You can go back in my timeline here and see that I (trying not to be an a-hole) sternly critiqued the decision by BOTH Bryan Mullins AND Porter Moser going to Southern Illinois and Oklahoma. No wait, nevermind, I'll go back myself....
I posted this on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 about the possibility of Mullins going to SIU.....
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Here's a question.... should Mullins want the job?
Consider the way Hinson was pushed out after finishing 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 3rd in the league in his last four years. Last year, he was OT from getting to the Arch Madness final, and 2nd in league play to a team that went on to the Final Four. He was 10 games above .500 in conference play in the past 4 years, which is probably second to only Illinois State. And that got him fired and jeered out of the arena at his last game.
SIU has the 2nd lowest budget in the league, declining enrollment, budget deficits, frozen staff salaries, and some programs being moved to their branch in Edwardsville. They're in an area with declining population, declining or stagnant income, and it's 105 miles to the nearest town with more than 30,000 people. They're 18 miles from the closest Interstate ramp, and Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois (20 miles away in Marion) has commercial service to one city.... St. Louis, where you are able to transfer to reach other destinations.
There are a lot of "safer" first head coaching jobs that Mullins could take... in the OVC, in the Summit League, in the Horizon, etc. And almost all of the safer choices are also in more appealing places to live, with less intense scrutiny and more institutional support or latitude.
Here's what I wrote about Moser on Jan 29 of this year:
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I lived briefly in Oklahoma, and it is such a severe lifestyle and cultural change from Chicago that you have to assume that someone who moves there who is NOT in desperation must hate where they came from or the situation they were in. Or they must have deluded themselves (like I may have when taking the job there that I took).
Either way, walking away from what Porter Moser left at Loyola was a minor act of violence, IMO. Self destruction, stern self-correction, a hard challenge to one's self? Yes, there was a lot of money. But how much-- how far-- would you let your comfortable, open lifestyle and a non-judgmental view of other people be dragged down into a self-centered, sequestered, insular lifestyle where you're on the local news every night, your sport is third or fourth most important in the scheme of things but if you don't produce at the top level you're gone, etc. If he'd taken the St. Johns job and done well, he'd be better off, wouldn't he? Porter was about 5-10 years too old and too invested in the outcome for that OU job to be anything but trouble and pressure and oppressively invasive. If he got canned tomorrow, he'd never have to work again and he could move back to Chicago. But it wouldn't be the same.
And I wrote similar things about Oklahoma vs. Chicago back in 2021 when he first left Loyola. That was a bad move for him-- he had kids still in school, and that place is freakin' toxic. I don't care how much money you make, you have to CONSTANTLY dumb yourself down to show that you're not looking down on anyone else. The lowest of the lowest common denominator rules. At some point it becomes an intellectual suicide pact.