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graydogg85 said:
The point with Norvell is that no one would have thought it was an idiotic hire in January 2024. He was 23-4 at FSU the two prior seasons and had just finished an undefeated regular season with a conference title. We have the benefit of hindsight now, of course. At the time, he would have been universally viewed as anywhere from a good to great hire.
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Not from me. I might have had Dabo too high, but Norvell was near the bottom of my list (posted here for the record). He was an obviously bad hire and only regency bias oblivious to all else would favor Norvell.

Then again a list that had Norvell and DeBoer as the top two would be a list that consisted entirely or recency bias, nothing else. Let's just look at the past couple seasons and ignore everything else. That's a terrible way to make a decision. You don't just make up a list consisting of coaches coming off the best seasons of their career, that's a horrible way to do it (and applies to the broader coaching search discussion any coach should be evaluated based on his career, not mostly on his previous season).

Norvell lost 31 games in his first 7 seasons, at good programs. That's about 4.5 losses per season. You'd basically have to be football illiterate to think that's a good hire.

I'm not saying DeBoer was a terrible hire or anything, he was at the middle of my list, but Norvell, just look at his entire resume.

As far as the talent, we can agree to disagree but if I'm trying to find a more stacked team, the only ones I could have possibly come up with would be Georgia, Texas, and Ohio State. Alabama was certainly at least top 5 in talent, and that was my point. It wasn't like the talent wasn't there, it was.
 
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KrAzY3 said:
Not from me. I might have had Dabo too high, but Norvell was near the bottom of my list (posted here for the record). He was an obviously bad hire and only regency bias oblivious to all else would favor Norvell.

Then again a list that had Norvell and DeBoer as the top two would be a list that consisted entirely or recency bias, nothing else. Let's just look at the past couple seasons and ignore everything else. That's a terrible way to make a decision. You don't just make up a list consisting of coaches coming off the best seasons of their career, that's a horrible way to do it (and applies to the broader coaching search discussion any coach should be evaluated based on his career, not mostly on his previous season).

Norvell lost 31 games in his first 7 seasons, at good programs. That's about 4.5 losses per season. You'd basically have to be football illiterate to think that's a good hire.

I'm not saying DeBoer was a terrible hire or anything, he was at the middle of my list, but Norvell, just look at his entire resume.

As far as the talent, we can agree to disagree but if I'm trying to find a more stacked team, the only ones I could have possibly come up with would be Georgia, Texas, and Ohio State. Alabama was certainly at least top 5 in talent, and that was my point. It wasn't like the talent wasn't there, it was.
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Ok, fair enough. I think if you look at collective career performance, CKD again was the correct choice. I preferred CKD to Norvell at the time, but I wouldn’t have been disappointed with Norvell. His FSU teams had gone 3-6, 5-7, 10-3 and 13-1 after inheriting the mess Willie Taggart left, and his 2019 Memphis team went 12-1 and landed in the Cotton Bowl. Not exactly chopped liver and not exclusively recency bias IMO. We made the right call for sure, but it’s not like we were considering CKD vs. Houston Nutt.

Out of curiosity, if Norvell was at the bottom of your list and CKD was in the middle, who exactly was on your list?

Let’s look at January 2024 and who was on our radar:

Dabo: credible mods on this board have said for a long time that this would never happen, too much baggage from his time on the Dubose staff. Board of Trustees wouldn’t have it, hard stop. That decision looks better by the day. The guy can coach for sure and his career has been fantastic, but recent years suggest to me that he’s not cut out for the current climate.

Kiffin: see above - never happening with current leadership, too many burned bridges during his time in Tuscaloosa. Also a great coach but not a complete slam dunk IMO. His defenses are hit-or-miss, he’s not a great pure high school recruiter and his Ole Miss teams have had some baffling losses to bad teams as well as getting outright skunked by good teams a time or two.

Sark: from what I heard he told us “no thanks” plain and simple. I suspect he figured he had a better gig at Texas. For the record he’d have been my top choice.

Lanning: depending on who you talk to, we either never talked to him, or he told us he wasn’t interested. Also, at that time he literally only had two years of HC experience and was a bit of a gamble.

Cristobal: his first two seasons at Miami had been very underwhelming and I don’t really think he was considered.

