Everett Withers Is Officially Your JMU Football Coach
Boom. Everett Withers is officially the 6th head football coach at James Madison University. Fans were forced to sweat it out all day after reports surfaced yesterday that the deal was all but done. Thankfully, JMU didn’t get Mummed again. No press conference has been scheduled, but a conference call with the media will take place tonight. We were not invited to said press conference. I only assume that means they’re giving us the first sit down exclusive with Coach Withers.
Withers of course has been the co-defensive coordinator and assistant coach at Ohio State for the past two seasons. His hiring is effective immediately, but he’ll be remaining with the Buckeyes through the Orange Bowl on January 3.
We’ll be back with our thoughts on the hiring later. For now though, let’s just say that we’re pretty optimistic about this move. If nothing else, it showed that JMU was ready, willing, and able to break out of a small-minded, regional mindset. I’ve heard the grumblings from Buckeye fans about the OSU defense that Withers helped run. Those critiques don’t bother me however, because I make a habit of ignoring Buckeye fans (kidding…sort of). His experience working alongside Urban Meyers could prove to be invaluable and he did some nice work at UNC. Reports indicate that he’s a guy players love to play for and he’s had considerable success recruiting in the Southeast, which he could leverage to open up a new pipeline for the Dukes. All in all, it’s a pretty bold move for Jeff Bourne and JMU. And we’re excited about it.
We hired a BCS coordinator from OSU. Let that sink in. What it means stature wise is immense. Excited by this. Also proud to have one of the embarrassingly few black coaches in college football.
As a buckeye and dukes fan I like this move. Fresh start for the dukes with a coach that’s got big game / big conference experience, and also helps the bucks reset their D. Recruiting will def improve.
It sounds big on the surface. I hope this is a good hire. An article about Ohio State football in our local paper today indicated the fans at OSU were calling for the coach to be fired. Here is the link to the story in The Virginian Pilot.
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/VirginianPilot/LandingPage/LandingPage.aspx?href=VmlyZ2luaWFuUGlsb3QvMjAxMy8xMi8yMA..&pageno=MjI.&entity=QXIwMjIwMg..&view=ZW50aXR5
If the link to the story doesn’t work when clicked, you can copy and paste the link address into your browser and view it that way. http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/VirginianPilot/LandingPage/LandingPage.aspx?href=VmlyZ2luaWFuUGlsb3QvMjAxMy8xMi8yMA..&pageno=MjI.&entity=QXIwMjIwMg..&view=ZW50aXR5
I am downgrading my estimate for next season from 6-5 to 3-8
Fair enough, but coaches get fired all the time. From my optic, even if he was due to be fired, there is still a lot of upside to this move. Withers appears to be a guy with good experience working at one of the top programs in the country, under an amazing head coach. It’s not like they grabbed some position coach from a random BCS also-ran. I joked about Ohio State fans (mostly to poke at CDL), but that’s a top of the heap sort of program. Hiring a guy from that level is a rare opportunity and worth a chance, even if his D did have a down year in my opinion.
Are you in corporate management Rob? “Optic”?? “Leverage”??? At least you didn’t say our new coach should really be able to break down “silos”…ha, I’m just giving a little grief, great write-up as always. I’m excited about this hire, and the way basketball season is going, football can’t start soon enough…
It’s worse than that s2dsayer. I’m a manager at a consulting firm. So sometimes the jargon is meant to be tongue in cheek, and other times it slips in as a result of me taking myself too seriously. Tonight it was the latter unfortunately. Haha.
I’m excited for this hire as well. And trying to convince myself hoops will turn around when Nation comes back.
Great hire for the Dukes. He has worked with some great coaches (despite flaws) in Jeff Fisher, Butch Davis, and Urban Meyer. He was seen as the “clean guy” at UNC. Urban Meyer hired him to run the defense and say what you want, but they did only lose 1 game in 2 years.
Ugh. Sounds like the same propped up “who he coached with” pedigree and hope associated with the Alex Wood and Dean Keener hires. Doomed to fail.
Let’s hope he brings one of the genius offensive minds from Ohio State with him. Oh and Braxton Miller if possible? Just some stats for fun:
Ohio State rushing offense: 317.50 yds/g
Ohio State passing offense: 200.90 yds/g
Ohio State rushing defense: 102.60 yds/g
Ohio State passing defense: 243.50 yds/g
Steve White, out of the candidates we know got interviews-Withers, Stinespring, O’Cain, and DeFilippo, who would you have chosen?
I’m really disgusted that the very first freaking comment was about him being black. I don’t care if he is ORANGE. Either win 8 games and go to the playoffs or get fired. Period.
I was very impressed with his interview with Curt Dudley. Based on the interview and the impression he gives off, it seems like we hired the most opposite person from MM that we could find.
I’m glad to have Coach Withers aboard, and I wish him the very best of luck!
My only concern is that, if he is successful, he will bolt for a BCS program…so we’d better be serious about moving up to C-USA. Please don’t mention the MAC anymore…it makes me throw up in my mouth.
Finally, this should be made clear:
Make. The. Playoffs. Every. Year.
Period.
According to the figures I have seen in reports, EW is taking a $ 260,000.00 cut in pay. Any thoughts … ?