Not wanting to beat the proverbial dead horse but I had to laugh at Wither's Spring Game quotes regarding our National Championship and his role in it (
https://texasstate.rivals.com/news/sprin...es-stats):
Comparing last year's team to this year: “I didn’t like those guys last year. I didn’t like them, just so you know.
Love (this team). Are we more talented? No, we’re not. But I like being around them. I like being around our guys. They are good people. Generally, I feel they have a better care for each other than a year ago. I want to be around them, I want my son to be around them. I want our coaches’ families to be around that. I want (defensive coordinator) Randall McCray to bring his son and his daughter over here and be around the team. Last year, I didn’t bring my kids over here because I didn’t want them to be infested with what was going on.
No disrespect to last year’s group, they didn’t know us, they didn’t know the expectations. We came in here swinging at them last year. We came here absolutely swinging at everybody in the athletic department because our standards were high. We just left a team that won a national championship at James Madison. We built that and we’ve built the expectations for that. The same expectations are here and they won’t change. We’re going to work until we get here.
I felt like our guys competed better this spring. Tougher and more physical this spring… I feel better about where we’re headed this summer. I always say this but this summer is the most important time for our football team. That’s when you build a team.”
I'll give Withers credit for bringing a new excitement to the program. We needed a change. I was one of the folks in the 400 Level constantly hollering at Mickey because we played down to the competition at times and didn't have a high octane offense.
I also have College GameDay down as one of my favorite post JMU memories but there's no way in the world I felt if Withers and his staff returned in 2016 we'd have been celebrating in the not under construction end zone in Frisco three months ago. No way.
I didn't have any confidence in Withers to develop or even go with Bryan Schor as our starting QB. I had no idea what we would have looked like on the defensive side of the ball or that Gage Steele would have been one of our senior defensive standouts after I thought Withers didn't properly utilize Gage his junior year.
Thank you Texas State for hiring him to take their program to the next level and thanks to Jeff Bourne and the search committee for bringing us Mike Houston. I love his pre-game speeches (those that we heard) and I hope you're here as our head coach for 10+ years.