Brent Key: I don’t think he even made the list but I hear his name a lot. In January 2024 he was coming off his second season as a head coach and had a 11-10 record.

I don’t think Kirby was contacted but I’m told it’s a safe bet he’s not leaving Georgia unless he decides he wants to give the NFL a try.

Who else is out there that we’d have pursued that would have been a better hire at the time than CKD?

Again, not saying CKD is the apex of coaching but given the above, in January 2024 who else do you hire? Eliminating everyone else above, I honestly cannot think of anyone else that makes any more sense than CKD.
 
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graydogg85 said:
Ok, fair enough. I think if you look at collective career performance, CKD again was the correct choice. I preferred CKD to Norvell at the time, but I wouldn’t have been disappointed with Norvell. His FSU teams had gone 3-6, 5-7, 10-3 and 13-1 after inheriting the mess Willie Taggart left, and his 2019 Memphis team went 12-1 and landed in the Cotton Bowl. Not exactly chopped liver and not exclusively recency bias IMO. We made the right call for sure, but it’s not like we were considering CKD vs. Houston Nutt.

Out of curiosity, if Norvell was at the bottom of your list and CKD was in the middle, who exactly was on your list?

Let’s look at January 2024 and who was on our radar:

Dabo: credible mods on this board have said for a long time that this would never happen, too much baggage from his time on the Dubose staff. Board of Trustees wouldn’t have it, hard stop. That decision looks better by the day. The guy can coach for sure and his career has been fantastic, but recent years suggest to me that he’s not cut out for the current climate.

Kiffin: see above - never happening with current leadership, too many burned bridges during his time in Tuscaloosa. Also a great coach but not a complete slam dunk IMO. His defenses are hit-or-miss, he’s not a great pure high school recruiter and his Ole Miss teams have had some baffling losses to bad teams as well as getting outright skunked by good teams a time or two.

Sark: from what I heard he told us “no thanks” plain and simple. I suspect he figured he had a better gig at Texas. For the record he’d have been my top choice.

Lanning: depending on who you talk to, we either never talked to him, or he told us he wasn’t interested. Also, at that time he literally only had two years of HC experience and was a bit of a gamble.

Cristobal: his first two seasons at Miami had been very underwhelming and I don’t really think he was considered.

Brent Key: I don’t think he even made the list but I hear his name a lot. In January 2024 he was coming off his second season as a head coach and had a 11-10 record.

I don’t think Kirby was contacted but I’m told it’s a safe bet he’s not leaving Georgia unless he decides he wants to give the NFL a try.

Who else is out there that we’d have pursued that would have been a better hire at the time than CKD?

Again, not saying CKD is the apex of coaching but given the above, in January 2024 who else do you hire? Eliminating everyone else above, I honestly cannot think of anyone else that makes any more sense than CKD.
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Norvell made the calculated, but ill-fated decision to build thru the portal vs supplementing with it

If he has the chops to recruit HS-first and build that way, I think he would’ve done well here

But he, nor Kiffin, or anyone else is gonna last long here without being a tireless, on the road, HS-first recruiter
 
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countrytider said:
Because I have a totally different opinion than you I don’t know how things work…gotcha 👍🏻.

These examples you have going back to Al Davis…I’m pretty sure Saban must have been unaware he wasn’t supposed to hire Kifffin for OC when he did.

The results speak for itself. Matter of fact, if Saban doesn’t act out of knee-jerk reaction and lets Kiffin coach one more game then we win 2 NC’s instead of just one during Kiffin’s three year tenure….and Saban has 8 NC’s instead of 7.

But Saban has too much pride and it cost him.

Just like it boils down to pride why didn’t hire
him over DeBoer, and the point I made that don’t you think 10 years later if it was something so unforgivable it would have leaked by now?

Also, nobody on here is asking for a public statement from the university. Just ten years of people continually referencing things he done as insider information, but ironically never expanding upon that other than the Joey Freshwater deal.
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You’re right, Saban’s pride got in the way, and he didn’t send Kiffin on to Boca before the UW game

Letting Sark be the focused, main OC the entire time would’ve been our best option

With staff, Saban proved to be anything but kneejerk…
 
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