Ok. I have no evidence whatsoever of this, but it IS possible and might explain some of the changes made in the coaching staff.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

BB looked at his staff. He had 4 "main", older, established asistants - Peterson, DJ, BG and Downing. They obviously have higher salaries than the other, younger coaches. So lets look at those "older" coaches a bit.

BG - Obviously one of the best, if not THE best coach on the staff who does more with the talent at hand than about anyone in CUSA. His job should obviously be safe.

DJ - He is pretty much the best offensive Asst on the staff IMO and has recruited extremely well and has a hand in all the success our offense achieved since BB has been here. Job Safe.

Downing - This is the one who IMO has done the worst on field job. Our kick game has been suspect and mostly a disaster for the last three years with blocked punts, questionable decisions to field the ball, errant kicks and punts, player turnover - on and on. But he is also the designated Associate Head Coach - assigned by BB. So it would be an admission of failure by BB to let him go since he has that title. In this stressful time in BB's tenure, he may not have been willing to let his "assigned" right hand man go. He may feel that SD is a keeper for now out of his own personal survival.

GP - Maybe GP was the odd man out.

Now this could also be a factor. MONEY. After last seasons failure and severe drop in attendence and no bowl game, BB may not have the money to pay and keep all his 4 main assts on staff intact. Since he couldn't fire himself and didn't feel it would be fair to let one of the younger assts go, and was probably pressured to let someone go, the easiest decision was the one he made. Thus he then hired someone he could pay less who would take the job and not be in a position to criticise his salary.

But I do know one thing, BB used to rely heavily on his main 4 assts and now only has 3 left. Will that effect the team negatively or positively?


Now once again, I have no evidence of any of this happening. But it would make some sense. Maybe BB didn't feel he needed a complete house cleaning and that was the result.

IMO

One other thing about how this "may" have played out is the fact that OSU lost OL coach Wickline. The rumor was that OSU was trying to lure DJ away from TU with a lot more money. So BB may have been forced to find a way to increase DJ's salary as well as his staure at TU.

But then, this is all just theoretical and may not mean a thing.

It is possible no doubt......but I must say, if we can't afford those 4 coaches maybe we shouldn't be playing D-1 football. If a new OC isn't hired and our only change is the addition of Josh you maybe right on the money, no pun intended. I can just see Josh working with the QB's if we keep the same offense........OK, turn around and hand the ball to this back, very good. Rabid, I think you could coach the QB's if this is the case!!!!

I'll throw out my speculation on what has & or still could happen. This is pure speculation. I think BB looked for an OC he would be willing to hand the steering wheel to & he couldn't find a guy he wanted that we could afford. Maybe Spavital got promoted @ A&M to keep him from coming here. Anyway, this led Coach B to make the move we just saw, Peterson out, Josh in.

I am losing hope daily that SD will be replaced. I agree with Rabid that SD should be replaced. Maybe after signing day, we will have one more change. The best case would be a new OC/play caller, with BB taking over special teams.

(01-21-2014 08:46 PM)Tulsafanzz Wrote:  I'll throw out my speculation on what has & or still could happen. This is pure speculation. I think BB looked for an OC he would be willing to hand the steering wheel to & he couldn't find a guy he wanted that we could afford. Maybe Spavital got promoted @ A&M to keep him from coming here. Anyway, this led Coach B to make the move we just saw, Peterson out, Josh in.

I am losing hope daily that SD will be replaced. I agree with Rabid that SD should be replaced. Maybe after signing day, we will have one more change. The best case would be a new OC/play caller, with BB taking over special teams.

Well, my hope for SD being replaced ended today with the Denver Johnson press conference. BB & Denver think that improved execution will be a real key for 2014. Posters on rivals think we lack talent, along with poor coaching. Again, next fall will be very interesting.

One point I'd like to make : Did ANYONE who posts on any Tulsa message board accurately predict the kind of season we had in 2013 ?

I believe that answer is NO. I think 2014 is equally unpredictable. Football is such a sport of momentum & we completely lost ours last season. I don't think our cupboard is as bare as many others do. I think there is still hope for a turnaround.

I agree, I don't think the cupboard is bare if we run the right offense.......we didn't have a lot of All Americans the years before 2013 but had one of the top producing offenses in the country!!!

