I hear you. I look back on the blue blood programs and heir worst decade. NU currently has the worst decade of any of them and not looking much better. The thing I found when looking the programs, NU, OU, OSU, ND, Texas, Michigan, Bama, USC, it took the vast majority of them until their 4th coach to turn things around. We are in our 10th year now. All of this to your point, other teams did not wait years to figure it out and give coaches multiple opportunities. Frost put us behind on the 10 year 4th coach plan. We kept him 2 years to long IMHO. Very few teams turned it around with the 3rd coach.
Do I think Rhule is the guy? Not really. No fire or passion. Where have we improved since he has been here? Hired some poor choices for the staff imho. Why'd it take Dana to call our WR's blocking and RB's missing the holes? Maybe this was addressed...Then why wasn't it corrected. Satts comments on needing to run in the B1G or 4 -5 yards per play was good.. Rhule has poor clock management, looks lost on the sideline and I fear the portal and NIL is lost on him. with a 105 man roster, you recruit guys who are ready and make sure your portal picks are solid. I remember Bob Stoops saying he never recruited a HS kid that wasn't ready to contribute on day 1. The days of building a team are over. He goes 9-3 I do think it means he's figured out how to win those 1 score games and get the team to know how to win. But, again to your point, it does make a lot more sense to honor the original contract and go from there. If there's improvement, pay incentives for the subsequent years. And his track record appears to get a team "flipped" and then leave in year 4...