Middle Tennessee seeks a brighter tomorrow under Derek Mason
With their first new hire since 2006, the Blue Raiders set a course into the unknown.
Note: rankings for this series are set by the final 2023 rankings from TERSE, a D1 college football metric designed to imitate human rankings.
In college basketball, programs often become inextricably linked with a certain head coach to the extent that it’s difficult to imagine anybody else at the helm. Take Jim Boeheim leading the Syracuse men’s team, for example, or Geno Auriemma guiding the UConn women. Logically, of course there have been other coaches in the past and there will have to be others in the future, but tenures in the sport can last long enough for that truism to feel impossible.
As a natural consequence of this fact, finally moving on and replacing those long-entrenched coaches is a monumental task. For a program that hasn’t had any other HC lead the way in decades, recalibrating expectations in the modern era can be difficult. Just ask the Tennessee Lady Vols, who have spent the last twelve seasons searching for their place in the post–Pat Summitt era and still haven’t quite found it, as evidenced by their loss this very season to the school we’re looking at today. How do you define what aspects of your success had to do with an iconic, long-lasting coach, and what is still achievable because of your own strengths as a program?
This question is less common in college football, simply because the sport doesn’t lend itself so much to rapid early-career ascents and resulting decades-long careers leading a single team. It’s rare to see a program wrestle with moving forward from an HC who lasted a mere decade or so, and in those situations there’s obviously still some relevance to remembering who they were back in the 2000s and early 2010s. The closest example in the power-conference ranks this offseason is probably Alabama, which is now charting a course forward after seventeen years under Nick Saban, and the list of other high majors who would face similarly significant questions with a retiring head coach can be counted on one hand1.
Such tenures are even rarer among G5 programs, in part because the broad targets for such teams aren’t as hard to nail down. Metro areas and strong recruiting territories largely define program goals at this level, and beyond that, it’s also worth noting that college football hasn’t changed quite as much for these leagues. Despite Troy Calhoun entering his eighteenth season at Air Force this year, for example, the Falcons won’t struggle to set expectations when he does eventually retire; good coaches across every era have made this an intermittent mid-to-low-top-25 team, and that’ll be the goal for Calhoun’s successor.
Not all programs have been around far longer than the typical college football coach, though, and it’s here that we come across more of those existential questions. UTSA, for example, had a decent first decade and then exploded onto the scene as a G5 titan under Jeff Traylor, who’s led them to a 32-9 record across the last three years. Thanks to a lengthy contract extension, they don’t really have to worry about moving on from Traylor any time soon, but the longer he stays in San Antonio, the harder it’ll be to figure out what the program looks like without such a great coach to lead it.
Does Middle Tennessee fit in this boat? Well, in a literal sense, no. The Blue Raiders have been playing football since 1911, and while Rick Stockstill’s eighteen years here make up a significant chunk of their existence, they obviously have a lot of history to draw on before him. On the other hand, MTSU’s time as an FBS (or equivalent) program only began around the turn of the century, and Stockstill’s tenure makes up a firm majority of their time in the top flight. There’s definitely some difficulty in knowing how good this team ought to be—part of the reason he survived a deeply embarrassing 2020 season in which his own offensive coordinator quit because of Stockstill’s refusal to acknowledge player and staff worries about COVID-19.
After years of alternating between a seven-to-eight-win CUSA contender and a three-to-four-win also-ran, though, Middle Tennessee finally decided to try its luck with a new head coach after a 4-8 2023 campaign. Notably, Stockstill didn’t get gently ushered out the door; he was fired, straight up. That’s not only a great move because he was a pretty vile person (seriously, read that article linked above) and didn’t deserve the respect of a mutually-agreed-upon departure; it’s also significant as a tone-setter for what the Blue Raiders hope to achieve going forward. Peaking at eight wins, for a team in a football-rich state and an extremely winnable conference, is not good enough.
This is the situation into which Derek Mason, who battled against the inherent near-impossibility of making Vanderbilt good for seven long seasons, will step in 2024. Mason is, in a way, a reflection of the type of program that Middle Tennessee is: he has a lot of head coaching experience, but it’s difficult to extricate it from the job he was in and determine how good an HC he truly is.
What happens next here, given these circumstances, is deeply uncertain. The success MTSU has found in women’s and men’s basketball, the talent-rich region available for recruiting, and a league that consists mainly of teams that arguably ought to be in FCS—it all points towards obvious potential for a true titan of the Group of 5 to emerge in Murfreesboro. Who can capitalize on that potential and build the Blue Raiders into a high-level program? It’s hard to say for sure, and Derek Mason may or may not be the right guy for the job; it’s plainly apparent, though, that Rick Stockstill was not, and moving on from him in pursuit of a brighter future is the hardest and most important part of determining what Middle Tennessee can be.
The Last Five Years
It’s hard to think of a word for Middle Tennessee across the last five seasons that fits better than “uninspiring”. The best of these years was 2022, and as in every season of this half decade, they didn’t even make it above .500 in Conference USA. Neither the defense nor the offense have been much to write home about: the former finished 85th in scoring last season, the latter 84th, as MTSU finished 4-8 and didn’t beat anybody better than 4-8 FIU. The fact that Stockstill’s tenure ended after this long, lifeless stretch isn’t surprising because he hadn’t earned it; it’s surprising only because it seemed that Middle Tennessee was willing to settle for this mediocrity. It’s nice to be proven wrong on that point.
The defense will be a work in progress next season, returning just 32% of its production (129th in FBS), but the offense does bring back some noteworthy pieces. Quarterback Nick Vattiato was solid in his first full season as the starter (7.2 Y/A, 23 TD, 13 INT), and Mason’s main strength as a coach—his strong recruiting of both high school players and transfers—should have a more immediate and significant impact than it did at Vanderbilt. They probably won’t be good in 2024, but they could certainly be competent, and maybe even sneak into the postseason if they rack up wins against CUSA.
The Next Five Years
This is the question, isn’t it? What can we expect from a team with so little to measure itself against that isn’t affected by Stockstill’s long, low-ceiling reign as head coach? I’m inclined to believe the circumstances of the job make better results a strong possibility, even if Mason doesn’t turn out to be an excellent hire, and MTSU should be planning its path forward with confidence in its own ability to be exceptional.
It’s hard to be certain, though, and actively making the choice to ditch Stockstill is undeniably a leap of faith. The timing of the move, with Middle Tennessee having been left behind in realignment (partially by their own refusal to depart for the MAC with Western Kentucky), suggests an awareness of the fact that they need to be proactive in making Blue Raider football more than an afterthought. It also magnifies both the risks and rewards they’re taking on here; 2024, of all years, is a fascinating point to look over the program’s past and decide that it should expect better in the present.
I like this move well enough. Stockstill was unexciting and morally repugnant, while Mason is a likable guy who probably deserves another shot at a job less daunting than Vanderbilt. But it’s less important what the move was, and more important that the move was made in the first place. It’s a definitive, audacious statement of confidence that this team can be great—that doing the bare minimum and never aspiring to more is no longer acceptable. For Middle Tennessee, that’s an admirable way to step out of Stockstill’s shadow and forge a new path into the future of college football.
To wit: Kirk Ferentz’s Iowa, Mike Gundy’s Oklahoma State, Kyle Whittingham’s Utah, and Dabo Swinney’s Clemson. There are arguments for some traditional basketball-first schools experiencing rare success under excellent coaches—namely Kentucky, NC State, and Wake Forest—but I’d say we have a pretty good sense of where those programs should expect to be long-term.