I figured if we had brought in a new, and what people thought, would be an exciting new offense, the football boards would be buzzing for the next two months.......with the changes made, I think the football boards will become fairly silent until at least Spring practice and then depending on the offense they see then, will stay fairly silent. A lot of the excitement about football the last 6-7 years will slowly die down until a new HC is hired!!!

(01-22-2014 11:50 PM)Tulsafanzz Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 08:46 PM)Tulsafanzz Wrote:  I'll throw out my speculation on what has & or still could happen. This is pure speculation. I think BB looked for an OC he would be willing to hand the steering wheel to & he couldn't find a guy he wanted that we could afford. Maybe Spavital got promoted @ A&M to keep him from coming here. Anyway, this led Coach B to make the move we just saw, Peterson out, Josh in.

I am losing hope daily that SD will be replaced. I agree with Rabid that SD should be replaced. Maybe after signing day, we will have one more change. The best case would be a new OC/play caller, with BB taking over special teams.

Well, my hope for SD being replaced ended today with the Denver Johnson press conference. BB & Denver think that improved execution will be a real key for 2014. Posters on rivals think we lack talent, along with poor coaching. Again, next fall will be very interesting.

One point I'd like to make : Did ANYONE who posts on any Tulsa message board accurately predict the kind of season we had in 2013 ?

I believe that answer is NO. I think 2014 is equally unpredictable. Football is such a sport of momentum & we completely lost ours last season. I don't think our cupboard is as bare as many others do. I think there is still hope for a turnaround.

Bingo on all that. I didn't think BB was going to let SD go, but I was hoping. He obviously is married to some of the staff and doesn't want to put pressure on them by letting go more than the minimum - that makes everything look good to those that support the program - someone walking the plank, but not more than one. I kind of agree with that if he is convinced this will work as designed. His most critical move was to fire himself as QB coach IMO for a vaiety of reasons. He had to do that, because the worst job of player development these three years under him WAS him. So that means the whole success or failure now falls on the ability of Josh to find and develope that player. It won't be easy.

I like Denver as a quality coach and rate him just behind Guy as a staff member, but I think there was some subliminal messaging in that press conf that conveyed the idea that the schemes weren't going to change, just the organization of those schemes, that it was execution and not talent or play design. I do agree with him from this standpoint: All plays are designed to go for TD's, even a QB sneek, but I slightly disagree that all plays are equal. Good passing is a talent equalizer. Fast fb (like the HUNH) is also an equalizer. But if TU can win every game and run the isolation-power play against every opponent next year and win, I'm on board. I just don't think we can against a tougher schedule in a tougher conference. But I'm occasionally, but rarely wrong.

Do I think this is a good move? For the most part, yes. Could there have been other staff "improving"? You bet. But then he makes the big bucks and I'm here posting on a message board.

If I remember my history, Hitler never took the blame for anything, it was always his generals and army's fault or that the German people just didn't want it enough........that they let him down. It was never his battle plan that was wrong. That's exactly what I thought of after the news conference!!! The team threw him under the bus. I, like I think most Tulsa fans, wanted BB to succeed big time.....if he did, we might have a good coach for years and years......which is good for recruiting, stable coach and winning tradition but he is losing me and if we aren't in a bowl game next year, I want him gone!!!!

The latest coaching moves comes down to one thing a lack of money to spend. Tulsa admin is not willing to invest much in the team or the coaching staff.

(01-25-2014 01:01 AM)TulsaEye Wrote:  The latest coaching moves comes down to one thing a lack of money to spend. Tulsa admin is not willing to invest much in the team or the coaching staff.

I absolutely agree on that - the money. But that is where TU has always been as far as coach hiring is concerned. For instance, John Cooper hired a local HS coach named Larry Coker (who won the NC at Miami and is at UTSA now) to coach running backs during his tenure. Glenn Dobbs did the same with FA Dry (who went on to head coach TU successfully) and moved on to TCU. The are many examples. Very few coaches start out their career on a DI staff full time. Most, at least at some point, are HS, NAIA, D-III etc coaches. There is an abundance of good, successful lower level coaches out there that can coach at this level imo. But the HC has to be aware of who to hire and where they are. There are a lot of Art Briles', Chad Morris' and Gus Malzahns and yes, Bill Blankenships who are in waiting. The problem with the way this went down is that it looked so bad when BB hired of all people, his son to coach the most important position on the FB field.

If that is as limited as the Bill Blankenship coaching tree is, then we would eventually have been in this position anyway. It's inevitable. As a matter of fact, one of the coaches's mentioned was the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M (who coached Johnny Manzell) who was on the TU staff before he was fulltime - Spavital. And Spavital has a pretty close relationship with the Blankenships as I understand.

