So, I used to be a Bronco Mendenhall loyalist. After seeing the same incompetence carry over from year to year, I've woken up and I've lost all confidence in Bronco. (By the way, the SOFT schedules during his tenure have helped cover up his deficiencies as a head coach.)

The coaching situation at BYU reminds me of the 9ers's coaching situation from 2004 - 2011 (the Nolan / Singletary era).

Nolan: good defensive coordinator, but didn't understand a thing about offense or how it worked. Hired a new OC every year. Didn't value the importance of quarterbacks.

Singletary: same as Nolan. Just like Bronco, he valued grit above all else. He famously declared that the QB position was just another position on the football field. One OC he hired was a coach who had last coached in the NFL 30 years ago (for the L.A. Rams) and ran the same plays from that era. It was a joke.

Both these guys lost the locker room and the confidence of fans, and once they did, there was no getting it back. They had to be fired.

However, they still had loyalists as well as the media hacks who worked for KNBR, the 9ers' flagship radio station, who would ask the same questions that Bronco supporters are asking now: "If you fired the coach, who would replace him?" "Who's available?" (By the way, they tried to protect Don Nelson of the Warriors in the same way after he had begun running on fumes.)

That's a terrible argument against firing a coach. And that's not the job of fans to answer these questions. Can you imagine if 9ers' management bought into the notion that there wasn't anyone available who was any better and so they kept Singletary around, causing them to miss out on Harbaugh?