Stokley says hi to playing a glorified D-II schedule in a D-II conference that's only labeled as D-1A (FBS)
Remember what our entire athletic budget was when Stokley was coach? Hell football alone spends more than that now!
Again, not discrediting Hud for all that he has accomplished, but as far as coaching goes, Stokley was better.
I am glad we have Hud now, and excited about the consecutive bowl games, but there are also like 37 bowls to 16 in Stokley 's era?
Stokley's strength was switching O styles to match Jake's abilities after refusing to switch the year after Mitchell.
He would have been bowl eligible 7 times by todays standards.
I don't see a large chasm in schedule strengths.
Sports spending has by a wide margin outstripped inflation and in the 80s few schools spent more than UL does now.
I disagree - remember that would have been 7 years of post season practice, when the limit was 4 weeks instead of 3, so that number of bowl eligible years could have grown, and we had Freeman, Hayes & Hayes, so still had mobile running QBs on the roster, then we switched offenses the year Jake was a freshman, but we had a stud JUCO we recruited from CA in Sanborn and DiPace from FL and Jake was supposed to be redshirted, so it wasn't because of Jake, but Jake took advantage of the situation and out performed those guys, and pretty much every other QB he competed with till the end in Cleveland.
Our schedule is horribly weak and those fans that don't mind playing FCS schools have no idea why we get skull drugged when playing our alleged peers, the SuckBelt talent is barely, and I mean barely above FCS, and we play bottom feeder FCS, and talent wise we are just getting guys with similar talent to those late 80's and mid 90's teams, sure we've gotten a few diamonds in the rough but overall and on the 3deep charts we aren't there yet, and our peer schools at the time were out spending their football budget to our entire athletic budget, granted it was only 3.2 - 3.8 million, but those figures are astronomical when taken in context.
What was so challenging about the schedule Stokely had to face?
Miami Ohio, NIU, San Jose State, LA Tech, Southern Miss, Tulane and few money games.seriously? I must be in the minority, but 4 straight bowl games people!!!
Just went through Stokely's entire coaching schedule. The most challenging schedule he faced was in '96 and '97.more than likely the years we were asking for his head! Other than that.usual mid-major suspects.
'96
Florida
aTm
Virgina Tech
Texas Tech
'97
Pitt
OK State
Texas Tech
aTm
This is silly.
http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div.ette/index.php
Nelson won at least a share of a conference championship 2 out of the 3 years we were in a conference. That's 67%. Currently, we are working on a 25% championship rate. Lost out on the Las Vegas Bowl twice due to tiebreakers. We were Indy the other 10. For those of you with no memory or not old enough to know, there were very few bowl games for Indys back in the day. Bowl game argument is not valid. Especially because they had to change the rules just so we could go since we have such a hard time winning the SBC.
Nelson, on average, played 1 more money game per season than the current staff with an 11 game schedule, not 12.
Nelson, using the above link as reference, played the toughest schedules, BY FAR, of any coach in our history.
Nelson did that with a shoestring budget compared to today.
Nelson had Brian and Jake. Some of you want to fault him for that. Y'all need to imagine this year's squad without McGuire. Not pretty.
Nelson had no TV access.
Nelson had no Administrative support.
Shall I continue?
Valid points CajunNation.but I'd rather win 8 games a year and make bowl games than win 5 games a year and sit at home (I also understand the point of more bowl games being available). Was Nelson a better X's/O's guy.sure. Did that equal into 8 wins a year, no. IT'S ALL ABOUT WINNING IN MY BOOK.
I was thinking of Freeman when I typed of his "refusing to switch the year after Mitchell."
Freeman was averaging 1.8 yards per carry but Stokley still rushed him a Mitchellesk 162 times in 1990
I understand your "projecting" on bowl eligible seasons because bowl appearances would most definitely have helped recruiting.
ps I am not sure of your meaning on the "because of Jake" comment, unless you are just throwing the fact out there I don't see a disagreement. That year, Stokley's style changed, I give him credit for that.
The 3 year drop-off between Brian and Jake was the time it took Nelson to realize that the run and shoot just didn't work unless you had a super-sepcial QB.
He got coaches who could change course and recruit accordingly.
I will never fault him for the 97 and 98 seasons. Nobody could have succeeded given what he had to deal with. Just like I will never fault Bustle for the first few years of his tenure. He had to build a roster almost from scratch.
When I think of Nelsons tenure, I really only consider 86-96.
When I think of Hudspeth's tenure, I think of 2011-2014, with 34 wins (and counting) and 3 bowl wins. You can't write off a portion of a coach's tenure just because it doesn't fit the narrative of what you want people to believe of Stokely. Hudspeth is coaching with the rules in place just like Stokely had to coach with the rules in place during his tenure.
And in no way am I trying to discredit the teams that stokely had.
What truth?! That he wrote off 5 years of Stokely's career? Write off 40% of hudspeth's and he's undefeated. On top of that, he used refusal to change a style as an excuse for down seasons. So that excuse is valid for Stokley but not Hudspeth? That's right. Hudspeth hasn't had a down year
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