IMO those guys are out there in an abundance and the puzzling thing is that BB should have had a "ready list" of coaches able to step up into DI college coaching (QBs) that didn't include his own son.

I hope JB is the answer, but BB doesn't realize how many people out there outside of the program want him to fail (OU, OSU in particular) and even several in the media and the local community. This was adding fuel to the fire IMO. Can you imagine what kind of pressure there will be on BB, JB and the entire staff next year? They now will have a very short leash and they not only will have to win, but to many TU fans, they will have to look pretty doing it imo.

He should have made a lot more than one or two calls to more than one or two people ready to move up. But of course this is what happens when many of those coaching prospects saw the train wreck we had last year at QB and on offense. They probably view this as a one and done job. I would.

(01-25-2014 12:13 PM)rabidTU2 Wrote:  

(01-25-2014 01:01 AM)TulsaEye Wrote:  The latest coaching moves comes down to one thing a lack of money to spend. Tulsa admin is not willing to invest much in the team or the coaching staff.

I absolutely agree on that - the money. But that is where TU has always been as far as coach hiring is concerned. For instance, John Cooper hired a local HS coach named Larry Coker (who won the NC at Miami and is at UTSA now) to coach running backs during his tenure. Glenn Dobbs did the same with FA Dry (who went on to head coach TU successfully) and moved on to TCU. The are many examples. Very few coaches start out their career on a DI staff full time. Most, at least at some point, are HS, NAIA, D-III etc coaches. There is an abundance of good, successful lower level coaches out there that can coach at this level imo. But the HC has to be aware of who to hire and where they are. There are a lot of Art Briles', Chad Morris' and Gus Malzahns and yes, Bill Blankenships who are in waiting. The problem with the way this went down is that it looked so bad when BB hired of all people, his son to coach the most important position on the FB field.

If that is as limited as the Bill Blankenship coaching tree is, then we would eventually have been in this position anyway. It's inevitable. As a matter of fact, one of the coaches's mentioned was the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M (who coached Johnny Manzell) who was on the TU staff before he was fulltime - Spavital. And Spavital has a pretty close relationship with the Blankenships as I understand.

IMO those guys are out there in an abundance and the puzzling thing is that BB should have had a "ready list" of coaches able to step up into DI college coaching (QBs) that didn't include his own son.

I hope JB is the answer, but BB doesn't realize how many people out there outside of the program want him to fail (OU, OSU in particular) and even several in the media and the local community. This was adding fuel to the fire IMO. Can you imagine what kind of pressure there will be on BB, JB and the entire staff next year? They now will have a very short leash and they not only will have to win, but to many TU fans, they will have to look pretty doing it imo.

He should have made a lot more than one or two calls to more than one or two people ready to move up. But of course this is what happens when many of those coaching prospects saw the train wreck we had last year at QB and on offense. They probably view this as a one and done job. I would.

I suspect you are right. Really doubt he would have gotten many bites for the job with current situation.

The only way he would have gotten some strong interest.....is to start the conversation with.......I need someone to come on board and put in their offense and call all the shots, make it their own. I got a feeling it was more like.......I need someone to come on board and learn our system and see how I do things. Not conducive for getting a real up and comer!! Spring ball may give us an idea of what we'll see this fall, but even then, he may go back to what he knows best and is comfortable with in the fall. I'm not optimistic but I'll wait and see!!

(01-28-2014 04:08 PM)jfisher Wrote:  The only way he would have gotten some strong interest.....is to start the conversation with.......I need someone to come on board and put in their offense and call all the shots, make it their own. I got a feeling it was more like.......I need someone to come on board and learn our system and see how I do things. Not conducive for getting a real up and comer!! Spring ball may give us an idea of what we'll see this fall, but even then, he may go back to what he knows best and is comfortable with in the fall. I'm not optimistic but I'll wait and see!!

I think you're pretty much right on, on that. I know one thing, horses couldn't drag me away from that spring game. I also think a lot of fairly loyal fans will attend it just to see if its worth buying season tickets next year. If its 2 yards and a cloud of dust, they'll just stay home and watch OU on TV next fall IMO.

But I bet BB is smarter than that and "instructs" his defensive staff to play the defensive scrubs against his 1st offense. I'll take bets on that. Any takers?

Bump