I haven't chimed in but wanted to share the following post from the boogeyman himself Connor Stalions when talking about the MSU hire - It's insightful.
"People need to understand coaching is just one piece of the pie. More times than not, it’s a huge factor because talent & resources are usually close. But at Northwestern, it’s not even in the same ballpark as the rest of the conference. The academic standards make recruiting damn near impossible. The administration doesn’t care about winning. It’s basically an Ivy League school in the Big Ten. Pointing to a couple bad seasons (from a record standpoint) is lazy.
Speaking from personal experience (yes, at a much different scale): I coached at Mumford HS in Detroit as the DC for a few months. We had 3 coaches & 18 total players in the program with a team-wide average GPA of a 0.9 when we arrived in the summer, and had to play JV & Varsity games with those 18 players (do the math on that). We somehow won a game. But of course we lost to Cass Tech 70-0. Went to Belleville right after the regular season as the OC and won 70-0 first game in the playoffs. Do you think I didn’t know how to coach then all the sudden learned in one week for a 140-point turnaround? No… We won at Belleville because we had Bryce Underwood, Elijah Dotson, etc. We lost at Mumford because we didn’t (and played against CJ Sadler, Don Tabron, etc.).
While talent gaps are much greater in high school, I’m explaining the point that coaching only matters when the talent gap is manageable."
Akron like Northwestern's issues are largely structural (and financial here), and Moorhead is not to blame there. Without addressing those underlying issues, a coaching change seems cosmetic. Unless they could line up someone like Jason Taylor. They are working to address the underlying issues though.