Following the announcement of Tulane offensive coordinator Will Hall being hired at Southern Miss, one of the things we've heard from opposing fans is how difficult this position is. "The pay isn't good! The facilities are bad! They have no budget!" are common lines we hear from the AAC and SEC (and even other leagues) masses. And all are true to at least some degree. But is the USM football job a uniquely bad position in the mold of a Louisiana-Monroe? I don't think so. And if ULM isn't a peer, who is?
I've compared because USM and ULM because at the surface level the two programs seem similar. Both are cash-strapped G5s outside of large urban areas in the Deep South. The Eagles and Warhawks are often called dead-end jobs by fans. But when you take a closer look at things, you see that there is nothing at all comparable about the two situations. Below I have made a spreadsheet comparing Southern Miss and ULM both athletically and institutionally. Money numbers related to athletics come from the USA TODAY's database.
USM far outpaces them in every category. Even with the head coach pay where Jay Hopson was dead last in C-USA, he still made 20%+ more than Matt Viator at ULM. And all indications are that this will see a substantial jump. AD Jeremy McCain told the Sun Herald that he wants the next salary to be in the top 5 range of the conference. Based on that, the minimum salary for Hall will likely be around $900,000 with assistant pay in the 1.3M-1.4M range. Both of these very competitive at the G5 level. Additionally, while the budget at USM is 3rd lowest in FBS, ULM's is only about 66% of that figure. Their athletic budget is on the level of a regional Southland university.
Institutionally, the universities are not peers. ULM is R3 (moderate research) with an endowment that isn't a quarter of what USM has. They have very limited doctorate degree offerings. Southern Miss is R1 (very high research). Academically, Louisiana-Monroe is closer to West Georgia where Will Hall coached in D2, than Southern Miss. Not only are the athletic programs far apart, but the universities itself are to. I'm not saying USM is Harvard, it's not, but it's still much more highly regarded than ULM.
Lastly, Southern Miss simply has an established donor base and brand in a way Louisiana-Monroe does not. The contributions at USM were more than 5x than that of ULM in 2019 with attendance numbers about double. And while not quantifiable, Southern Miss is more a part of the cultural fabric in South Mississippi than ULM is in North Louisiana. All of this allows USM to develop a core following in a way that ULM cannot.
So, if the Louisiana-Monroe job is uniquely hard, which G5 programs can Southern Miss compare their job to? The answer would seem to be Louisiana Tech and Georgia Southern.
The USM situation compares favorably with both Louisiana Tech and Georgia Southern --- both successful G5 programs that don't have the "dead-end job" narrative around them. While Southern Miss trails in HC pay by a bit that's going to change soon as previously noted. The three programs are all R1/2 universities in rural areas (rural-ish in Hattiesburg's case) that have athletic budgets under $30M. All 3 also have small, but engaged fanbases and established donor pools. Georgia Southern has a larger enrollment than USM and LaTech due to them in being a major state but their endowment trails by a decent margin. While not in the spreadsheet, none of these 3 programs have an indoor practice facility, which is yet another similarity.
Why the Southern Miss job has the narrative of being impossible or a dead-ender is anyone's guess. Louisiana Tech and Georgia Southern have seen their programs ascend whereas Southern Miss' has descended in the last decade. Jay Hopson taking a comically low salary for FBS standards of 500k didn't help either. Additionally, USM is somewhat of a Millwall within college football, as I've said before. Tulane, Memphis, and other AAC fans like to slander Southern Miss because they're bitter some guy named BowerPower69 was mean to them on a C-USA message board in like 2004. Ole Miss and Mississippi State like to slander the job because their USM co-worker at an office park in Flowood talked smack too much after a midweek baseball win during the Corky Palmer days.
In any case, the claim that the USM football job is extraordinarily difficult by G5 standards does not stand up to any scrutiny. That's not to say there aren't challenges in Hattiesburg. There are! But the resources and situation here are close (better in some metrics) than programs like Louisiana Tech and Georgia Southern which have been top teams in their league for years now. It's a winnable gig. This is not a ULM situation. The pay is competitive within the C-USA/Sun Belt level, the fan support is fine for a non-P5, and the recruiting territory is fertile even if the program doesn't have access to the players it did 10 or 20 years ago. It's not a coaching graveyard. A good coach, which I think Will Hall is, can and will win here.
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