What has happened to USM?

[bigoak]

I know we have some Southern Miss grads on here. Was last years Sr class just that good or is the coaching this year just that bad? Not a USM fan but they are local and my wife is a graduate. Almost like USM did not even have a football season it is so quiet. You watch WDAM sports and they don't hardly talk about football. Sad situation in Hattiesburg right now. What is the answer?

[duckter]

The answer? Jeff Bower.
Whatever happened to that guy anyway. Seemed to offer a competitive 7-8 win team every year.

[mudsucker]

We need DIB to tell us about that and about who can punt and who can not!

[SWAG]

Maybe USM fires him and he comes back to MSU as defensive co!!!

[gps4]

The answer? Jeff Bower.
Whatever happened to that guy anyway. Seemed to offer a competitive 7-8 win team every year.

Amen, I still got a bad taste in my mouth about how they treated bower. Yeah USM went to a bowl with the new coach, but it cost them money and who got to attend? what goes around comes around. And now they stuck with this situation for three more seasons. What's is gonna take to Lear if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Seymore]

I'm still pizzed about the Bower deal. Man ran a clean program, never heard anything about any players in the news, and had one of the highest graduation rates in the country. And he had a winning program.

A few money guys think things were "stale" and get Giannini to have Bower resign so they can bring a high power offense in.

Fast forward and Fedora leaves for greener pastures, Giannini leaves, and they hire Johnson within 2 weeks.

Bad hire to say the least. The guy is not a head coach. Reading some of his quotes in the paper just makes me sick. He has basically laid it on the players door step saying it's their fault.

Unfortunately, to buy him out will cost $2 mil and USM ain't got that kind of money. Should have offered the job to the offensive coord. under Fedora but we let that slip away and he went with Fedora. Johnson is in coast mode and ain't going anywhere. Announced attendance at last home game was 24,000 but I'd be surprised if there were 10,000. Fans are wearing bag to the game and holding signs up that he needs to go. Security is confiscating all the sign because they are not "positive" in nature as required by the boiler plate language on the back of the ticket. I asked security at the last home game while they were confiscating the signs if they would let them keep them if the sign were change to, "we positively want to fire Johnson". They just laughed and said while they empathized, they had their marching orders.

They new AD has had to go around the table at the bar and grill where the coaches show is held asking patrons to clap when they come back from commercial break.

To sum it all up, SAD. That's all I can say.

[SWAG]

I'm still pizzed about the Bower deal. Man ran a clean program, never heard anything about any players in the news, and had one of the highest graduation rates in the country. And he had a winning program.

A few money guys think things were "stale" and get Giannini to have Bower resign so they can bring a high power offense in.

Fast forward and Fedora leaves for greener pastures, Giannini leaves, and they hire Johnson within 2 weeks.

Bad hire to say the least. The guy is not a head coach. Reading some of his quotes in the paper just makes me sick. He has basically laid it on the players door step saying it's their fault.

Unfortunately, to buy him out will cost $2 mil and USM ain't got that kind of money. Should have offered the job to the offensive coord. under Fedora but we let that slip away and he went with Fedora. Johnson is in coast mode and ain't going anywhere. Announced attendance at last home game was 24,000 but I'd be surprised if there were 10,000. Fans are wearing bag to the game and holding signs up that he needs to go. Security is confiscating all the sign because they are not "positive" in nature as required by the boiler plate language on the back of the ticket. I asked security at the last home game while they were confiscating the signs if they would let them keep them if the sign were change to, "we positively want to fire Johnson". They just laughed and said while they empathized, they had their marching orders.

They new AD has had to go around the table at the bar and grill where the coaches show is held asking patrons to clap when they come back from commercial break.

To sum it all up, SAD. That's all I can say.

I was at Mugshots when I was working in South MS a couple of weeks ago, the coaches show was awful and no one there seemed interested. In fact they almost seemed perturbed that they were having to deal with the coaches show while eating. On another note, they have a great burger there!

[lilwhitelie]

It was hard to sell tickets when we were winning the conference championship must less having the worst season in history!! I bet JSU has more in attendance than we do.
Sad state of affairs and the athletic dept is BROKE and that is why next years schedule is so grueling, as they have to attempt to make so money traveling. What I have heard is the boosters are not happy with the thought of keeping a coach that can't win ONE game and they say the money is there to buy him out. Is that the answer??? Obviously they do not have the players this year and ol fedora new it and ran while his stock was sky high and who blames him. Usm is getting what was coming by running a great coach off. A season like this years is a huge blow to the program and will take a LONG time to recover since we were having trouble recruiting as it was.

Bowers was the joe pa of USM and they ruined it being greedy. It will happen again if hey somehow land another good coach but I doubt they will have success anytime soon. Sucks cause now they will get beat to death when they finally get to play ole miss and state. Sad he got inducted during a season they haven't won a game. Maybe he would come back but I doubt it.