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Some points in another thread got me thinking about this. We've all heard that Dickey clashed with Helwig and RV over quite a few things, and the discussion about tough OOC schedules made me wonder about the HC/AD relationships. So, since I don't know exactly what they did and didn't like about each other's style or opinion of how things should be scheduled, let's look at a couple of possibilities that led me to this thought. Let's say Helwig wanted to keep putting up UT, OU, Nebraska, LSU, etc. as OOC foes and Dickey disagreed. Well, RV comes along and they're already on the schedule for a couple of years or so. Is it reasonable, prudent, or even done as a matter of business-as-usual, if a new AD agrees with the HC, to look at trying to get out of those games and replace them with ones he feels are better suited to the program in its current state? My big reason for asking is that if you are pretty much going to stay married to the OOC schedule planned years ahead regardless of coaching or AD changes, doesn't that add just another reason to our usual "well, we have to wait and see because of what he inherited" tact? And in that sense, even if coaching hires don't work out and you make a change in the AD position...wouldn't that give the AD twice as long as the HC? I mean, just for giggles, let's say this year was disastrous in both FB and BB, both coaches and RV were sent packing (okay, maybe not everybody would be giggling but you know what I mean). The new AD would inherit a football schedule that's pretty much set for about 6 years. That's the big one...so even if they got a bad hire and replaced him as HC after Mac, the FB schedule could basically cover the tenure of two 3-season coaches. As much as the "bare cupboard" argument is made, couldn't an AD make that same one for at least twice as long if they were pretty well stuck with over half a decade of someone else's scheduling? If so, and people accept the "bare cupboard" notion, wouldn't an AD's grace period be about 6 years before they could say they were "rebuilding properly"? Or could they say, "Hey, if I'm going to come in here and take over this mess, you have to let me scrap half of this schedule and do something better with it"? Obviously if that was part of their terms of hiring, the administration would choose whether or not to hire them...but would that be a reasonable demand if you thought you had a great AD hire and that's what they wanted to do?