Interesting hire...

http://www.d1baseball.com/analysis/texas-makes-pick-hires-tulanes-pierce/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=dundee_share

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Good hire.

Now Kendall and the longhorns both made themselves look silly in this process but that is another issue.

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Why did Kendall look silly? Thought he reported the search pretty well.

Jay Johnson wasn't a splash hire for AZ and look at them. Unfortunately, this was the best choice even though it was their eleventieth. He will do well.

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And bad for Sips but they are stupid and enjoy talking about how prestigious their job is more than actually winning so they stupidly conduct all of their job searches through the media.

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They've fired their head coaches in the 4 biggest sports on campus in about the last 5 years because they stopped winning big. Its a pressure cooker for coaches and I've personally heard that straight from one of their coach's mouths.

I won't say that they conduct their coaching searches with utmost effort to keep it secret,, but its probably impossible to not have some of it play out in the media. Its one of the biggest athletic departments in the country and the premier coaches in the country.

They're not going to care if Aggies think they look stupid or not. They know we're never going to like them. Either they end up with a good hire or they don't, and that's the bottom line.

Wow things have sure changed for Texas baseball. The last time the job was open they got the best coach in the game to immediately quit his job and come to Austin. Now they are hiring their 11th choice and could not get a big name.

Pierce may work out fine but, much like their football vacancy, big names aren't just going quit and walk to Austin to take a Longhorn coaching job. I was much more impressed with their basketball hire.

^ the entire collegiate sports world has drastically changed since then. Night and day different. That was back when you had to go to a blue-blood program in order to get to the CWS, or get any tv time.

I am not sure I follow the point you are trying to make here but the fact is that they consistently have the most public coaching searches (that is true for baseball, their OC hire last year, their basketball hire, their last football hire). Either they do that intentionally or they are the absolute worst about leaking information.

They also have a tendency, more than any other fan/media base, to throw out unattainable names as candidates and exhibit a delusional sense that theirs is "the best job" (whatever that means) in the country.

At the end of the day, they usually end up making perfectly normal hires that would be consistent with what any other top 25 athletic department would expect.

But the circus before that is very abnormal I am confident I can say that as a completely objective observation.

I'll try make my points clearer.

1) I think they care about winning. A lot. Despite your (doubtfully objective) opinion winning isn't a priority.

2) I think very few, if any, coaching searches in the country draw as much natural attention as their's do. They might be bad about leaking information, but no where else are so many media-types poking their heads in the door and trying to dig up information.

3) I don't think they care if it looks like they go after "unattainable" coaches. You don't get bonus points for self-eliminating yourself from premier coaches. At the end of the day, they care if they made a good hire or not.

Do you not think Pierce is a good hire?

Is Texas going the way of USC, Arizona State and Wichita State? Hard to believe it could happen, but 20 years ago no one suspected Southern Cal would become a perennial also-ran.

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Whether pierce is a great hire or not remains to be seen.

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Its sports so you never know for sure how things will work out.

Two years ago Aggie fans were (rightfully) skeptical of retaining Billy Kennedy for basketball while Auburn hired Bruce Pearl. Pearl had a great resume and Kennedy had struggled significantly his first 3 seasons in College Station. Rather than firing Kennedy at the end of that third season, A&M instead gave him the chance to make some replacements on his assistant coaching staff to try to right the ship (replacing Cyprien and John Reese with Rick Stansbury and Rahim).

Since then, the past two seasons Texas A&M has gone 24-12 in the SEC conference (the second most wins in conference play the past 2 seasons. Only Kentucky had more), and went to an NIT and then was SEC conference co-champs and went to an NCAA Sweet Sixteen.

Auburn meanwhile went 9-27 in the SEC the last two seasons, finishing 13th (next to last) in the conference both seasons. Pearl is a good coach and may certainly eventually work things out, but you really never know for sure.

BTW, sometimes I get the vibes from posters that seems like they feel Texas A&M is somehow nicer, more patient, has lower expectations, etc. than the majority of its peer schools. I guess because Aggie head coaches are not getting fired as fast and frequently as the message boards prefer. But IMO there does seem to be signs of real pressure on Aggie coaches. The past few seasons both Sumlin and Billy Kennedy for example whacked several coaches on their respective staffs (Snyder, Spavital, Christenson, Cyprien, Reese, etc.) to try to fix issues and ultimately save their own jobs. It isn't like our sports programs underperform and then there are no signs of any repercussions. Also the 'Fire the assistant coaches' card can only be played so many times by a head coach before ultimately his head is next to roll.

Luke, we can only hope.

It's not the job they thought it was. Said it immediately and it was true.

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^ the entire collegiate sports world has drastically changed since then. Night and day different. That was back when you had to go to a blue-blood program in order to get to the CWS, or get any tv time.

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This is absolutely true and should be remembered in this board when throwing out the idea of firing someone the industry considers successful. Nobody (not even Texas, LSU, Floida) can just throw open a job and expect tier 1 coaches to come stampeding. The money is too spread out and the opportunity to recruit and win is too even.

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If he takes them to a CWS in the first five years it was a brilliant hire...

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Its all about context. Texas made it to the CWS in 2014, but I think a vast majority of people consider their last 4 years or so to be pretty much a disaster. I know there are a lot of people here consider the CWS the only measuring stick, but what happens in other years matters too.

If Pierce makes it in year 3 but sandwiches 3 or 4 years where they fail to qualify for the tournament around that....that wont go over well.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter that they went through 11 rejections before getting someone to say 'yes'. If he's the right guy, no one will care.

Nick Saban told Alabama 'no' before they came back to him later after several other rejections, and paid him the money to get him to say 'yes'. How many people remember that coaching search? Think anyone cares that 'Bama had to take a while to get the guy who has built their modern dynasty, and won 4 of the last 7 national titles?

People who say things have changed are right, though. Garrido actually called Gustafson to make sure it was okay for him to take the texas job and follow him. texas doesn't have the cache or mystique they used to have, and their fans don't realize it.