COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

The Pac-10/12 Conference is a Changing under new commish Larry Scott

Clearly, the marketing of college football has been updated and changed in recent days by some of the moves by the Pac-10 conference under new commissioner Larry Scott.  It has been fascinating talking to our contacts at Pac-10 schools in recent months about some of things that the Pac-10 conference has been working on and the Media Days events over the past few days were just another part of rebranding a conference that has been borderline moribund for the past couple of decades. 

What Larry Scott has brought to the Pac-10 is a realization that college athletic program exist in a marketplace that compete for the disposable dollars of the American public with other sporting and entertainment events.  Yes, that should be obvious to everyone, but it was not clearly understood by anyone at the Pac-10 until Larry Scott showed up last year and started looking at the large differences between what the Pac-10 and other college conference were hauling in dollar wise.  Since many of the Pac-10 schools are in very large metropolitan areas there are lots of things that people can do with their money besides watching or attending football games and unless the Pac-10 markets itself in an aggressive way and establishes its brand and presence in the marketplace the school’s sports teams are from start behind the 8-ball when it comes to attracting the entertainment dollars of consumers.  Most ADs completely understand this reality since they work very hard to promote their school’s sports teams in local markets, but the Pac-10 school presidents are starting to understand that their school’s athletic teams are the front porch and most visible element of their institution in the mind of the public and that makes promoting college athletics a very serious and important business for the overall success of the school.  The days of the Pac-10 not competing in the marketplace for the entertainment dollars of American consumer do appear to be over and we say “Bully to That!” because for too long the Pac-10 relied on the individual schools to work on their own marketing efforts to gin up interest in their school’s athletic teams and there never was an overarching brand and theme in marketplace for the Pac-10 as a whole.  Yes, those days are over….

The challenge for Pac-10 commish Larry Scott going forward will be meld the two new schools (Utah and Colorado) into the new Pac-12 while building the conference’s brand which will hopefully translate into many more millions of dollars from national, regional and local TV contracts and increased ticket sales for each school’s sports teams.  As Larry Scott and the Pac-10 school presidents and ADs think about the near and long-term future of the conference we only hope that they think of the conference as one entity made up of 12 schools that will benefit greatly if they all work together to build a very strong brand which will lead to the additional revenues that all of the Pac-10/12 schools desperately need to operate in the very challenging world that all business folks face in the early 21 st century.   (Jon Wilner of the Mercury News has a great news story detailing the challenges and goals that Larry Scott is facing with the Pac-10:  Pac-10, about to become Pac-12, on a mission to increase TV value) 

The Pac-10/12 can look to the SEC conference for guidance has a lot of very strong schools and personalities that are able to stand on their own, but under the leadership of their commissioners: first Harvey Schiller, then Roy Kramer and now Mike Slive that have been able to build a very strong brand with the SEC that is very clearly indentified in the eyes and mind of the consumer.  The SEC stands for great football first, but also great athletics and some very strong academic institutions as well.  The SEC “brand” was not built overnight, but actually over decades of the SEC schools playing very good football and other sports performing well  followed by some savvy commissioners in recent years that have positioned the SEC very smartly in the modern marketplace.  The SEC and Mike Slive may have met their match in Larry Scott and Pac-10 though, but there is only so much that the conference can do and that means the Pac-10/12 schools will have to be fully committed to creating a conference that not only has strong performing athletic teams, but schools that hold up their end of the bargain if they want all of these new marketing efforts to pay off in the end.  It might be tempting for a Pac-10/12 school or two to claim that they are carrying more water than other conference members and thus deserve a bigger piece of the pie, but the schools thinking along those lines should look at what happened to the Big 12 in recent months and what the Big 12 will be facing going forward with some schools being treated in different ways compared to the other conference members.  No, that kind of approach never works in America because that “All Men Are Created Equal” idea is too deeply imbedded in all of our collective DNA and that really means the Pac-10/12 schools should work very hard in the coming days and months to build a conference that is strong at the center supported by all of the 12 schools equally and one that can build itself around a strong and central Pac-10/12 brand. 

