Randy Edsall to retire @ end of season | Page 7 | The Boneyard

Randy Edsall to retire @ end of season

kemba said:
This is a complete non issue. If the next coach thinks Corey will add value they will offer him a job.
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The next coach must have 100% control over his staff. Everyone on this staff does not have a job at UConn after the season ends unless the new coach wants them. If DB makes retention of some coaches a requirement, then say goodbye to getting anyone that has ambition and a vision Of how to build a program.
 
We need to hear a commitment to FBS from those in charge of the university. Otherwise, I can just imagine the awful coach we will wind up with.
 
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Ajs120102 said:
Yup let a coach get us to a 6 win team and then Keep the cycle moving. Fun games. Competitive. That’s all we need
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Agreed. Rinse & repeat. Let's at least climb back to respectability with this next hire. The harder part will be to develop that knack for lining up talented replacements, but let's worry about finding the right guy to lead us off.
 
Exit 4 said:
I think prime candidate number 1 just beat us 24 hrs ago. Still looking for prime candidate number 2.
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No, No,No. did you watch him on the Field. Walked around the whole game with his clipboard harassing the refs and not in any of the sideline huddles . Didn’t appear involved with his players At all.
This is a make or break time for UCONN Football. This is a time to “aim high”. , not time to take a risk with a lower level coach.
 
Please please when we hire a new coach don’t let that coach say the following
“ the cupboard is bare”. “ we need to tear it down and rebuild”. “ The kids are t in good shape and have too much body fat”. Just come in in make it work. NO EXCUSES!!!!
 
LBird33 said:
Please please when we hire a new coach don’t let that coach say the following
“ the cupboard is bare”. “ we need to tear it down and rebuild”. “ The kids are t in good shape and have too much body fat”. Just come in in make it work. NO EXCUSES!!!!
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I would love to see an Athletic Director fire a new coach in the introductory press conference if the coach started making excuses before he coached his first game.
 
Those of you who follow college football closely need to start a new post listing possible replacements for Edsall. Their strengths and weaknesses. Most of us want to be bowl-bound in a couple of years, and after that working toward getting in the top 25 year after year. Who can provide the leadership?
 
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Drew said:
The other position I want to see is a “Director of Prep School Relations” on the recruiting staff side of the house. This state is FLUSH with prep school talent in the Hartford area and Southern CT. We have to be able to tap into that going forwards.
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Smart idea
 
Sonova said:
It’s not irrational hatred. It’s called emotional intelligence. Let’s assume the next coach is a decent human being. A decent human being wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone on his staff. Yet that’s exactly what would happen if the next coach speaks openly and honestly about what’s broken with UConn football. Corey Edsall’s father failed miserably in his second stint at UConn. No coach would want the added burden of having to protect a junior staff member’s feelings while turning this burning ship around. It’s why the term “clean house” exists. Get a clue
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lol!

Referring to emotional intelligence in a Boneyard post is funny enough. But to then end the post with an insult is priceless.
 
LoyalFanCT said:
Those of you who follow college football closely need to start a new post listing possible replacements for Edsall. Their strengths and weaknesses. Most of us want to be bowl-bound in a couple of years, and after that working toward getting in the top 25 year after year. Who can provide the leadership?
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If we knew we'd be making big money in an athletic department somewhere
 
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There's something poetic about all this.

The first time Edsall left us, he hurt the program unimaginably.

The second time he leaves the program, he just may help the program unimaginably.

Hopefully, karma will finally shine on the Huskies...
 
He deserves credit for making a tough decision. Hopefully the team can remain focused and at least play for themselves and get some enjoyment out of the remaining games. This gives the University time to look at their options and focus in on new candidates. Twitter was all over him yesterday and today as well.

I'll make it to at least 1 game to support the team now. As soon as we see some movement indicating their commitment to the future, I'll show up to more. A retread DC won't cut it.
 
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businesslawyer said:
It would take far more than a good hire. It also requires a much higher budget for staff and recruiting, and much more flexibility in the academic and integrity qualifications of football players. Not to mention how we recruit as an independent with no chance to play for conference championships and limited access to bowl games.

