In fairness, I’m a big Kermit guy. He’s the reason I really am a die hard blue raider. Second, I have been a high school head coach for 11 years and seen over 20 of my players go play college ball (all levels). Currently I’m out of coaching as our program ended suddenly this past summer. That said, it would take a monsoon of corruption and/or incompetence for me to ever call for a coach’s job. I have built relationships with college coaches and understand what it means to have a family while coaching and all the things that go along with that.
This all said, both Wiley and Mtfblue have good points. These were different era’s yes, but I don’t think Kermit got as much grace as you think. He is a hard-nosed no nonsense coach more geared toward discipline. Nick is more of a relational coach (or player’s coach).
Kermit was in the sun belt but every year there were 4-5 teams at the top that could jump up and get anyone. LaLaf had a group of guys that were dominant for a few years, but Western was tough all the time! Kermit had been handicapped early though big recruiting acquisitions who didn’t pan out (these were supposed to be program changing guys) like Bryan Smithson who transferred after a great freshman year, Jonathan Loe who was highly recruited out of high school, Adam Vogelsburg (my goodness he was good), Josh Sain, and even Theron Shelton-Schmidt later. And only having one losing record in those years before LaRon Dendy walked on campus was pretty incredible.
Nick was 100% behind the eight ball when he walked in. Super high expectations for the program (Kermit didn’t face that), and kicked off 2 guys immediately who would have been our best players once he stepped on the sideline (Johnson and Dixon). 1 guy that stayed had a decent career (Sims). In my opinion, he was hired too late to really build that first roster which was riddled with players who didn’t belong in a mid-major program, or even a division 1 program, but with transfers already running rampant it wasn’t possible to get the level of player Kermit had built up to. A lot of that goes on M&M if you don’t remember how everyone was up in arms about the 3 commits we had and it was taking forever to hire a coach and they were not being contacted by anyone. So after that first year and terrible record I don’t know who you could convince to come to MT with a complete momentum stop. The one guy they got was Eli Lawrence, but everyone else was not the quality of player needed. It took until the 2021-22 team before we had a roster rebuilt with quality guys… and that team won 26 games.
All this said, I would find it hard to not renew somebody (even if only a year) who just put up more than 20 wins in the regular season. Also the last 4 years have been considerably better than the first 3 (26, 19, 14, 22 wins respectively). The quality of player Nick has gotten has consistently gotten better (Essam, Lands, and Counter this year). I honestly think what we are missing is a hard nosed assistant coach like Grensing which is why I was in favor of finding a way to keep him on staff during the transition. Remember Kermit had the benefit of him, Monty Towe, Win Case, and Donnie Tyndal on his staff. I wish Nick had someone with a national title under his belt for credibility purposes. It would do wonders for the culture in my opinion.