Whatever happens with the Pac-10/12 in the coming years we here at Coaches Hot Seat are confident that the days of the Pac-10 allowing other conferences to set the tone and nature of the marketplace are over and thank goodness for that!

 

Analysis of 2010 New Head Coaching Changes

Solid Hire.  We are expecting these new head coaches to build winning programs and have chances to win championships in the coming years.

USF

Skip Holtz for Jim Leavitt– After posting a 94 – 57 record in 13 seasons at USF, including taking the program from a I-AA program to a member of the Big East Conference Jim Leavitt was gone from the Bulls football program in an instant last fall.  We have read a lot of stories on what did or didn’t happen between Leavitt and a USF football player and we are still not clear what exactly happened in that locker room, but it sure seemed that the folks at USF were ready to send Leavitt packing on an incident that seems to be up for debate.  Not that Jim Leavitt isn’t a very passionate football coach, because he is, but if what was reported in the news media on what Jim Leavitt did to the player was all there was to it, then ALL of football coaches in our lives here at Coaches Hot Seat would have been fired as well.  With Jim Leavitt gone from the Bulls USF went looking for a new head football coach and landed ECU’s Skip Holtz who put up a record of 38 – 27 in 5 seasons, won the last two C-USA conference titles and is clearly one of the top up and coaches in the game.  The challenge for Holtz at USF will be to keep the momentum going that Leavitt has built up over the years and to also expand the recruiting base to challenge Florida, FSU and Miami for more of the top players in the Sunshine State.  USF has everything in place to take the next step up in the game of college football and we expect Skip Holtz to raise the bar even higher with the Bulls.

La. Tech

Sonny Dykes for Derek Dooley– We have been wondering for a few years now when Sonny Dykes would get a head coaching shot and with Tennessee hiring away Derek Dooley a pretty good head coaching opportunity opened up for Dykes at La. Tech.  La. Tech has had quite a revolving door in the last 20 + years with their head coaches….

Derek Dooley (2007 – 2009) – 17 – 20

Jack Bicknell (1999 – 2006) – 43 – 52

Gary Crowton (1996 – 1998) – 21 – 13

Raymond Peace (1988 – 1995) – 40 – 44 – 4

Carl Torbush (1987) – 3-8

A L Williams (1983 – 1986) – 28 – 19 – 1

Overall Record Above Head Coaches:  152 – 156 – 5

…and that means that Sonny Dykes will have his hands full to build a consistently winning football program with the Bulldogs.  Derek Dooley as the head coach and AD at La. Tech put in a pretty good foundation, but if Dykes is going to make La. Tech into a force he will need to amp up recruiting even more and he and his new offensive coordinator Tony Franklin will need to develop an offense that can put a lot of points up and take some of the pressure off their defense.  Sonny Dykes has the pedigree and the skills to be a very good head football coach and now is the time for him to become that very good head coach.

