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So...about Charlie Strong at USF...


horn_of_the_morning

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Came across this on USF's SB Nation site. USF fans have the same gripes that Texas fans had about Strong. Looks like he learnt nothing from his time at Texas. They are ready to fire him. Looking back, can't fathom how dysfunctional we were in hiring Charlie. He is a terrible HC. There were imbeciles on this very board defending him even after he lost to KU. Unfuckingbeleiveable.

https://www.thedailystampede.com/2018/11/23/18100289/so-could-usf-football-fire-charlie-strong-if-they-wanted-to

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The level of dysfunction at Bellmont in 2013 is what created the CS hire.  I don't think there were any "name" coaches out there that wanted anything to do with us.  He was literally the best we could do.  Dark times indeed.  I trust  those days are gone now that CDC is at the helm.

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This is no surprise.  The guy is simply an awful leader.  He showed zero attention to detail.  USF puts woefully unprepared teams on the field, and lost their last 5 games despite having better athletes in 4 of those 5 games.  Hell, maybe in 5 of the 5.  The guy he hired to be DC there was an utterly horrendous hire.  He was awful as our LB coach.  Gilbert isn't exactly the next great thing at OC.  All of this was foreseeable.  Charlie was simply way in over his head in a leadership position, and that didn't change with a new zip code.  I doubt they fire him this year, but they'd be wise to do so and pay him a pittance compared to what it is going to cost to fire him after next season.  Not sure why anyone thought this would work.  He showed zero skills in running a program here.  I mean, the man declined a penalty where the opposition made a first down for F*cks sakes.  

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4 minutes ago, gecko said:

The level of dysfunction at Bellmont in 2013 is what created the CS hire.  I don't think there were any "name" coaches out there that wanted anything to do with us.  He was literally the best we could do.  Dark times indeed.  I trust  those days are gone now that CDC is at the helm.

this is 100% verifiably false.  

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1 minute ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Are we still paying a portion of his salary?

we are done as of Dec 31.  USF can fire him before Jan 1 and only owe him about 200K since they're only paying him about 400K this season.  IF they wait until next season they will have to pay him well north of that to make him go away.  

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17 minutes ago, horn_of_the_morning said:

Came across this on USF's SB Nation site. USF fans have the same gripes that Texas fans had about Strong. Looks like he learnt nothing from his time at Texas. They are ready to fire him. Looking back, can't fathom how dysfunctional we were in hiring Charlie. He is a terrible HC. There were imbeciles on this very board defending him even after he lost to KU. Unfuckingbeleiveable.

https://www.thedailystampede.com/2018/11/23/18100289/so-could-usf-football-fire-charlie-strong-if-they-wanted-to

 

Funny thing is.... Texas paid more of his USF salary for the first 2yrs Charlie has been there.   Now that USF has to pay him more, they don't want to pay.....

Dec 2016....

Strong’s salary with USF was released on Tuesday. The deal is for five years and worth $9.8 million total, according to Tampa Bay Times sports reporter Joey Knight. The contract is backloaded, due to Strong’s $10.7 million buyout with Texas. He had two years remaining on his guaranteed contract.

Strong will make $1 million annually from USF during the first two years – $500,000 base salary and the remainder to come via incentives.

From Years 3-to-5, Strong’s salary will increase to approximately $2.5 million.

Strong’s buyout is $2.5 million before Jan. 1, 2018, and will decrease to $1.7 million if he stays longer.

It’s a win-win for both USF, who gets Strong at a cheaper cost, and Texas, who gets to unload some of the guaranteed money owed to its former coach thanks to the Bulls.

Edited by LTtxfan
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4 minutes ago, pepper brooks said:

This is no surprise.  The guy is simply an awful leader.  He showed zero attention to detail.  USF puts woefully unprepared teams on the field, and lost their last 5 games despite having better athletes in 4 of those 5 games.  Hell, maybe in 5 of the 5.  The guy he hired to be DC there was an utterly horrendous hire.  He was awful as our LB coach.  Gilbert isn't exactly the next great thing at OC.  All of this was foreseeable.  Charlie was simply way in over his head in a leadership position, and that didn't change with a new zip code.  I doubt they fire him this year, but they'd be wise to do so and pay him a pittance compared to what it is going to cost to fire him after next season.  Not sure why anyone thought this would work.  He showed zero skills in running a program here.  I mean, the man declined a penalty where the opposition made a first down for F*cks sakes.  

