Sorry, but no sympathy or words of appreciation from me. I am glad he was shown the door. If he is smart he will take whats left of his $1.95 M buyout and put it in a safe investment somewhere. If he still wants to coach I am sure someone will pick him up as a OC. I think teams will look long and hard before considering him for a HC position any time soon.
He reminded me so much of Levin it was scary. They both had the same "lost" look on their faces during games. He never inspired confidence. Bryles was the real energy and expertise behind the Cougar's early success before the injuries starting piling up.
I appreciate the times when he was the UT QB. As a coach...? Major strikes me as an OC type that needs to be up in the box on headphones instead of on the sideline.
Levine definitely seemed lost during games. I remember he'd violently chew gum on the sidelines in pressure situations. Outside of actual game time decisions, I could buy Levine as a head coach or at least understand why someone might think he could grow into the job. There is zero about Applewhite that makes me think he can lead a football team. A coordinator that stays up in the booth, maybe. I don't know how he got the job in the first place. I think they even spent a few hundred thousand on a "search firm" as well.
I give him credit for at least having enough awareness to revise the offense eventually. Outside of that, he was only winning because of our pure talent. I never had confidence he could adapt on the fly.
I am wondering if Applewhite gets hired somewhere else, Miami OC for instance for a fairly decent salary, are we still on the hook for the $1.95 million?
I think this was true even when he was just OC. So much of that offense's success was Greg Ward improvising and scrambling out of a broken play.
Levine I felt was a disaster from the start. Completely in over his head. Undeserving of the job entirely. Major at least seemed like he could succeed. Apart from his milquetoast personality and inexperience, he did have a decent resume. It would not shock me if 5-6 years from now Major is enjoying a good bit of success as a HC somewhere. We were simply too early to give him a job. Not only that, we set him up to fail in many ways by dragging our feet in hiring him. By the time we signed Major, most of the assistant coaching pool already had jobs lined up. When Major went grocery shopping, the shelves were quite bare. Which is how we ended up with turds like D'Onofrio.
I think he could definitely succeed down the road and actually end up citing UH as one of those pivotal experiences. Like one of those Linkedin posts that says "everyone should be fired at least once." Just remembering how long we put up with Helton because the money literally wasn't there, while UT fired, paid off and replaced Mackovic and Penders in the same quarter.
