Roy,
While I understand your concerns about play calling… I think you are trying to compare an apple to an orange here.
Ty and Grimes both had no play calling experience, however, Grimes has had 25 years as a D1 coach with multiple schools and some of the HC of those schools are considered some of the best. Then enable Grimes to learn and get valuable knowledge about how to run college football offense.
Ty Detmer on the other hand only had 3 years of High school (Small one at that) experience, although he did have his dad and brother to help teach him along the way.
That experience on the College level is critical to success, I think Ty would have been a better OC if they had first hired position coach and then worked his way into OC…
Ty failure as OC is on Tom Holmoe and Kalani… They threw Ty into the deep end without any life raft, they should have known that he was not prepared for college level football, even though he spent 14 yrs in the NFL.
Your correct about deeper problems… We have way to many inexperienced position coaches, we have players who don’t give a 100 percent…
One thing I have heard from all the former players at BYU over the radio is that Grimes is REALLY BIG into accountability of the players and the coaches.
As Daniel Coates put it "He will test the players to the max to see who will give 100 percent and who will quit. Those the give the 100 percent, he will mold the offense to the players he have. Every practice and every game, the players have to earn their starting position. He does not accept “days off”.
In the world of sports even at BYU… Yes… Winning is everything to the people who pay the bills…
Lavell built BYU into a recognized Football program across the NCAA… He did it with inferior talent (Compared to the power houses of the days), he did it with innovation of an Offensive scheme. He also did it while Maintaining the LDS image that the BOT wanted…
Lately, it seems that fans and some of the previous coaches wants to live on the laurals of Lavell Edwards and not try and maintain that Legacy he built by always looking for ways to perform at a high level with the players they have.
I look at post like Jim Hawks and all his “College is Corrupt” remarks and wonder what happened? Did he and others forget all the crap BYU and Coach Edwards had to endure when we won the NC in 1984… The system was rigged then as well, they made it impossible for BYU to win it without having a perfect season…
Nothing has changed, but now we have the BCS instead of the prior system. I would like to see BYU hire innovating coaches that can take 2-4 star recruits and term them into our current Jim McMahon and Steve Young’s.
Maybe I am living in a pipe dream,but I think it can happen.
If winning is truly everything to BYU then let’s see the BOT unleash the money to get P5 experienced coaches with some money under the table also. Let’s get in on all the shenanigans the top P5 teams do, in the shadows, to get top flight athletes into the BYU program. Then wait down the road for NCAA sanctions. That is what it will take for TRULY winning is everything attitude and behavior to come to fruition.
I hope Grimes has what it takes - everything I have heard about him is positive - to help the program but he is going to have to have the authority, along with Sitake, to repair the several deeper problems with the FB program. I just doubt that the powers that be will give up that control.
I guess you are correct,I don’t get your complaint. I don’t know how you can fix the deeper problems by not starting at the obvious … we probably need a DC too but that will need to change next year if things don’t start getting better. Obviously the head coach got a pass this year and I suspect that he will get 4 years because he will need it to show what he has in the recruiting dept. Other coaches can’t afford a year offf from this point forward.
My complaint: I don’t like the process and if that process is that BYU is onboard with “winning is everything” then I am disappointed in BYU. Now if winning is important but not everything, then I can appreciate that stance. When the institution gives a coach (whoever the coach is) 1 losing year and then scapegoats him, that is not the BYU I cared about in the early 70s when L E started out. They have the right to fire but this seems unethical to me. I may be wrong but I thought ethics was important to the church and to BYU.
Roy, BYU isn’t going to put teams out on the field or court that are designed to lose! If you understand D1 football coaching contracts, with the exception of the head coach, the contracts allow the employer to terminate the employee at anytime. That is a fact known by both parties before any employment is offered. Even the head coaches can and are fired as at will employees. The difference is that the institution is on the hook for a percentage of the original contract. There is nothing unethical about it at all! It also explains why assistant coaches are the first to be sacrificed vs the head coach! Ty’s offense was very poor both yrs and was showing increased downward momentum this past season. Sure other coaches deserve part of the blame and it may mean more jobs are lost next year, but BYU is not being unethical! In fact, I know for sure that Ty is still earning his salary despite losing the OC title and that wouldn’t occur at the vast majority of D1 football programs! BYU is more than fair.
Football is SELF FUNDED… no Money, no Football… No Football, then no Basketball, no Baseball, no Volleyball, no Soccer, no Track or any other “lesser” sport. Money brought in by the Football games, funds all those other sports…
The Church does not fund the sports programs…
So yes, Money is important even at Saintly BYU.
Take off the “I Love Ty Detmer” glasses and you will see the real problem was that the team did not improve over the year, they got worse. That is on Detmer, not the players. He was way over his head and he knew it (see the article Detmer gave about learning on the fly).
Detmer was no scapegoat, sorry if that diminishes his image for you, but the fact of the matter was Detmer was not getting the job done.
Floyd, I don’t care who the OC is or was, whether it was Detmer or superman or Lex Luthor, I don’t like how this was taken care of. I am cool with you and others being ok with it. I am done with the topic.
I agree with you, Roy, for the most part. I wanted Detmer to have at least one more year to redeem himself after this year.
The thing is, this year was so bad, it kind of undercuts that. We were unwatchable, and Detmer’s offense kept doing the same futile things with no or bad results. At some point, you have to do some different things (even if it’s trick plays), but staying the course for the long haul with the utter futility and unwatchability is what did Detmer in.
Most of us can handle losing, if we’re competitive and don’t look as bad as we did this year.
But, I’m with you in feeling bad for Detmer and wishing that he had more of a chance. I know that he knows what he’s doing, and I’d like to think he could implement it.
This is an interesting conversation for me to read. I was very happy when Detmer was hired, but I thought our team was so terrible that I too quit watching. As much as I love BYU and BYU football, I’m not gonna sit there and watch us struggle to put away FCS caliber teams. So I get why Detmer was fired, and I’m fine with it, but I’d have been just as fine with him getting another year. And I am happy about the Grimes hire–maybe this is all me just being a “glass half full” guy…
I thought he was relieved from OC position? I know it may sound like he was fired. I read somewhere Grimes knew and like Ty Detmer and who knows he may just keep him around so Ty can learn something. I doubt Ty will get the OC back when Grimes leaves. Just stay tune when Grimes & Kalani put together which new and current coaches going to be where and to be gone.
Technically, he was just removed as OC. They could keep him as quarterback coach or some other coach, but the human psyche being what it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he said, “No thanks.” It’s quite an embarrassing thing to face, and I would actually be surprised if he stayed in some capacity.