It's really easy and simplistic to blame "idiots" not as smart as you for bad hires. It's much more difficult to ask whether we can or should expect the Governor to appoint Trustees who are willing to risk us being Baylor in scandals to have Baylor's improvement in football since we beat them home and home. I doubt the state is willing to support that level of relaxed standards.

But yeah, keep beating your chest that if "they" were just better at hiring the right guy we'd be above where we were in 2010.
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Intelligent post
 
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revisionist history
Dave Benedict had a steep steep hole with a new BE membership fee plus the exit fee and then new salaries for HC and assistants.

There was nothing wrong with the thinking at that moment. Herbst etc wasn't going to dive in easily ... and the HCRE hiring probably took the sting out of it.

I expect we will pay a decent amount - more than Buffalo, Temple, UMass. Just saw Hugh Freeze is getting $3m at Liberty - sheesh.

I am a believer in Benedict given how shrewdly he handled Hurley + lowkey'd it on Ollie. Some were his doing ... and some started long before him.
 
Brochacho said:
First call is Bill O'Brien imo. He will decline the offer, and I doubt we could afford him. But he's a NE guy who knows offense and is currently in the Nick Saban rehab program - so an attractive target.
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I can see UConn sending out feelers on O’Brien, if they want to make a commitment to the program. Only thing they need is money. Lol. Uh Mr Burton?
 
businesslawyer said:
It would take far more than a good hire. It also requires a much higher budget for staff and recruiting, and much more flexibility in the academic and integrity qualifications of football players. Not to mention how we recruit as an independent with no chance to play for conference championships and limited access to bowl games.

It's really easy and simplistic to blame "idiots" not as smart as you for bad hires. It's much more difficult to ask whether we can or should expect the Governor to appoint Trustees who are willing to risk us being Baylor in scandals to have Baylor's improvement in football since we beat them home and home. I doubt the state is willing to support that level of relaxed standards.

But yeah, keep beating your chest that if "they" were just better at hiring the right guy we'd be above where we were in 2010.
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BL, it was great seeing you yesterday.

I've avoided posting for quite a while (got tired of every post turning into an argument). I also wrote most of this post this morning, before the news of RE's imminent retirement and.

Yes, the football program's trajectory over the past decade is a massive problem. Sadly, until things change at a level far higher than the athletic department, there will never be much to look forward to in terms of sustained success, or even success at all.

For reasons that I've never been able to comprehend, any time that UConn has had aspirations (in any field), it has been met with resistance by people within the school, elected officials, people who had some access to media (before the information age and subsequent social media) and private citizens who didn't mind getting loud while voicing their complaints. The idea of the school having ambitions makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This is what needs to change and until it does change we will be climbing a greased rope when trying to build a football program.

I'd wager heavily that when Jim Calhoun said "it's doable" in response to being questioned about the possibility winning a national championship here, if people actually believed it could be done, they would have sabotaged his career here before it began. Hell, we had to lie about the size of (then yet to be named) Gampel prior to approval.

Yes, we need a change in leadership in the football program but if all we do is hire a new head coach every few years, hoping he can accomplish something we'll never get anywhere. Diaco had to go, he had to go weeks, months before DB pulled the trigger. I'm not sure that anyone who is still allowed unsupervised in public is as detached from reality as Diaco was back then. Benedict unfortunately also has his hands tied at the time he brought RE in. He had extremely limited resources, he needed someone who understood the unique challenges of building a program in the northeast (yes, all programs face challenges, they don't necessarily face the same challenges) and he felt finding someone who had been through it before and had some level of success (something nobody else did here) was at worst a way to stabilize the program. He also placed two young coordinators on the staff (contrary to popular boneyard belief, Crocker was DB's decision, not RE's) to be potential replacements for RE somewhere down the road (for different reasons, neither lasted).

A few things that DB didn't realize:

  • How truly depleted (in terms of athleticism) the roster was due to Diaco's recruiting. This played a major role in losing Lashlee (I will address later).
  • The manner (almost identical to his first run here) that RE would manage the rebuild (which I had initially hoped he would accomplish a year or so quicker than the original, but unfortunately appears to be running a couple years longer than that one).
  • The incompatibility of the talent/athleticism of our defensive personnel with the defense Crocker attempted to install.
  • The incompatibility of Lashlee's offense with a defense that couldn't get off the field (Lashlee grudgingly agreed to slowing it down for the sake of the team).
Temple (and Memphis) were able to endure decades of inept football, land a great hire, reach heights they never could have imagined, lose that great hire and then slog, along hoping to one day find their next great hire. We've floundered for a decade (with a minor bowl appearance in that decade) and have been hearing the "we need to drop to FCS" talk for a few years. If our great hire doesn't come soon, those who want football to fail here (and there are far too many that should want success who would greatly prefer failure) will get their wish.

