Been giving it some, a lot, of thought.
Looking at next year's team, there are the breakout juniors, and I'm going to assume everyone comes back. Then there is the sophs class, and we can see their potential, and finally the incoming 4, hopefully 5, frosh to take a beating from the upper classmen. Also, this now core group will be together not 1 but 2 years. I'm sure an a-ha moment will occur to them that they have something special going on for these next two years.
But then it occurred to me that since Josh is an alumnus, I was curious as to how closely he followed his alma mater teams from far away, since I'm sure he knew that at some point he was going to have a chance to be its AD at some point in his AD career.
So let's go back to the Thomas hire and then his hires, Beckman and Groce. Following Beckman's, then Cubit's effort, and Josh being a football guy, I'm sure he thought that they would need to go sooner rather than later. And sure enough, that's what happened. Following Groce's path, which we have all been doing these past 5 years, my guess, even though Groce is not his hire, that Groce has been through some interesting times and next year it looks like the program will finally be on stable ground with all of his recruits. No more "island of misfit toys" to babysit anymore.
And so, that's why I believe he will be back next year.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it, until proven wrong by Josh, and no one else.