Dave Braine, Georgia Tech AD and founder/sole member of the "OMG Chan Gailey is sooo hottt" Club, is retiring at Tech. Start the chatter...oh, about right...now regarding 7-5's long term job security with an incoming AD who didn't hire him. The scenario for an incoming AD at Tech unfolds in our heads something like this: you get a nice new house, modest, mind you, but still nice and stylish in its own way. Crown molding, original floors...small square footage wise, but you weren't hoping for a mansion anyway, right? So you turn the corner with your first armload of bags, and this guy's sitting in your living room eating a bag of pork rinds, sipping on a Big Red and watching Walker, Texas Ranger on the tube:
Hey, it'll get you 7-5.
As a concerned home owner, we'd tell the guy to leave quietly before we called the police. But he stops you and says: "But hey, I'll clean the floors. Kind of. And sorta half-assedly clean the kitchen. I'll even swat a broom through the gutters for you once in a blue moon. And I'll just sit here congenially the rest of the time just bein' me and shit. How's that sound?" And if you like that, you keep the guy in your house. If you don't, send him packing.
Whatever you do, though, don't hope. Don't expect better. Chan Gailey is in his fourth decade of coaching football. His lifetime record is just over .500, and hoping for anything better is hopign against every piece of evidence you've got to work with, so give up the effort before you start. Don't make Chan Gailey anything else than what he is: someone who gets paid over a mil a year to go 7-5 every season and mutter a bit on radio shows in between heart attacks and bad jeweler's commercials.
Better informed stuff on this at Golden Tornado.