Not saying they aren’t decent coaches, but I just wonder if they can get players to come here.
(Apologies; this is for those who don't recall the history here.) The tail end of Blackman's tenure in the mid'70s and then the three-season-long human neutron bomb that was Gary Moeller all but destroyed the program by the time Mike White showed up in early 1980. He built a team quickly using JC transfers when a "transfer portal" was nothing more than a sci-fi concept. After three seasons we were in a bowl game (back when that was a relatively difficult feat to achieve.) By that third season we really should have beaten Michigan (failed to score down six at home in the final couple minutes with a first and goal sitch), OSU (lost by five at home when we were favored) and Iowa (lost by one at Kinnick) and gone to the Rose Bowl with Tony Eason. By the fourth season we ran the BT table (the only team in history to have done that) and went to the Rose Bowl.
Yes, White ran afoul of the NCAA. He didn't have to and to this day I believe that if the university had proper controls within the DIA at the time, none of that would have happened and White would have coached us quite successfully into the '90s.
Anyone who takes the job will have to cobble together teams for a couple years, as Lovie has been doing for a while, using transfers. Talented transfers will come if the coaching staff is attractive. If he can also recruit then by 3-4 seasons down the road you have something substantial and talented H.S. players will to want to come. It's very difficult to do but it can be done. White at Illinois; Fry at Iowa; Alvarez at Wisc, to use three BT examples in the span of 10-15 years taking programs that were rock-bottom bad to the top fairly quickly. But you need a young, creative, very smart, dynamic guy. I.E., not Tim Beckman. Thank goodness Mike Thomas is so far in the rear view mirror at this point he's invisible.