Arena 2023-24 NCAA Football Discussion

I'm in the minority that thinks Muschamp will do well in South Carolina, despite his complete and total flop in Florida. There's a few reasons for this.

1) Despite how bad his offenses were in Florida, his defenses were good. Damn good. You can win 6 games a year on defense alone. Throw in 1-2 more wins on luck and you've got 7-8 wins a year. That's not a massive disappointment in South Carolina, the way it was in Florida. Which leads me to ...

2) The expectation level. Hello. Spurrier and Meyer have set an impossible bar in Florida. Anything less than contending for a National Title year in and year out is unacceptable. Not so in South Carolina. Getting to a not-terrible Bowl annually. being competitive, beating Clemson, and every few years contending for a division title are more like it. Those expectations mean you can take time to groom and let a QB prospect grow and learn. At Florida, if the QB you recruited wasn't performing, too bad. Bench him or throw him to the wolves and watch his career die.

3) It's not like there aren't tons of coaches at different sports and all kinds of levels that do significantly better their second time being a head coach compared to the first.

 

The problem is that if he couldn't attract offensive talent (which was his undoing) at Florida, how is he going to do that at South Carolina with Clemson ruling the roost? He's going to need an offense to have any chance.

 

There's no guarantee of success (there never is) but I'm in agreement with Inty in that I think Muschamp was a very good hire. The biggest issue with him at Florida was the offense, which had significant problems stemming from poor OC hires (Charlie Weiss, I'm looking at you). While admittedly hiring an OC at SC (Kurt Roper) who was at UF with him, Roper was the guy who came in the final year to attempt to fix things, and never had enough time to really do so.

Also, don't forget that his one really bad year at Florida was when they were plagued by a truly insane number of injuries - something like 25 scholarship players missing games, and 17 season ending injuries, many of those to starters. I don't care how good you are as a coach, that's really tough to deal with - it makes it hard to even really practice when that many guys are out.

As far as recruiting, he's assembled a staff with a bunch of top-notch recruiters, so they'll likely be able to get the talent. And its quite possible that they already have the "QB of the future"... though that certainly remains to be seen. Connor Mitch was supposed to be the guy this year, but he got injured early on and missed most of the season. And they signed Brandon McIlwain, one of the top QBs in this year's class, who is enrolling this spring (will also likely play baseball... had he not decided to enroll early he would have been drafted in the MLB draft this summer, possibly quite highly). I don't know if McIlwain will be ready to start as a freshman, but whether he's ready immediately or not, he should make an impact at some point.

 

Can I have a moment to just lol @ MSU peeps who talked **** after their Buckeye win?

...

...okay cool continue on

 

I'm pumped for this game tonight. As a Clemson grad I'll of course be pulling for the Tigers. Alabama is a great team, but I think we will be too much for them.

I'll be interested to see how Muschamp does, but right now it seems that Clemson is a bigger draw to most recruits than South Carolina is.

 

I don't think we're in for a very compelling game tonight. I look at that Alabama front 7, and I just see dominance like I've never seen from a unit in college football before. I think Alabama wins by at least three scores, and the game is over before halftime. I think Watson gets one or two moments of magic, probably early, to give Clemson fans hope, but Alabama just has too much on defense for the Tigers to overcome.

 

Previous years championships hype vs this years, at least where I am, No one is really excited. See a Bama fan occasionally, but otherwise, Out of Bama and Clemsons organizations and ESPN, no one seems super excited about this game. More dreary.

 

Shaq Lawson is a shell of himself. Think Clemson might be better off without him ...


... And, as I post that, he gets a sack ...

 

Henry run run running.

 

Wow. Clemson just got screwed

 

I'm happy with it being tied at the half. Clemson needs to tighten up on some of those mistakes and we will be in good position to win it.

 

Saban hates mobile quarterbacks with a passion

 

Int-idioc-y

Glad I was wrong

 

Sack!
Lol I hope Tamu starts knight against Bama, and Knight just torches them terribly. Thenk Knight bombs the rest of the season

 

Tight game, not sure who is going to win.

Come on Clemson.

 

There's the Alabama we are used to...


Sent from my iHorse

 

Ballgame

 

This game was tighter than we thought it'd be... TD here and it's all over...