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Nigel Burton gets axe at Portland State

Green Laser

Green Laser

Active member
Sacramento's own Nigel Burton finally got the axe at Portland State today. He went 21-36 in four years and 3-6 this season.
He had 1 year left on his contract which they bought out at $187,500. The OC will take over as interim HC until a permanent AD is hired. Burton seemed to be able to recruit a lot of talent but could never put it together. Some speculation that Portland State may be considering dropping football.
Burton has a defensive background and was the DC at Nevada before going to Portland. Think he might be able to help our defense?
 
:'(

Nigel Burton was an outstanding DB at the unmentionable place. He would be a welcome addition to the Sac State staff, at least as far as I'm concerned.
 
Oldhornet23 said:
Do not hear good things about Burton. Hear that staff did not like each other. Not really interested in being him here.
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I heard something about that last year, Burton firing his DC mid season? They got into some kind of confrontation at a game or something? I don't know much about him but he was Chris Ault's DC at Nevada, he must have had something going on there. Portland is in a bad position, sounds like they are getting kicked out of Providence Park by the Timbers Soccer team and may have to play at Hillsboro High School.
The administration said the football program needs to be self sufficient. The fans are talking about June Jones and Dan Hawkins. It will be hard to sell the program tr a decent coach with all the uncertainly especially with other openings like Montana's available. This has to be a nightmare for recruiting also.
 
Oldhornet23 said:
If you were to bring Burton on who do you let go?
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That's for Coach Sears to decide if there needs to be a change I just suggested that Burton might be an option if a defensive coach was needed. The defense did seem to improve as the season progressed, especially the DBs and corners. I'm not sure if it was because of the younger guys were learning and maturing, better coaching, coaches working better with each other etc. but they were improving.
 
Oldhornet23 said:
If you were to bring Burton on who do you let go?
Click to expand...

Would there actually BE a requirement to get rid of someone? Are we at the limit in terms of staff size? IS there a limit?

I think SD might be the most informed on this one, or if he's not, he'll know who is....
 
Hauck handed his resignation at UNLV today. I find the timing peculiar. He had two years left on his contract. I suspect one of two things. 1- He's headed back to Montana; 2- He may be headed to PDX St.
 
GoldenEagleHornet said:
Hauck handed his resignation at UNLV today. I find the timing peculiar. He had two years left on his contract. I suspect one of two things. 1- He's headed back to Montana; 2- He may be headed to PDX St.
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Hauck is a decent football coach but he recruited some felonious thugs to Montana and ran a loose ship. Their arrests eventually brought on NCAA sanctions after he left. I doubt that their president would welcome him back.
 
Sad to read that PSU's football program is teetering on the edge (or at least is claimed to be). PSU and Sac State have a lot of similarities and I can't help but think we would be in the same position if we had another string of awful seasons. The PSU brass has claimed their FB program needs to be self sufficient yet this Burton move just stuck that program with $187k of red ink to start the season. :|
 
Sac State has

men's soccer
men's golf
baseball
women's sand volleyball
women's gymnastics
women's crew

6 programs more than PSU

and Sac has an on campus football stadium that does not need to be rented.

Sac State went 7-5 this year. PSU went 3-8. And Sac State is not buying out a head football coaches contract.

Think Sac State football and Sac State athletics is in a bit better shape than PSU.
 
and forgot the marching band.

Sac State has a marching band and PSU does not.

PSU is the only big Sky school without a marching band.

Do not see how PSU and Sac are similar other than being the two Big Sky schools in large urban areas.

Attendance at Sac State football games was down this year but PSU attendance at football games has been down for many years. And many years ago PSU had excellent season ticket sales but that has since been a thing of the past.

Sac State continues to try and improve given the challenges with the decades of issues with facilities. Not sure what PSU is doing.
 
I was thinking more about their respective environments. Both schools are in a large metropolitan setting in which they are far from the top draw in their respective market. Both cities have NBA teams and if Sac gets the MLS expansion both will have that. Both are in the shadow of 2 Pac-12 programs. Additionally we have all the Bay Area pro-teams that also take priority over what the Hornets offer.

Given those competing sports entertainment options, neither populace really gives a damn about low tier D1 athletics offered by their local university. Both schools struggle to draw fans to events and most concerning is we had a down attendance year even with the first 7 win season in 14 years, the most prolific offense in school history, and fresh faces on the coaching staff. Something will have to give eventually and it sounds like things are on the verge of giving in at PSU. All it takes is an anti-athletics president to come here next fall and the house of cards that is Hornet football can very well come tumbling down.

