Mr. Babar
I have no elephant books
Keeping Hawk an extra year hurt, but hiring Embree was worse, IMO. Think about where we would probably be had we hired McElwain instead of Embree.
Put in other terms, it wasn't keeping Hawkins an extra year that set the program back so far, it was who they eventually replaced him with.
Valid point for sure; however, the fact that Hawk stayed on for another season, which completely alienated the fan base, made hiring a former Buff who could "bring back tradition, etc" a very popular move. Think hiring a coach from the outside would've worked after year 4, but so much damage had been done by an 'outsider' by the end of year 5 it needed to be a homegrown guy. To go back to my previous post, we gave ourselves brain damage in the process and made the wrong choice.
All that said, it still hurts that Embree/Bienemy didn't pan out. I really liked both those guys and thought they could recruit the program back where it needed to be. If it weren't so painfully obvious that they were out-schemed every week they could have used more time, but they didn't have the ability to adequately game-plan. Hope both of those guys still feel a part of Buff family and that those wounds heal in time.