I think its an interesting comparison because I sense Fuente is going to have to decide what kind of coach he is in the not too distant future.

I was a mocker of Dabo. I, like many, have egg on my face now. I started taking the guy more seriously though when I noticed he wasn't playing around when putting his staff together. He went and hired THE BEST coaches possible without regard to friendships or prior relationships.

That's not all that common, but it's not uncommon among the best in the game. Dabo was a WR coach, so while that seemed absurd at the time, in retrospect it was brilliant because he didn't have the burden of carrying dead weight around with him. He started fresh with a pocket full of money, and a shopping list. Chad Morris? check. Brent Venables? check Its not easy to cut a coach that "got you where you are today", but is no longer helping the cause.

Regardless of what they did at Memphis and/or TCU or wherever before that, it may well be that Vice and Cornelson are not cut out for this level of football. Hell, it might be that Fuente is not. If any of those are the case, Fuente would serve the program and himself well by taking a page from the Dabo playbook.

Frank Beamer suffered this same issue. He would have been fired after 1992 had he not been FORCED to fire his defensive staff. Nobody would even remember Frank Beamer's tenure if he hadn't hired Phil Elmassian in '93 which changed the culture of the program. He went on to waste a decade of amazing defenses by holding onto an offensive coordinator for reasons to do with personal friendship, and a stubbornness with regard to offensive style.

Dabo is the model.




[Post edited by Techsupport at 11/12/2018 10:53AM]