[81alum]

One thing needs to be made clear. Sometimes coaches aren't actually deserving of being fired.  It's possible that given more time they can turn things around. But, when people lose their jobs for not performing, it demonstrates a culture of accountability that will translate to everyone.

So you can say changing coaches won't matter, and you may e, but, absent even be correct, but don't expect anything to improve if people don't lose their jobs when there is failure. Accepting failure without accountability is just awful for any enterprise.

Never seen a bigger delta between the talk of toughness and the actual demonstration of it. Firing people is hard.  As Bill Walsh said, if you don't have the intestinal fortitude to fire people when performance standards aren't met, you aren't going to last as an AD or a Head Coach.

This I do agree with, which is why I do wish changes had been made on his staff.  I've seen this too many times in my own career  in academic administration outside of athletics, too, when various Vice Presidents who are disasters are not fired because it would reflect poorly on the President.

Shaw undoubtedly knows things that the Cardboard does not know.  He may think that his assistant coaches actually completed their jobs as well as they could and their obvious failures were actually largely due to his own mistakes or external factors beyond their control.  Under those circumstances he may feel that it would be unfair to remove them.

But at that level of pay and responsibility it is not only about fairness.  Firing a questionably performing assistant coach--even if Shaw knew there were mitigating factors--would send a signal to all the coaches and players that lack of performance will have consequences.  That creates a culture of competition that is healthy.  So I would argue that it is actually about MORE than "fair individual accountability," but the creation of a non-complacent, collective competitive culture.  The earlier quote from Walsh is spot-on.

None of this changes my mind that the odds of getting back to an elite performing football program are even lower with a new head coach than they are with Shaw.  In fact, I am pretty pessimistic that it is possible at all given the structural changes underway.  But I do agree with many here that Shaw would improve the odds by showing a willingness to make personnel changes.

[81alum]

One thing needs to be made clear. Sometimes coaches aren't actually deserving of being fired.  It's possible that given more time they can turn things around. But, when people lose their jobs for not performing, it demonstrates a culture of accountability that will translate to everyone.

So you can say changing coaches won't matter, and you may e, but, absent even be correct, but don't expect anything to improve if people don't lose their jobs when there is failure. Accepting failure without accountability is just awful for any enterprise.

Never seen a bigger delta between the talk of toughness and the actual demonstration of it. Firing people is hard.  As Bill Walsh said, if you don't have the intestinal fortitude to fire people when performance standards aren't met, you aren't going to last as an AD or a Head Coach.

This I do agree with, which is why I do wish changes had been made on his staff.  I've seen this too many times in my own career  in academic administration outside of athletics, too, when various Vice Presidents who are disasters are not fired because it would reflect poorly on the President.

Shaw undoubtedly knows things that the Cardboard does not know.  He may think that his assistant coaches actually completed their jobs as well as they could and their obvious failures were actually largely due to his own mistakes or external factors beyond their control.  Under those circumstances he may feel that it would be unfair to remove them.

But at that level of pay and responsibility it is not only about fairness.  Firing a questionably performing assistant coach--even if Shaw knew there were mitigating factors--would send a signal to all the coaches and players that lack of performance will have consequences.  That creates a culture of competition that is healthy.  So I would argue that it is actually about MORE than "fair individual accountability," but the creation of a non-complacent, collective competitive culture.  The earlier quote from Walsh is spot-on.

None of this changes my mind that the odds of getting back to an elite performing football program are even lower with a new head coach than they are with Shaw.  In fact, I am pretty pessimistic that it is possible at all given the structural changes underway.  But I do agree with many here that Shaw would improve the odds by showing a willingness to make personnel changes.