 

4 minutes ago, pepper brooks said:

this is 100% verifiably false.  

 

2 minutes ago, pepper brooks said:

we are done as of Dec 31.  USF can fire him before Jan 1 and only owe him about 200K since they're only paying him about 400K this season.  IF they wait until next season they will have to pay him well north of that to make him go away.  

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24 minutes ago, horn_of_the_morning said:

Came across this on USF's SB Nation site. USF fans have the same gripes that Texas fans had about Strong. Looks like he learnt nothing from his time at Texas. They are ready to fire him. Looking back, can't fathom how dysfunctional we were in hiring Charlie. He is a terrible HC. There were imbeciles on this very board defending him even after he lost to KU. Unfuckingbeleiveable.

https://www.thedailystampede.com/2018/11/23/18100289/so-could-usf-football-fire-charlie-strong-if-they-wanted-to

They still are.

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It's not like USF's fanbase is legion or anything, but there was definitely a smugness about their hiring of Strong in the form of "we're getting a high quality coach on someone else's dime, hahahahaha" from various posts and threads I read at the time, probably right there on the same linked site in the original post. The media didn't really go that far, but in every article grading the coaching hires for that year, much of the blame for Strong's failure at Texas was put on Texas itself. The boosters, the fans, the entitled players, blah blah blah.

Well, now, for anyone who saw the guy's work over the last two years at USF, from almost losing to Stony Brook across to the current 5 game losing streak, what are the excuses? Is it the huge pressure of winning at USF? Onerous boosters? The cesspool of bad fans? Entitled players he's going to have to break and remold? Right. 

I thought it would go this way after seeing some of the crazy shit this guy enabled at Texas, but it is still gratifying to witness the schadenfreude with the fans and writers there. Strong seems like a decent guy and I still assume he can be a good assistant, but he's got zero business running a D-1 program. Taggart left him a terrific foundation to build on, and he's got no excuses for creating this kind of collapse, this quickly. 

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Easier article to understand financial..... Texas paid Charlie $4.5M for 2017, and $4.5M for 2018.  USF paid Charlie $1M for 2017, and $1M for 2018.

 

USA Today: Charlie Strong’s contract among nation’s best bargains

Published: October 3, 2018

For now, the contract of Bulls second-year coach Charlie Strong represents one of the five best deals among Division I-A football coaches as determined by USA Today.

The news organization unveiled its annual coaches-salary database Wednesday. Strong ranks 82nd with a base salary of $1 million, but the structure of the five-year deal combined with Strong's record at USF (14-2) makes the 58-year-old a bargain of sorts.

The contract was backloaded so Strong still could receive a bulk of his buyout money ($9 million) from Texas, which dismissed him after three years following the 2016 season. Essentially, most of his 2017 and '18 income arrives from the Longhorns.

RELATED: Strong's USF contract, 5 years, $9.8 million

"When Strong's buyout money from Texas expires next season, his salary at USF will more than double – from $1 million to $2.5 million, with incremental raises to follow," USA Today's Tom Schad writes. "But for one more year, the contract is an absolute steal for the Bulls."

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I cant hide from the fact that I was a Charlie Strong fan on his hiring, the first year, not really suprised as Mack truely fucked us on talent.

2nd year, we were just getting his guys in- i was still onboard.

3rd year....i was backing him the whole way- we barely lose to ou, and the K-state game seemed like a crazy anomaly  where we got 3 TO's to losing none... but managed to lose, with some seriouslly questionably choices by Charlie in the game... and then we won 2 straight and I thought we had turned the tide,  bowl game for sure...  and Charlie manages to blow the WV game,  and fking Kansas... and that was the absolute moment I knew he had to be fired.   

