I understood your point. i just disagree with it and find it a tired excuse.
I'll veer away from baseball for a moment and talk about football. Every single one of our coaching hires over the last dozen years or so previous to Manny had been well-regarded by sportswriters across the country. Shannon, Golden, Richt...they were all A/A-/B+ hires according to the folks who cover this stuff. Could we have done better? Obviously the results say yes. But we doled out decent money for what the admin thought, in their honest evaluations, would be good for the program and get us Ws.
This idea that the admin just cares about the ACC checks rolling in and doesn't care about winning...or that somehow being an Indy or being in the Big East made our admin "hungrier" to win...it's just kinda silly. As I said, virtually all programs go through droughts...that doesn't mean the admin got lazy or de-motivated by money or whatever. Bad hires happen to good organizations all the time. Mediocrity strikes even those programs that are motivated and want to win.
Let me chime in really quick here;
These “well-regarded” sports writers have been lazy af, lately. Truth be told, the folks that write about us have always given half-hearted efforts, UNLESS, there was something controversial or sensational.
So let’s go through our coaching hires for football:
Saban
Schnelly
Johnson
Erickson
Davis
Go look at their pedigrees. Either they all had previous successful coaching experience at the highest level, or they came from an absolutely incredible coaching tree.
Now, let’s go to Coker. Coker, at first glance, made sense b/c he was from Butch’s coaching tree. Had the BCS not screwed us in 2000, he would’ve been a Nat’l championship OC taking over. I had zero issues w/ The Coker hire, until it proved he was resting on his laurels. Now; this is where NONE of the next subsequent hires made sense:
-Randy Shannon (apart of a failed regime w/ Coker, where the team was completely undisciplined). Why make this hire?
-Al Golden (a sub .500 G5 coach who had one good yr in his 3rd yr as HC, before taking a step back the follow season in wins total before accepting the job. Furthermore the coaching tree he came from absolutely sucked ***!) Again, why make this hire.
-Mark Richt (a man who once upon a time had a solid rep, was on the downside of his career, wanted to retire) For name sake, this was a solid hire.....if the yr was 2006. We hired him in 2016, & he was sliding.
From 2001 - 2007 (72-19 {.791 winning%} w/ 4 divisional crowns & 2 Conference Crowns)
2008 - 2015 (73-32 {.695 winning%} w/ 2 divisional crowns & 0 Conference Crowns)
We had to not only over spend to hire him (the biggest pay day he ever had), but sweetened the pot by allowing his inexperienced, unqualified son to be the OC to stop him from retiring! Not very smart
Which brings us to Manny (see my comments about Randy Shannon & add a touch of Al Golden’s coaching tree & voila, you have Diaz.)
My friend, from 2006 - present, this is the unequivocal definition of a poorly ran AD. Forget the fact we hired a Baseball coach who, too, came from a failed regime, but it was clear it was nepotistic hire! So we hire the guy who’s daddy is one of the biggest boosters? What’s the likelihood he’ll be fired for continuously under achieving? I know he’s a former player & alum, but come on! Lol.