Tennessee 

Derek Dooley for Lane Kiffin– The folks at Tennessee are learning in spades the problems that can be created by a bad head coaching hire in college football and by any measurement we can think of Lane Kiffin’s hire at Tennessee was one of the worst hires in recent memory in the game of college football.  It’s not that Lane Kiffin doesn’t know the game of college football or that he and his staff didn’t work hard at Tennessee, but it is about the incredible importance of how a college head football coach carries himself and acts in public and how that translates into how a football team and even an entire school is perceived by the people outside the program.  It’s our opinion that Lane Kiffin did tremendous damage to the University of Tennessee name and brand, because Kiffin in the highest public profile position at the school basically acted like a spoiled brat and pompous ass for over a year and the folks at Tennessee just flat-out let him get away with that behavior.  Then after only one year on the job and running the school’s reputation into the ground, Lane Kiffin heads out the back door for the USC job which left the administration at Tennessee looking like idiots after they had taken a chance and hired a guy that only a year earlier would have been lucky to get a head coaching job in the junior college ranks.  With Kiffin going out the back door for the USC (which may top Tennessee as the stupidest hire in college football history when all is said and done) the Vols were stuck with a tarnished brand and a football program in chaos.  Yes, hiring the wrong head football coach can be disastrous and that is what Tennessee looked like to many potential coaches (a disaster) which did limit who the Vols could hire in the coaching marketplace.  We don’t know this for a fact, but we here at CHS believe that the Tennessee head coaching job came down to between Kevin Sumlin at Houston and Derek Dooley at La. Tech (two very good young coaches) and that Dooley got the job because of his experience with Nick Saban and in the SEC.  Now with Derek Dooley being on the job for about 7 months things are starting to get back to normal after Hurricane Kiffin blew through town and we fully expect that things will continue to get better with the Vols football program, but with many bumps in the road to come as UT tries to get its football team and good name back.  Clearly, the Tennessee football head coaching job, like all coaching jobs in the SEC, is a very tough one and as Dooley works to rebuild UT football he will have to do it while playing in the toughest conference with an incredibly challenging schedule each year, but that is what makes taking the Tennessee job worthwhile in the first place.  A good question to ask about new head coaches always is:  Will Derek Dooley be the head coach at Tennessee five years from now?  To that question we would have to answer “Yes” Derek Dooley will be the head coach at Tennessee five years from now and probably with a very good Vols football program and team as well by then.  Will Derek Dooley have won a SEC conference title by 5 years from now?  We would say “No” to that question, but the Vols should be knocking on the door by then and it will be up to Dooley and his Vols to knock that door down.   

Note on Tennessee Football and Lane Kiffin:  Probably the most Outrageous thing that was said by Lane Kiffin and “his friends” (Kiffin’s “friends” include a few media members that carry Kiffin’s water which make big fools of themselves by defending him so….if they only knew….if they only knew….) during Kiffin’s tenure at Tennessee was that Kiffin had to bluster and act like an idiot when he got to UT because the Vols did not have the college football history of say….USC.  To that belief, that Kiffin had to act like an arrogant pompous idiot we are calling Bullshit on and anyone that makes that argument clearly has no knowledge of the history of Tennessee in the game of college football.  Memo to Lane Kiffin and “his friends”:  Tennessee has been winning football games for decades and long before Dumbo Kiffin arrived on campus, but since Kiffin knows little about life beyond the fantasyland he was raised in, of course it makes perfect sense that Kiffin and “his friends” would make the argument that Kiffin had to do all that stupid behavior to raise the awareness of Tennessee.  Please, even if Tennessee football was not known by a single person on the planet, there is an appropriate way to raise its profile and then there is the Lane Kiffin way.  Clearly, anyone that would favor the Lane Kiffin way was raised by wolves but then walk into most California K-12 schools today and one will find plenty of pompous and arrogant little Lane Kiffin’s running around with people allowing and sometimes even encouraging the very same behavior that we have gotten from Lane in recent years.  Sadly, Lane Kiffin is but the tip of the iceberg of kids raised by parents that never told their children that there were ever wrong about…ANYTHING….and if anyone really wonders why the K-12 schools in California are imploding just try to imagine millions of Lane Kiffin’s popping off to their teachers and parents with none of them correcting them or hardly anyone…SAYING A WORD!  Now you understand why K-12 schools in California are so awful…and getting worse every day and why Lane Kiffin is baffled why people thinking that him acting like a pompous ass is “abnormal.”  Pompous arrogant ass is what Lane Kiffin thinks is “normal” because he was raised to believe that is the appropriate way to act and if you don’t believe that reality just check the behavior of millions of kids in the California schools that think their teachers are little more than just another adult to crack on and ignore (those same kids often view and act that way towards their parents as well which their parents tolerate…and you wonder why California is headed to insolvency…Hell, the place is raising a generation of spoiled brats that are complete and utter idiots to boot!).  Uhhhhhh…. Memo to Lane Kiffin:  Pat Haden and the new braintrust at USC (including some boosters that are starting to get involved with USC athletics) are not going to tolerate the kind of bullshit you have been allowed to get away with in the past and even winning 10 games a year plus at USC will not save you if you keep acting like an idiot.  You can take that little factoid to the bank and cash it all day long.