I sure as hell wasnt advocating we keep him after Kansas.... but I was on the keep him train until we blew an 11 point lead to kansas.

who the hell was saying to keep him after that?  and after the TCU demolition the next week?

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Just now, YChang said:

Was rooting for Strong but yeah... seems like his tenure at Louisville is an outlier rather than what a program can expect from him. I hope at least for his own sake if he's let go from USF he'll find success again as a DC. 

Only reason he had the season he did at Louisville was because of Teddy B and the fact he got to play in the Big East when it was on its way to becoming extinct. They won in spite of him, not because of him. He's a shitty coach and that hire was terrible for Texas.

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Charlie is a bad head coach. He was justifiably fired. He recruiting a large part of the nucleus of players playing for a conference championship Saturday. I do think he, even if marginally, let the program better off than it was under Mack. At least he helped us get away from the rot. I'm not going to bury the guy. He seemed like a good man way in over his head in a job like this. I'm happy with where we're headed.

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57 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

 

It's not like USF's fanbase is legion or anything, but there was definitely a smugness about their hiring of Strong in the form of "we're getting a high quality coach on someone else's dime, hahahahaha" from various posts and threads I read at the time, probably right there on the same linked site in the original post. The media didn't really go that far, but in every article grading the coaching hires for that year, much of the blame for Strong's failure at Texas was put on Texas itself. The boosters, the fans, the entitled players, blah blah blah.

Well, now, for anyone who saw the guy's work over the last two years at USF, from almost losing to Stony Brook across to the current 5 game losing streak, what are the excuses? Is it the huge pressure of winning at USF? Onerous boosters? The cesspool of bad fans? Entitled players he's going to have to break and remold? Right. 

I thought it would go this way after seeing some of the crazy shit this guy enabled at Texas, but it is still gratifying to witness the schadenfreude with the fans and writers there. Strong seems like a decent guy and I still assume he can be a good assistant, but he's got zero business running a D-1 program. Taggart left him a terrific foundation to build on, and he's got no excuses for creating this kind of collapse, this quickly. 

Pretty incredible that Herman and CDC have flipped this narrative on its head in one calendar year at Texas. 

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This is same guy who declined a holding penalty that he later accepted after the referee broke it down for him that allowing the opposing team to get a first down was not in his best interest. And this is also the same guy who's special teams were so horrible that you wondered if he ever coached a single special teams play in practice. 

He was in way in over his head here and its not surprising to see that he is tanking with a team that was loaded with talent. What will also not surprise me is when we hear that many of the players that he recruited turn out to be terrible mental evaluations. 

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1 hour ago, AUS-97HORN said:

I cant hide from the fact that I was a Charlie Strong fan on his hiring, the first year, not really suprised as Mack truely fucked us on talent.

2nd year, we were just getting his guys in- i was still onboard.

3rd year....i was backing him the whole way- we barely lose to ou, and the K-state game seemed like a crazy anomaly  where we got 3 TO's to losing none... but managed to lose, with some seriouslly questionably choices by Charlie in the game... and then we won 2 straight and I thought we had turned the tide,  bowl game for sure...  and Charlie manages to blow the WV game,  and fking Kansas... and that was the absolute moment I knew he had to be fired.   

I sure as hell wasnt advocating we keep him after Kansas.... but I was on the keep him train until we blew an 11 point lead to kansas.

who the hell was saying to keep him after that?  and after the TCU demolition the next week?

So the 3 blocked extra points in a row against Oklahoma State, the missed extra point to lose to Cal, and the muffed snap punt against Oklahoma State to lose that game didn't do it for you? That is just the tip of the iceberg

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45 minutes ago, cfpisrigged said:

He was good at recruiting, but one of the worst game managers I've ever seen. Looking back on the list of candidates from that year there weren't a ton of good options. Only realistic one that would have been good was Franklin.

..and Franklin had that creepy vibe about him, but yeah, there were not a whole lot of known slam dunk hires at the time.

Hard to really disagree with the decision at the time.  Look at Stoops, Tressel, and Carroll -not exactly can't miss hires before the fact either.