I hate to sound like a downer given the positive season that just wrapped up and the positive and encouraging changes that Sears has started up in his short time here; but my concern is with the long game. Hornet Stadium is already past its useful life and later this week the student body will resoundingly vote against the events center referendum. Meanwhile there has yet to be a public push (any push) for private monies for facilities (i.e. a capital improvement fund) from anyone within the AD. I guess we just have to wait to see how the leadership positions shake out and take it from there but having a west coast FCS program go under is not good news for anyone in the BSC, especially for us.

:rant:
 
I just don't understand how it is that KCRA 3 often broadcast Hornet D-II games back in the '80s (yes, it was our D-II heyday), but we can't get a whiff of a local TV contract (for even a PORTION of our games). Heck, CAUSEWAY at the very least ought to be broadcast locally on an over-the-air station. SMH....
 
understand and agree SD and Super Hornet.

I get all the negatives and of course have similar thoughts .


Looking at PSUs website they include cheerleading as men's and women's sports on their list of athletic programs as well. We got that covered but the Associated Students sponsor the cheer/dance teams at Sac State. PSU is really reaching.

Agree that we do not want to see PSU football or any Big Sky football team fail. The Northern Colorado fans and Cal Poly fans are calling for their football coaches to resign. So many Big Sky football programs are in bad shape as I notice Weber State is losing 9 scholarships due to some type of NCAA punishment.

Being in the shadow of Cal and Stanford and all the pro teams in the SF Bay Area and northern California has always been a constant thru the years. That being said Sac State has a potential local fan base of 2 million people, probably 250,000 alum, the 20th largest media market. How to harness all that potential in the US and make Sac State football relevant?

Win. Just win and win and win.

It seemed like that was maybe happening a few years ago when we beat Oregon State and we had a weekly show on cable. Then the losses came again.

Agree that Sac State needs some type of TV station and it is baffling that we did have KCRA during the Div II years and nothing now despite the explosion of cable stations. Any station. A station run by Sac State students from campus. Something . Anything. Even Southern Utah has it's own sports TV.

Baffling that Eastern Washington as a small commuter school (most EWU students are commuters) in the middle of no where in the shadow of Washington State and Gonzaga wins the Big Sky in football year after year and goes to the pllayoffs. And their football stadium is truly nothing to brag about. And it has a track around it just like ours. Seems like Sac State could be smart to study how EWU does it. Off the top of my head EWU does win year after year after year. That might be something that works at Sac State . Winning. Winning championships .

Hoping that Coach Sears and his staff have an amazing recruiting season gearing up for another 2015 winning season and continuing. From there the marketing of Sac State football can build much easier.

Winning seasons in football has been something that we have not had in decades and perhaps winning will go a long way to bring Hornet football to relevance and answer a lot of our questions about the future of this program. Sac State continues to be a great destination for quality high school and JC football players who may not get a shot at the Pac 12 school or MWC school. We market ourselves as the destination campus in CA. That remains a huge draw. We are a young school of only 67 years of history with excellent academics and currently enroll only 50 percent of those who apply. A couple dozen excellent recruits very soon will be coming to Sac State and continue to move our football program in a winning direction. And our current returning players have experienced a winning season and that will go a long way!!

Go Hornets.
 
interesting and perhaps important to note that 322 people have posted LIKES on the Sac State football facebook page regarding the Sac State win over Davis. Pause to think about forums like Sac Buzz just being one of so many ways Hornet fans show their support of this program. Perhaps a dozen or two of us post here but hundreds of other fans use other social media outlets to express their support. And these many social media outlets are the wave of the future for Hornet athletics perhaps and probably for sure. About 300 other fans were wanting to express their support like we do but did on facebook with a mere click of LIKE.
 
Green Laser said:
GoldenEagleHornet said:
Hauck handed his resignation at UNLV today. I find the timing peculiar. He had two years left on his contract. I suspect one of two things. 1- He's headed back to Montana; 2- He may be headed to PDX St.
Click to expand...

Hauck is a decent football coach but he recruited some felonious thugs to Montana and ran a loose ship. Their arrests eventually brought on NCAA sanctions after he left. I doubt that their president would welcome him back.
Click to expand...

There haven't been any issues like that at UNLV. If he kept it clean in Vegas, I'm sure he can keep it clean in Missoula, this time around.

Montana: The Missoulian is reporting that there are four leaders for the vacant head coaching job; former head coach Bobby Hauck, Eastern Washington head coach Beau Baldwin, Washington receivers coach Brent Pease, and current Montana defensive coordinator Ty Gregorak.
http://footballscoop.com/the-scoop/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
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