There are things that I really don't get about the current state of the football program. I realize that resources for the football program currently aren't what we'd like (and until the KO settlement happens this won't change) so the idea that we could have landed Joe Moorhead (currently with Oregon) is ridiculous. I do not however understand why we couldn't have landed his protege (Andrew Breiner, arrived at UConn before Moorehead) who currently works for Butch Davis at FIU.

I don't get that we weren't even able to outplay an FCS school in the trenches. Yes, they had a 300lb guard and a 290lb tackle, rarities for their level but even including them, we faced a team who's linemen (offensive and defensive) were 20-30lbs lighter per man and less athletic than what we will normally face. What happened on both lines of scrimmage yesterday baffles me (and it will be much worse against nearly everyone left on our schedule).

I am amazed at how difficult it is for us to find a QB. The kid HC played at QB (true soph from NY State) is better than anyone we've had here in years and bigger than all but Leon on our roster. When he had to come off the field (his helmet came off), the kid they brought in (also a true soph) had more poise than our starting QB.

I don't get how, with two starting LBs who are really 210lb safeties, we didn't have sufficient speed at LB to stop an FCS school.

After what we've seen the past two weeks it would be insane to continue with JZ at QB. One sad reality is (contrary to boneyard opinion), going into this season there was zero reason to believe that he wasn't clearly the best option. Shy some miracle, our answer at QB is/will be during TP's redshirt sophomore season (it would be unreasonable to believe he'd be ready earlier) and with what we currently have on the offensive line, he'd get killed before the middle of next year at the earliest.

Our roster is flush with what appears to be a lot of very young talent. Our next head coach should have a good amount to work with. It will be far easier to increase excitement, enthusiasm towards the program thinking the new regime needs year two to be truly competitive than being told the current regime will get there in two more years. I don't believe that this would be anywhere near as impactful on the players as most believe and it will be entirely for those outside of the roster, but the kids who will be returning next season won't be carrying the baggage of RE's first run with the program, his departure after the Fiesta Bowl, the P years, the Diaco years or the first couple of years of RE II.

We need to make a change but it can't merely be change for the sake of change. Hopefully DB has already been working on a list. While I'm sure that he will be able to communicate the 'difficulties' inherent with the job (having experienced them himself), hopefully the hire will understand them well enough prior to facing them that they won't undermine his ability to succeed. I believe DB can also communicate the positives that success here can bring, hopefully the best candidate will have sufficient vision to see this as this is where we will or will not sell the position.

If you want to be angry about the position we are in, be angry with those who were running the school decades ago that felt competing in the Yankee conference offering fewer football scholarships than many schools offered in basketball was acceptable. Be angry with those who were completely dismissive of the idea of moving up to play 'big boy football' for more than a decade after the D1-D1A split and spent the following half decade ignoring the idea. Be angry with those who responded with enmity when the idea of modeling UConn after the University of Michigan was presented (I saw this first hand in the late 1980's). Be angry with the fact that we were basically rudderless for a decade when we were achieving our greatest success (had either a lame duck, interim or looking for greener pastures president), allowing Hathaway to squander a massive amount of perception capital built by head coaches who despised his lack of support and his efforts to claim credit for what was accomplished in spite of him, not because of him.

We can't go part-way, thinking we can try something, if it doesn't work, try something new, ending up on a treadmill similar to the past ten years. We can't do a lazy search (Hathaway hiring P). We can't do a cost-effective retread (RE II) no matter how logical it may appear and we absolutely cannot afford someone with a lot of style but little substance (Diaco), even if he doesn't become completely detached to avoid realizing he is in over his head. Contrary to what the naysayers are preaching, there is enough here for us to be competitive in the not too distant future and, at some point become highly competitive. We will however need more than merely a new coach, we will need to fight (and defeat) those who are against the idea of our competing at this level in football.
 
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