re: A balanced discussion about Mel Tucker

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Tucker is not my number one choice but there’s just as many question marks my around Napier and Aranda as there is Tucker.

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I feel the same way.

I’m not going to melt over any hire. Admin made the right, and expensive, decision on O, so with this new AD I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone he chooses.


But out of every other name that has been thrown around, those three simply won’t give me any feeling of excitement at all.

I love Aranda, and Napier and Tucker may turn out to be the next great coaches in CFB, but none of them have proven, or even shown glimpses imo, that they are capable of both building and sustaining long term success at a championship level anywhere they’ve been.

For starters, they simply haven’t been head coaches long enough. Three and four years, two in Aranda’s case, and not even in P5 for Napier, just doesn’t give a big enough sample size to truly measure the programs under their guidance. Hell, Aranda and Tucker are about to finish their first season with a winning record.

The samples they’ve put together earn them another step up, but you don’t go from two pretty good years at UL or one decent year at Baylor or MSU to HC of LSU imo. That was fine in 2000 or even 2005, but in 2021 it just doesn’t translate


If Napier had been going undefeated and blowing everyone out in the Sun Belt for two or three years in a row turning UL into Boise south, maybe. If Aranda or Tucker had won the Big 12 or 10 or were able to string together two or three big upset wins in a year, that would be something that would set them apart.


But right now all these guys have are words, their own and, even scarier, words of reporters who are trying to pump up every candidate they can think of so that whichever one is picked they can see I told you all he was the one!! They can also point to those fluff pieces to earn favor and access from whoever is eventually in charge.


No one is going to write an article saying Tucker hasn’t done a damn thing other than beat one ranked team (then lose to an unranked team the very next week) and Napier can’t even dominate teams in the Sun Belt when their jobs may very well depend on that person liking them in a few weeks.


There just isn’t any candor in the information being put out there about these coaches.

So I simply see UL winning 4 games in the Sun Belt by 4 points or less, Tucker following up two bad seasons by beating a bunch of unranked teams then getting annihilated by Purdue the week after his only real significant win, and Aranda following up a mess of a debut as HC with one pretty good season so far, but with OU still to come.


That’s the reality of what these guys have actually done as head coaches. And I just don’t see any of them being qualified to take over the program has won more national titles, including one just two years ago, in the BCS/CFP era than every school not named Alabama at this point.


This isn’t the job that Saban took over or even that Miles did. This is a proven sustainable championship program, and we simply shouldn’t have to hire someone on the mere hope that they are championship material any more.

WOKE knows best ?