I agree with pretty much exactly what you said here. Most people on here would have looked at making a bowl game last season as progress. I doubted that thought process. In 2012, UT had the lead against UF and had the ball driving against UGA and USC. 3 big games where UT had a legitimate shot against very good competition.
Hell, they even had a "shot" at Miss St. They just made too many mistakes.
So in reality, in 2012 the team had several chances to get that 6th win their D just sucked something awful.
My point is, if you simply look at record, you're missing a lot "reality" about a particular team...especially the one you root for the most.
Take this season's basketball team. Even in the SEC tourney people were whining about UT. I made the point in the basketball forum that if someone who had never seen a college basketball game watched the UT/UF SEC tournament game there is no way in hell that person wouldn't have thought the 2 teams were fairly evenly matched...much less UF being the #1 team and UT being the #45 team (or whatever).
Here is another area where this sort of evaluation applies. We are going on a run of almost ten years of losing to the gators. The simple fact is that I cannot find a time that UT has a four-year trailing average that is higher than the Gators. As a baseline that means that every year UF comes into the game with a 70% chance of winning.
Fans create this mind-set where UF has some sort of psychological hold on UT. No, it is just that most people truly do not understand the likelihood of a 9 run series, especially when the "coin toss" of each event is weighed 70/30 and is totally independent of the previous. There have been times that UT could have won, to be sure. In fact, Florida (at least in relation to their talent) is a woefully under-performing program, even with 2 national championships in the past decade. Until Florida plays a yearly series against the top recruiting team from the west (it is rarely LSU), they shouldn't lose a SEC game. But, they do.
This means that while people cite Florida and Foley as being the paradigm of a well oiled athletics machine, they are actually missing how Florida tends to turn a Ferrari into a Ford more often than not. In my view, with Florida's resources, and an AD that understands how to use them, UF could create a juggernaut that would be truly terrifying.
Similar with Saban. Saban's strength is his recruiting, his weakness is his ability to adjust to coaching schemes (see also Fulmer). Again, the BCS titles tend to blind the observer from the fact that with the talent that Bama accumulates, much more should be expected. Forgive the hyperbolic example, but if the Patriots played in C-USA, should anyone really be impressed that they have three titles? I would hope not, but Saban has the reputation of being the best coach in the land. He is an adequate coach, but a master of accumulating talent. That does have an enormous amount of value, but not for the reasons most think.
For instance, it was rumored Texas was willing to spend 10 million dollars a year to buy Saban. Why?! Texas doesn't need a recruiter, almost any coach could grab a bull horn and step outside his front porch in Austin and yell "Hook 'Em" and fill up a top 5 class of recruits. Texas needs a coach that can coach top talent without hindering those results. You could almost pay a high school coach to do that. Personally, I think their recent hire indicates this sort of backwards, institutionalized, thinking.
I have long thought that at a school like UT, who is digging its way out of a financial hole, that the paradigm should shift. The head recruiter should be a much more well paid position, and should attract big name buzz. What if Jones could bring back a guy like Fulmer whose only job is to recruit? Pay Fulmer a million a year, but he never actually coaches. Imagine the team of Jones/Fulmer/Thigpen and others out there selling the UT brand. Allow Fulmer, or this recruiting position person, to be the family liason, the sort of quality control assuring that the kids are taken care of, and performing in the class as well. I think there is much value in ideas like that, instead of trying to buy a "big name" coach who is likely over-valued (see the basketball coaching search if you want an example of the fan perception that I am discussing).
Don't get me wrong, I love what Butch is doing, and his history of over-performance is very likely to translate to big things here (find another coach that has averaged winning more than 3 games a year over his talent predictions for 7 years, and who also has a history of increasing talent averages every year at a school).
I simply think there are ways to use the data that we have about what actually drives success, and capitalize off of that in a way that no one else is doing. Some bash Hart, but when I hear him say that the key to success at UT is recruiting, that recruiting is UT's "lifeblood", I think that he at least understands
some of this data. His hires tend to support his own theory. Most fans just don't "get it" though...
Or, maybe I just think about all of this too abstractly from a position of only academic understanding?
