re: Check in if you're ready for sumlin to go

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Not really, he is responsible for our recruiting.

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Kinda.

I mean he is the one who actually tries to sign the kids, but (metaphorical) we are all responsible for what the Texas A&M brand looks like to recruits. We created that corps block that looks on TV like we grow white skinheads the same way Nebraska grows corn. We decided to wrap our brand in the military and political conservatism even though neither are very appealing to the demographic that is best at football. We sucked for decades prior to Sumlin thereby giving him no history to sell like almost every other program we are competing with has.

Sumlin has fricked up some in recruiting (mostly with who he has hired and how he managed QBs last year), but really the only success he has had was when he created a new brand for us (as the hip and young swag team) that is 100% opposed to everything the engineers that run our ship have wanted to be seen as for decades. That shows us how fricked up our real brand is, because when Sumlin's smoke and mirrors brand fell apart so did our recruiting.

Hell, even when things were going perfectly our best class under Sumlin (which then means since 1991 or some shite like that) was barely top 5 in a SEC West division where three teams not including us had top 6 classes that year. To compete in this division we need 2014 to be an average year and a kind of year we have NEVER had in modern times (aka a top 3 class year) needs to be our up years.

I don't know if any coach that doesn't already have a national title (think Saban to Bama or Urban to tOSU) can recruit at that level here. Maybe what we want we simply can't have due to mistakes from our past.

Sometimes just throwing money at a problem when you can't fix the root cause just makes the problem worse. I am not saying Sumlin is the answer, I am just saying you can't pin all our problems on him.