Saban was on his way to winning titles at Michigan State. By his third year at MSU they destroyed ND in back to back seasons, despite having much lower ranked recruits than Bob Davie's teams. If you can coach, the recruiting takes care of itself. And if you can't, recruiting doesn't mean that much (Weis years).
Last night Vanderbilt looked like a completely different program in Clark Lea's second year. Their defense was disciplined and flying around the ball, making every tackle. That's coaching - and his recruits haven't started seeing playing time yet.
Hopefully Freeman's team play with fire but are just as disciplined and fundamentally sound as Kelly's teams. If so, THEN the recruiting could eventually put them over the top.
So you're saying we should have hired Clark Lea instead of MF? That's a fascinating thought experiment. Or whatever, just something to ponder. Clark Lea is NOT charismatic, at least in the sense that he's quiet and self-effacing, pretty much with this demeanor that he's deep in thought about something football-related at all times. Whereas MF is a rock star, who's facial mien comes off as if he's almost never thinking about football. So they contrast each other in that sense....
And they're both about the same age, Clark Lea a few years older, and I think with pretty similar career arcs. And I just thought the defense was in such good, safe, very competent hands with CL, and not quite as much with MF. Although still good with MF, most definitely, but if I had to pick a DC I would take Clark Lea over MF, and for me at least it would be an easy decision. With the only hesitation being what I might lose not having MF around as a recruiter.
So let's say CL was still the DC, and we never hired MF to begin with, and BK left to coach LSU, would we have promoted CL to ND football coach? Probably not, is what I would say, bordering on definitely not. And that would be fine, and to be expected. But when it came to MF, hell no, they couldn't hire him fast enough, and let any lack of experience or brooding contemplativeness be damned...
In any case, that's nice to see that CL is picking things up at Vandy, that has got to be the toughest job in the country to win at at bar none. Though that certainly sucks for my hometown Bows. Because that is a serious beatdown to be on the receiving end from lowly Vanderbilt. I bet you UH was probably thinking they could get the win! Not this time, that's like something you'd expect to see out of Bama...
