[msqueri]

Thanks Matt.  

Boy, there are a lot of moving parts when choosing a new head coach.  There are very few paths to get it right and many obstacles and pit falls that could lead to a bad hire.  

Let's hope the best and brightest minds use clear eyes and full hearts in the selection process.  

Unfortunately, we fans don't get to watch them make the sausage, we just get to eat it when it's done.  Let's hope that it's Jimmy Dean good.

I think I am more optimistic about this. I think a period following catastrophic failure like we've witnessed the last four years is a time of great promise for a college football program, at least one with significant advantages like Stanford has. The bar to clear to improve on recent results is extremely low and the nature of failure is such that just about any change will have healthy/cleansing aspects in at least some (if not many/most) respects. As such, if you came up with a list of 100 plausible candidates and had a monkey throw a dart at the board to pick the candidate we'd have a good shot at having more success in the coming years than we've had in the last four. Based on the history of Stanford coaching hires and other Power Five rebuilding effort coaching hires over the last 30-50 years, I peg about a 50 percent chance that any given hire could get us to occasional top 25/8+ win seasons. So I guess I don't think the paths are so few for us to get a result worth being happy about.

What we need to avoid is Muir selecting among poor candidates. If we hire somebody like Pep Hamilton, Derek Mason, Lance Anderson, Tavita Pritchard, Will Muschamp, Justin Wilcox, Mike Sanford, a position coach making a gargantuan leap, an FCS coach with less success than Troy Taylor, etc. then I think we will face an uphill climb back to relevance. So I guess there are pitfalls. But I'm going to hold on to some optimism that some rigor and sanity will prevail and somebody on my wish list will get it rather than somebody on my pitfall list.

[msqueri]

Thanks Matt.  

Boy, there are a lot of moving parts when choosing a new head coach.  There are very few paths to get it right and many obstacles and pit falls that could lead to a bad hire.  

Let's hope the best and brightest minds use clear eyes and full hearts in the selection process.  

Unfortunately, we fans don't get to watch them make the sausage, we just get to eat it when it's done.  Let's hope that it's Jimmy Dean good.

I think I am more optimistic about this. I think a period following catastrophic failure like we've witnessed the last four years is a time of great promise for a college football program, at least one with significant advantages like Stanford has. The bar to clear to improve on recent results is extremely low and the nature of failure is such that just about any change will have healthy/cleansing aspects in at least some (if not many/most) respects. As such, if you came up with a list of 100 plausible candidates and had a monkey throw a dart at the board to pick the candidate we'd have a good shot at having more success in the coming years than we've had in the last four. Based on the history of Stanford coaching hires and other Power Five rebuilding effort coaching hires over the last 30-50 years, I peg about a 50 percent chance that any given hire could get us to occasional top 25/8+ win seasons. So I guess I don't think the paths are so few for us to get a result worth being happy about.

What we need to avoid is Muir selecting among poor candidates. If we hire somebody like Pep Hamilton, Derek Mason, Lance Anderson, Tavita Pritchard, Will Muschamp, Justin Wilcox, Mike Sanford, a position coach making a gargantuan leap, an FCS coach with less success than Troy Taylor, etc. then I think we will face an uphill climb back to relevance. So I guess there are pitfalls. But I'm going to hold on to some optimism that some rigor and sanity will prevail and somebody on my wish list will get it rather than somebody on my pitfall list.