It's Bronco. The buck stops with him. Now, that doesn't mean that he has absolute control over every event. There are some things that no coach can control. There is a lot that they can.

Anyway, the real question is what's the best way forward? It's not automatic that the guy ultimately responsible for the mediocre last few years should be shoved aside. Remember, this is the guy that had the program running at a higher level just a few years ago. There have undoubtedly been mistakes that have limited our success, but again, that does not automatically mean that we ought to can the guy. Because the next guy is going to make his own mistakes. It's a big risk to swap out a pretty successful coach for an unproven entity. You're betting that the next guy will avoid similar mistakes, and you're betting that Bronco can't learn from his.

Given the right candidate (I trust Holmoe to know if such a candidate exists), I'd be fine trying someone new. Just understand that the chances are very good that the new guy will perform worse than Bronco. If I'm Tom, I'm talking to Bronco all the time to make sure he recognizes the mistakes that were made, and that he has a plan for avoiding similar mistakes going forward. Right now, I'm probably inclined to keep Bronco, because I can see a good pipeline of QB talent hitting the program, and I'm confident that the defense will get fixed and return to being a typical, strong, Bronco defense. Strong defense and good QB play is the formula we used to rack up those 10+ win seasons and top 25 rankings, and I think it likely that those types of teams are on their way again. I think the newer recruiting philosophy will also start showing results on the field as early as next season.

By the way, there's no way a 22, 23 year old recruiting coordinator "forced" a new way of doing things on Bronco. I'm sure Martzen brought good ideas with him, but if Bronco wanted to stick with the older way of doing things, we'd still be doing things the older way. If you're going to blame Bronco for every last misstep, you're going to have to give him credit where credit is due.