UND-FB-FAN

You’ll be okay. As for UND football, we’ll see …

Absolutely. An absolute must. Would be a real slap in the face *if* the UND guy who went away, and made great new “FBS connections”, then gets hired back and keeps the majority of the current UND staff in place …

Never changes.

If in fact that’s the case, which only time will tell, then we’ll be fine.

Players win games. Coaches recruit the players. 2016 Bubba and Schmidt defense choked at home vs CAA Richmond …

They didn’t work from 2014-2019, but maybe DeBoer retrained him into a new person, although 2024 did not suggest that.

No one here, if they are actually a fan of UND, should be hoping the new coach fails before they even coach their first game or season at UND, but it’s okay to have an opinion on whether they were the best choice or not. How can you blame UND fans, especially diehards, for being cautious. We all remember the decision to hire Bubba Schweigert over Kalen DeBoer …

Not hedging, will support whoever they hire, just explaining why Schmidt shouldn’t be considered a slam dunk and he’s not really in my top 5. Then again, though, I don’t know who all applied. Schmidt was always a favorite from the start. Remember, Schmidt is an understudy of Bubba, so will there be too many similarities?

That will be everyone’s argument that endorsed this decision, but that remains to be seen. If UND hires Schmidt, and San Diego State’s defense does much better in 2025, and UND struggles with Schmidt in year one, there will be a lot of early sandbagging …

Didn’t look it at San Diego State in 2024… looked like San Diego State hired Bubba and not DeBoer

Still runs a porous defense from what I saw of 2024 San Diego State … but maybe he just had bad players … and we should excuse his non-playoff success defenses from 2014-2019 at UND.

Winners win. It would be nice to try hire a former head coach that actually won as a head coach. But yeah, there will always be risk. And of course coordinators can be hired and be successful, but new found success is rare, especially when there has been years of struggle. That tends to predict what is going to happen … not sure why UND football needs to keep taking the uphill path.

That’s his teammate / buddy. Just like asking the current players, it’s not necessarily in UND’s best interest to base the hire on that biased opinion… But sure, it’s a nice endorsement.

I disagree. It’s about risk management. When you hire somebody with no previous experience directly doing the job you are hiring them to now, then you are inherently taking on a greater risk. With all that said, everyone has to get a start someplace. Interviews are key. Hiring internally for UND means you are: A. Hiring somebody with no head coaching experience. B. Hiring somebody who has most recently been on losing teams.

Too low.

Sure, he did not cut ties completely, but he’s not working for him anymore even though he had that opportunity.

True, but more important than optics is success. Who do we (and most importantly Chaves) honestly think is the best candidate to turn UND football into a championship contender?

He did quite well at Central Washington that one year, though, as the head coach. Not quite the same. The “inbred” choices here are all guys who have never been a head coach, and they’ve been most recently on losing teams as an assistant.

Chaves historically hires D2 head coach, going back to Beau Baldwin at EWU and most recently Paul Sather at UND. I’d guess it will be a Midwest D2 coach or the lazy (and risky) move of Fruechte being promoted. Hoffner beat Bolte today, maybe Hoffner? From the very beginning (see my earlier posts), Schmidt has been the favorite. Too much fraternity support and now fundraising. It’s basically a hiring similar to Bubba - UND ties and is familiar to alumni. Justification used is it is “DeBoer’s guy” , although he’s not working for him anymore and cut ties … UND going with Schmidt could work, but could be mediocrity like with Bubba. We will see.

I doubt either one gets the job, but since the name has been mentioned plenty and is popular, are we sure Johansen is even a better candidate than his counterpart (USD offensive coordinator)? I think USD OC Josh Davis is looking like a darn good coach. Turnaround for USD really started in 2023 with his hiring as their OC. Has extensive experience with SDSU prior to USD. No HC experience but obviously knows the Midwest and the Dakotas very well.

History wouldn’t suggest that.

Sounds like excuses, but I’m sure there’s potential; there always is … You know what they say about your record; you are what your record says you are. DeBoer didn’t elevate Schmidt to be his DC, so I think this ongoing argument of DeBoer’s “endorsement” also should be reconsidered.

We got our guy as in we kept a guy in Grand Forks around whose teams he’s coached over the past two years have gone a combined 10-13? This sounds like a tremendous risk and a tremendous slap in the face if true. Like Fruechte as a person, just like Bubba, but sure hope there’s a different direction than this … but it would be typical UND. I’ll support whoever, but damn …

I’m sure, it’s a fraternity, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for moving UND football forward in Division I against NDSU and SDSU. We’ve seen this movie plenty of times before, and we all know how it ends.

Alabama and DeBoer currently has 3 co-defensive coordinators … apparently Schmidt didn’t was to join that …