Around the 'Shoe

I don't think anyone hated Fickell the person, but it was obvious he was way over his head and making game time decisions that were costing us the game. Let him coach defense, thats where he's more comfortable.

you mean mr timeout or deer in headlights ...

No one here has ripped on him since last year....

Fick will be a good coach one day. You can't judge his head coaching prowess from last season. You don't really believe Fick had authority to change the OC do you? He was told Bollman was going to run the offense - last season was doomed and Gene Smith knew it. Fick took one for the University, knowing it was to late for a coaching search.

It all worked out in the end, he gets to learn a different coaching style from another NC head coach.

Go Fick, Go Bucks!

On this board? I dont go anywhere else, not even the homepage. Ha

I thought he was a defensive coach ... The defense that was always taking wrong angles ... Getting gashed by rex burkhead ... Also continuously putting bauserball in there ...

What he said + 10000000000

Never satisfied with ineptness as hc and their record last year ...under no circumstance is that acceptable

As far as Joey is concerned, he was put in when Brax was flattened a few times if I remember correctly. Joey did what he could, he wasn't a starter and the OC had no plan on how to use him.

Yawn ... Poor fickell ... Having to take over as hc of ohio state ... Only winning is acceptable

Not drawing me in sofla...arguing is futile.

I believe Fickell was hamstrung from the get-go. He was dealt a bad hand off a stacked deck. Where was he going to find a competent OC not only on two month's notice (remember: Tressel quit on Memorial Day) but with only a 6-month contract? Because there were no guarantees, no job security for anyone on that staff. I'm guessing they were all updating their resumes. He would have had to hire someone with nothing to lose. 64 year old Walt Harris, who's enjoying retirement in Pittsburgh after coaching at California (or Pennsylvania in 2010) may have been the only guy...and two months wouldn't have given him any kind of time to learn a playbook, the players, etc. So everyone played it safe. No one wanted to switch horses in mid-stream.

Same with Withers at UNC. And look at Arkansas, which temporarily made Taver Johnson interim HC (who had just been hired a few weeks earlier himself) when Petrino was fired, then brought back John L. Smith, who was Petrino's ST coach for the previous 3 seasons before going to Weber State as HC, only to quit that job to come back to Arkansas. He's got a 10-month deal. But at least he's been an HC before, managed a staff, been in the hot seat....plus he's been on the job since April. If Gene Smith had hired anyone as HC other than someone already on the staff, he might've been run out of town tarred and feathered on a rail.

I would love to hear what Fickell would say he'd have done differently if he had to do it all over again. What lessons did he learn? The hardest steel is forged in the hottest fire, just as winners find ways to learn and grow from adversity and failure. I doubt firing Bollman and Siciliano would be on his list because I don't really believe he had that green light from Gene Smith. I think, though, that he would say he would have been more aggressive, would have coached to win. That was Fick's problem, he coached passively as if he was playing not to lose and in the end, he did anyway. It was a painful learning experience but I'm sure he's a he's a better man and a coach as a result of it.