TERRY COLUMN: 'Cats fire Ash, lose safety net

If you’re going to fire the winningest coach in program history, you’d better have a replacement in mind.

Montana State fired head football coach Rob Ash on Monday, not coincidentally two days after a 54-35 thrashing by the University of Montana at Bobcat Stadium.

In his nine-year tenure in Bozeman, Ash won more games than any other coach, with a 70-38 overall record and three Big Sky conference titles, consistently keeping Montana State as one of the top teams in the Football Championship Subdivision.

But he was just 2-7 against Montana, going winless in five tries against the Griz in Bozeman.

There’s no amount of hardware that will make that sit well among the fan base.

So the administration in Bozeman acted emotionally, firing the coach that led the Bobcats to their longest run of sustained success in school history, because the Griz have beaten them eight of the last 10 times.

Now that he’s gone, however, MSU had better have a plan in mind for who they want to take Ash’s place.

It’s not the first program to head down this path.

John Cooper led Ohio State to three Big Ten titles, recruited a Heisman trophy winner and won a Rose Bowl. But, he was 2-10-1 against Michigan.

Phillip Fulmer won a national championship at Tennessee and convinced Peyton Manning to leave his father’s shadow at Mississippi and play in Knoxville. And while he was far and away the Volunteers’ most successful coach in the modern era, he was just 5-12 against Florida, an unacceptable result on Rocky Top.

Both were successful coaches at wildly successful programs.

And each was fired because he couldn’t win the one game that mattered.

But, there’s something to be learned in how each of those programs responded.

Ohio State hired Jim Tressel and two years later won the national championship, finding a Heisman trophy winner and two more trips to the title game before Tressel left his office.

In the six years since Tennessee fired Fulmer, it has yet to win more than seven games and has been mired in mediocrity, losing the luster from a program that was once considered one of the best in the nation.

The latter is a real possibility in Bozeman.

The world of college football moves fast and a bad coaching hire, or an unprepared search, can leave a program in the dust, even at the biggest programs.

FBS superpowers Texas and Michigan toiled in mediocrity after bad hires. Miami, Colorado, Washington and Nebraska, all national powers in the 90s, are no better than average in 2015.

At the FCS level, Youngstown State, an unquestionable power under Tressel in the 90s and the early 2000s under Jon Heacock, made one wrong hire and hasn’t been to the postseason since 2006.

While nine years may not seem like a long time, this year’s top recruits were only eight at that time.

A few years out of the spotlight could be too many in the spectrum of recruiting, leaving the only notable history to old stories and grainy video. The tradition of today could be old news by the time the athletic department gets the program back on the right track.

There will be top coaching candidates interested in the Montana State job. It’s too big and powerful, with too much support for the program to not be attractive.

But a wrong hire could leave the program stuck. And ditching a successful coach to do so would look bad for everyone involved.

So, while firing Rob Ash may have been justified, it’s not guaranteed to get results.

And losing that security blanket could leave the program exposed.