Every great S&C coach has been an assistant at some point in their career. Tommy Moffitt was an associate at UT when mighty Miami hired him off. Chris Doyle at Iowa was an OL coach at Holy Cross when Wisconsin hired him as their S&C guy and the mighty Scott Cochran was an assistant SC for a NBA team when Saban hired him. And you go with the trend of Butch promoting Szerszen? Different coaches make different kinds of hires. Pruitt has a pretty good record so far.
To answer your question, “And you go with the trend of Butch promoting Szerszen?” I do. With consideration to your examples, Butch Jones’ example of promoting Szerszen is the more like-for-like example to compare with Pruitt’s decision to promote A.J.
Looking at your examples, there are big differences between their resumes and/or familiarity with the coach hiring them.
Doyle who was fired for his Badgers being pushed around, took a while coaching major programs before hitting his stride.
Mofitt is the closest comparison and was the S&C HS coach of the year before moving to Tennessee for FOUR years before he took on the job at Miami.
Cochran was an assistant with LSU (saban) for 4 years before moving to NBA (PRO) level coaching. LSU won an NT while he was there.
AJ has GA experience at App State and Campbell, Director experience at a patsy school like Duke and assitant experience at UT. That’s pretty weak in comparison to your examples and for a program you are trying to get back to national prominence in the SEC.
I have always liked Pruitt, but he made some mistakes as a first time HC. I.e., Pruitt’s initial staff had a couple of holes in it, but he had to put together a staff for a failing program quickly. This time, he has a program that just came off a 6-win streak narrlowly missing 10 wins, with what seems to be a few solid recruiting classes in a row and a solid staff. Yet, doesn’t seem like he interviewed many people. He has no excuse to botch this move. So, I think my concern is valid.
That is all it is, however. I am not knocking him, I am simply concerned when there are more proven S&C coaches that would love to make what FitzI’mOutaHereGerald was making. We are rolling the dice with AJ. Let’s hope he learned a LOT from Fitz.