UND92,96

Kyle Myers is not being retained by Bubba per footballscoop.

I just watched the UND Sports Zone webcast, and the Herald guys had a good point about Rudolph--he has a good track record of developing quarterbacks, at least from his SCSU days.

Marty Rodgers hire now official.

You beat me to it! At least he got his "natty" last night for "Nole Nation".

And fortunately the forecast is actually quite nice for this weekend, with high temps from the mid-20's to low 30's ABOVE zero.

Per an SFI tweet, it appears Schmidt will be responsible for recruiting ND. According to a Forum article today, Hedberg will recruit ND for NDSU. Should be interesting.

It's a bit perplexing that a program can go five years between signing a 4 or 5 out of high school. We have one coming in next year, and that will be the first since Brekke. I get that sometimes transfers are necessary, but I have a hard time believing there wasn't another project coming out of high school in the past three or four years that UND could have taken a chance on.

But I don't think they had to assemble nearly their entire class in basically one month. That's a lot to ask of any staff, particularly one not even close to being at full strength yet.

I'm not in a position to make that call. My main concern is that even if most of the players who have departed hadn't proven they could play, their departure now means UND is apparently going to be a position where true freshmen, and perhaps juco transfers are going to be asked to play immediately in large numbers. And particularly considering the abbreviated recruiting season, that's kind of a scary proposition.

I can't help but wonder what is the bigger factor in this mass exodus--the unreasonably long delay in hiring a coach, or Muss simply recruiting a lot of the wrong kids? I'm not sure we've ever seen the kind of roster overhaul in one year that we're apparently going to see from 2013 to 2014.

I really hope Bubba gives Hoffner a chance to get back into coaching. Maybe OL coach?

I'm not sure there is a simple explanation. The thing that makes it all the more difficult to understand, as I've mentioned probably too many times in the past, is the relative success Stiegelmeier has had at SDSU after being essentially a mediocre dII coach for seven seasons. I think he was something like 1-6 vs. Lennon at UND, and had zero playoff appearances. So all of a sudden they go division I, Lennon moves to an established FCS program, Stieg got better and Lennon got worse? It makes no sense. Lennon was great here, but no so much at SIU. Stieg has been very good of late at SDSU, but would he be anywhere else? Doubtful, IMO. Nielsen was great at UMD, but if Western Illinois never makes the playoffs, does that mean he's not still a good coach? I think the point is that at least at this level, coaches are often uniquely suited to certain parts of the country. I can't really come up with an alternative explanation, but that's not to say there aren't others.

Given the corner situation, I would think one of the first orders of business would be to sign at least two juco corners quickly enough to get them into school for the spring semester. It would be hard to imagine heading into spring ball with as few as one corner on the current roster. Who would be some candidates to switch positions to add some needed corner depth, at least for the spring?

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't hold any ill will towards Lennon. I think that in retrospect he made a mistake going where he did. And yes, it was the worst possible time for him to go, at least from UND's perspective. But nevertheless he did a lot for UND football, and is still a great coach no matter what has happened, or will happen at SIU.

Bubba and Schmidt had nothing but success while at UND. I think they deserve the full support of all UND fans. As far as I'm concerned, Muss was like Behrns, and Bubba will be like RT.

I don't think he is coaching anymore.

Tom Dosch?

Schmidt presumably sees the writing on the wall in Carbondale. Hypothetically, even if his loyalties to Lennon and Bubba are roughly equal, the lure of going home and getting a fresh start (as opposed to the situation at SIU--win now or else) should make the better and wiser choice fairly clear.

DeBoer reportedly is going to be OC at Eastern Michigan. Who is going to be left at SIU next year? And does this open the door for Muss to go to Carbondale (which saves UND buyout money)?

Yeah sorry, totally forgot about the 12-game schedule next year.

Not yet.

I think it's really difficult to predict. Weber has been down for awhile, although who knows what a coaching change may do for them. PSU certainly didn't look good last year, and they are now under the threat of not even having football anymore. It won't be easy to recruit with that kind of shadow hanging over a program. NAU may really fall back down to earth with the loss of Bauman and most of their best defensive players. And of course UNC is still UNC. I don't expect this year's recruiting class to be great for obvious reasons, but despite some defections I am at least somewhat optimistic that the young talent from the past two classes should receive better coaching and hopefully develop far more quickly than they otherwise would have. I really wouldn't be surprised with anything from 2-9 to 5-6.

We shouldn't be comparing somebody's qualifications as OC based upon what they later did as head coaches. I suspect Rudolph would have done well in the NSIC with Mankato's resources, too. And Hoffner would have had all kinds of trouble trying to win at Minot. The fact of the matter is that Rudolph has a longer track record as a successful OC than does Hoffner. With that said, I think it would be great if Hoffner gets a shot as a position coach at UND.

I would think so. He spent a number of years at St. Cloud, so would presumably be very familiar with the twin cities metro area, and would definitely have good connections in ND (as would Bubba and Schmidt).