you? It's not like anyone would just donate the money if he asked nicely. And a few 56-13 beatdowns will help scare away the last few die-hards.
Step 11: Manufacture financial crises out of whole cloth, especially during the heat of conference realignment. I cannot stress this one enough; over-the-top, highly public declarations of poverty are indispensable if you truly want to be the "next Southern Miss". Try and put the whole athletic department into a constant state of siege-by-auditor, and shake down your own secretaries and janitors for donations. The inevitable lawsuits that will result are an added bonus.
Step 12: Loudly proclaim how much you love being in the worst conference in FBS, and declare any program that feels otherwise to be a bunch of reckless idiots.
If you can complete this twelve-step program, rest assured, you can be just like Southern Miss.