[CTcard]

Mora is a fascinating case.  On the one hand, his record is substantially better than the coaches who have preceded him:
... Mora can recruit about as well as anyone,
... BUT, it sure seems that when you go through the roster, you might have expected UCLA to have performed better given the players they have on the team.

I think Mora is more a classic case study.

He came in and won a lot more than the previous coaches.

He has a set of annoying public-personality traits that opponents hate and home fans either love or don't care about as long as in a given season he's winning more than the year before, but everyone jumps on when the losses appear.

Eventually, he has a season substantially worse than the previous one (or few) and much of the fan base starts grumbling that he cannot win championships, cannot get his team to the next level, has terrible personality flaws, so let's fire the guy and take a roll on someone else.

I certainly won't grieve for him if he gets fired - he's made a boatload of money, his douchebag tactics are first annoying and this year injured a bunch of our team, and anyway he coaches a team I don't care about other than as an opponent. But, I would expect there is a pretty high likelihood that if they do fire the guy, the next guy will on balance be worse.

There is an interesting caveat to that. Most teams tend to hire a guy who approximates the opposite of the guys they fired. [Stanford hired the ebullient Buddy after the stoic Willingham (and we didn't even fire Willingham), the disciplinarian and longtime offensive-planner Wlat after the loosey-goosey and tactically challenged Buddy, the enthusiasm unknown to mankind Harbaugh after the somnolent Wlat.]
So, if we take as a given that Mora's strength is recruiting and he lacks in some aspect of molding that talent and if the next guy has the opposite traits, he might be able to get a lot out of Mora's top recruits before the talent level drops.

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A very interesting case is Helfrich at Oregon.

Oregon hasn't fired a coach or hired from outside the program since 1977 when they fired Don Read and hired Rich Brooks (from UCLA).

After that they went Brooks to NFL - hire OC Bellotti, Bellotti to AD - hire OC Kelly, Kelly to NFL - hire OC Helfrich.

I don't know the local views on Oregon's staff to know if they have a logical successor there right now. Their Asst Head Coach has been the OL coach for about 30 years. Their OC is new and I don't think very high profile. Their DC is Hoke who of course has been a major program head coach but teams don't promote coordinators of atrocious units. I'd guess their most likely candidate is Scott Frost - who as a first year head coach at UCF at least has them playing competitively against their schedule.

[CTcard]

Mora is a fascinating case.  On the one hand, his record is substantially better than the coaches who have preceded him:
... Mora can recruit about as well as anyone,
... BUT, it sure seems that when you go through the roster, you might have expected UCLA to have performed better given the players they have on the team.

I think Mora is more a classic case study.

He came in and won a lot more than the previous coaches.

He has a set of annoying public-personality traits that opponents hate and home fans either love or don't care about as long as in a given season he's winning more than the year before, but everyone jumps on when the losses appear.

Eventually, he has a season substantially worse than the previous one (or few) and much of the fan base starts grumbling that he cannot win championships, cannot get his team to the next level, has terrible personality flaws, so let's fire the guy and take a roll on someone else.

I certainly won't grieve for him if he gets fired - he's made a boatload of money, his douchebag tactics are first annoying and this year injured a bunch of our team, and anyway he coaches a team I don't care about other than as an opponent. But, I would expect there is a pretty high likelihood that if they do fire the guy, the next guy will on balance be worse.

There is an interesting caveat to that. Most teams tend to hire a guy who approximates the opposite of the guys they fired. [Stanford hired the ebullient Buddy after the stoic Willingham (and we didn't even fire Willingham), the disciplinarian and longtime offensive-planner Wlat after the loosey-goosey and tactically challenged Buddy, the enthusiasm unknown to mankind Harbaugh after the somnolent Wlat.]
So, if we take as a given that Mora's strength is recruiting and he lacks in some aspect of molding that talent and if the next guy has the opposite traits, he might be able to get a lot out of Mora's top recruits before the talent level drops.

----------------
A very interesting case is Helfrich at Oregon.

Oregon hasn't fired a coach or hired from outside the program since 1977 when they fired Don Read and hired Rich Brooks (from UCLA).

After that they went Brooks to NFL - hire OC Bellotti, Bellotti to AD - hire OC Kelly, Kelly to NFL - hire OC Helfrich.

I don't know the local views on Oregon's staff to know if they have a logical successor there right now. Their Asst Head Coach has been the OL coach for about 30 years. Their OC is new and I don't think very high profile. Their DC is Hoke who of course has been a major program head coach but teams don't promote coordinators of atrocious units. I'd guess their most likely candidate is Scott Frost - who as a first year head coach at UCF at least has them playing competitively against their schedule.