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2 minutes ago, Texas25 said:

So the 3 blocked extra points in a row against Oklahoma State, the missed extra point to lose to Cal, and the muffed snap punt against Oklahoma State to lose that game didn't do it for you? That is just the tip of the iceberg

short answer is no... at the time it didnt, shit happens sometimes....

losing to Kansas was (and is) unforgivable.

you left out the UCLA kickoff twice moment and the Cal fail in Berkely

now, since you want to act all high and mighty, looking back, yes, all those fucked up things that happened do show a lack of preparedness and do show his inability to coach special teams and high-pressure situations, but you also forget, he beat ou- in his 2nd try- something Mack had only done once in his last 4 tries- and we didnt just beat ou- we fucking destroyed them that game, at no point were we behind, and we had a 2 score lead almost the entire 2nd half... and we could have finished with a 2 score victory if we didnt give them the big FU and kneel at the 4 yard line to close out the game.

beating ou with a mediocre team was coaching, you can claim otherwise, but it was.   However, as I have said above, that all went away losing to Kansas.  and my point was - I was a charlie fan until he failed at kansas, and even *I* knew he needed to be fired after kansas.   which was the point of my post-  

 

who in the FUCK was saying we needed to keep him after and the TCU destruction?   Those folks are the real wack jobs

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12 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

..and Franklin had that creepy vibe about him, but yeah, there were not a whole lot of known slam dunk hires at the time.

Hard to really disagree with the decision at the time.  Look at Stoops, Tressel, and Carroll -not exactly can't miss hires before the fact either.

I think the problem was that we weren't going pay above $5M. We probably needed to money-whip some of the entrenched, quality coaches. That is assuming Patterson actually reached out to them.

Of the guys that we supposedly contacted or interviewed, I think Briles would have been successful here, but obviously I am glad my pick didn't get the job. I am confident Franklin would have failed here. In some ways his Vandy tenure has played out similarly at PSU, beat the bad teams, lose to anyone with equal or more talent. Look at PSU's schedules since he took over. His 7-6 seasons are likely losing records here. He now has them winning through easy OOC schedules and a Big 10 that is weak compared to the Big 12. He might have made it to year 4 just because he seems to avoid the KU-type losses, but I think he would have regularly gotten outcoached in the Big 12, so just replace Strong's few good wins with some of his bad losses. He still hasn't beaten as many ranked teams as Strong did in 3 years. He can definitely recruit though. I am not as sure about Mora. At the time we were looking, he had a solid resume that showed he could recruit and win against ranked teams. Didn't follow UCLA enough to understand why the bottom fell out the way it did.

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50-7 was what did it for me. The 41-7 loss to BYU concerned me but I somehow managed to lie to myself through the Texas Bowl AND the Notre Dame debacle, and I was so caught up in the officiating fiasco against OSU in 2015 that Charlie's ineptitude in that game didn't stand out the way it should have.

Basically I liked the hired because I'm pretty stupid and don't know much about football, and even after some pretty obvious tells I still held out foolish hope that Strong would turn things around... until TCU got up 30-0 on us in one quarter. I'm not going to start Googling but I'm pretty sure there's never been a head coach you'd want as your own that got down 30-0 in the first quarter of a game.

I didn't think you could or should fire a coach after 2 years at that point, but I changed my mind on that score too after we got shut out by Iowa State. 

why am I talking about this

why

I really think I was blind to some of Charlie's shortcomings because I was so fucking amazed he taught Mykkele Thompson how to tackle 

Edited by SwanderedTalent
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2 hours ago, horn_of_the_morning said:

Came across this on USF's SB Nation site. USF fans have the same gripes that Texas fans had about Strong. Looks like he learnt nothing from his time at Texas. They are ready to fire him. Looking back, can't fathom how dysfunctional we were in hiring Charlie. He is a terrible HC. There were imbeciles on this very board defending him even after he lost to KU. Unfuckingbeleiveable.

https://www.thedailystampede.com/2018/11/23/18100289/so-could-usf-football-fire-charlie-strong-if-they-wanted-to

Bullshit to the part about being so dysfunctional as to even hire him.

Agree to the criticism of supporting him even after the KU loss.

Edited by Asithappens
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