Blame it on Bob Stoops. If you don't want to blame it on Stoops, blame it on Jim Tressel. If not Tressel, then Urban Meyer. All three of those guys took over high-profile programs. All three won national titles in their second seasons. Now any school thinks it can do the same thing. If you're a coach and you can't get your program turned around by the middle of the third season, there will be a fire(yournamehere).com website. And you can look forward to a variety of stock arguments as to why you should be unemployed. The problem, of course, is that most of these arguments are completely worthless. Don't believe me? Let's investigate.
"We can't let this program sink any further into mediocrity!" Yeah, that's what Steve Pedersen said when he fired Frank Solich and brought in Bill Callahan. I suppose you could argue that Pedersen was correct; instead of sliding into mediocrity, he let the program degenerate into irrelevance. Unless your team just went 0-12, "up" isn't the only possible direction a new coach can take your program.
