Position coaches, like Sam Pittman or Dabo (went from WR coach / recruiting coordinator to interim to HC)
Survivors from previous failed regime (Dabo, Stoops)
Coordinators (Stoops, Riley, Snyder)
HS legends (Malzahn)
Lower division legends (Leipold, Klieman)
G5 winners (Urban at Utah; Rhule)
Guys who haven't won big enough at a P5 (Saban at MSU; all of the above)
NFL failures (Carroll)
I am not itching to fire Sark or any of the staff at this point, but just pointing out that every kind of resume has its pitfalls and rewards. Somebody in our slapdick organization has to be able to realize when the guy is the guy. And then they need to GTFO his way.
Going back to Dana X. Bible, we've exactly one seamless transfer of power. He handed off to the guy he beat out for the job ten years previously -- Blair Cherry -- who did something you just don't see anymore: he bided his time for a decade. Cherry's four-year run was as great as Bible's peak, but our fans and boosters wore him out with unrealistic expectations -- an NC every year, even though we'd never won a single one yet. 9-1 seasons and undefeated conference championships capped off by major bowl wins were not enough. (Yes, he lost to Bud Wilkinson's OU that year, 14-13). He was an insomniac, ulcerated wreck at the end of four years, but it looked like he managed to leave the program in good hands, just as Bible had done in leaving it to him. Cherry's successor went 23-8 with two top ten finishes and a Cotton Bowl win in his first three years....and then drove the program off a cliff. Yes, this was Ed Price, truly the worst coach in Texas history, who took a dynasty and in six years turned it into a 1-9 team.
So the whole promoting from within thing is also dangerous. We tried that at the end of Royal's tenure too. By most accounts, Akers was not Royal's guy. That was his DC Mike Campbell, but some of our boosters meddled and Akers won out. Who knows if Campbell would have been any better in the long run -- probably not, 'cause we needed young, post-integration blood on the sidelines then -- but maybe, who knows. And Akers did represent continuity, but not as much. At any rate, he, and the complete catastrophe that was the McWilliams Restoration, represented the end of the Royal era, and decades later, Mack did not get to execute his succession plan, which time has proven would have been a disaster, anyway....
Fuck this season. This is an off-season thread.