FSU

Jimbo Fisher for Bobby Bowden– We have never been a proponent of the “Coach in Waiting” concept, but if there is a place where it could work it is at a school where the new head coach is already on the staff when charged with follow a living legend and make no doubt about it….Bobby Bowden is a Living Legend in the game of college football and life for that matter.  It really is too bad that our kids did not get a chance to see Bowden’s FSU football teams between 1977 and 2000 (237 – 49 – 4  .817) which included winning the ACC title the first 9 years that FSU was in conference and 2 National Titles.  Yes, Jimbo Fisher is replacing a Living Legend in Bobby Bowden and the Seminole fans are hungry to get back to winning ways that Bowden brought to FSU but struggled with in his last few years on the job.  The expectations for Jimbo Fisher are very high and our friends that are FSU alums/fans are expecting big things from Fisher and that means he will need to get out of the box very quickly in the first few years to keep everyone happy which translates to Fisher facing the most pressure of the new head coaches to win and win now.  Can Jimbo Fisher win big at FSU?  Yes, Jimbo can win big at FSU, but he will have to do it and just “doing it” is more than a marketing slogan, it is what Jimbo Fisher must do and do now or be prepared for the heat that comes with coaching at one of the top schools and jobs in the game. 

Kentucky

Joker Phillips for Rich Brooks – Do you want to see what looks like an average coaching job but is really one of the best coaching jobs in recent years in college football.  Kentucky’s record 2006 – 2009:  30 – 22, 3 – 1 in bowl games.  That is Rich Brooks’ record at Kentucky over the past 4 seasons and considering that UK is playing in the toughest conference in the country in the SEC, the job that Rich Brooks did at Kentucky over the past 4 years is remarkable.  The challenge for Joker Phillips will be to keep the ball rolling at UK and not lose the momentum that Brooks built up in his 7 years on the job.  If there is a coach that is ideally suited to know what has worked over the past few years it is “Coach in Waiting” Phillips at Kentucky that got to go through all of those tough SEC and Louisville games and it is Phillips that will need to be ready to take on the challenges that come with having to compete in the SEC.  Joker Phillips seems ready to us to take on those challenges and if can keep his focus on the things that have made and will continue to make Kentucky a winning football program then he should have a successful run with the Wildcats.

Buffalo

Jeff Quinn for Turner Gill – One of the most interesting numbers about Jeff Quinn is that he has been a “football coach for 26 years, 21 of which have been as an assistant at Cincinnati, Central Michigan and Grand Valley State.”  Wow!  21 years is a long time to have the same boss, but Brian Kelly and Jeff Quinn won a lot of football games together and that reality bodes well for Quinn in his first head coaching job at Buffalo.  Turner Gill worked very hard and laid down a very nice foundation at Buffalo and it will be Quinn’s job to keep things rolling with the Bulls and to make Buffalo even more of a force in the MAC conference in the coming years.

Marshall

Doc Holliday for Mark Snyder– What a lot of people forget about Marshall football is that between 1990 and 2004 under Jim Donnan  and Bob Pruett the Thundering Herd put up a record of  158 – 44  (.782) which means Marshall fans are used to and expect to be winning football games.  Those expectations are why Mark Snyder was fired after only putting up a record of 22 – 37 in 5 seasons on the job and that is why new head coach Doc Holliday has his hand full in his first head coaching job at UM.  To get back to winning lots of football games Marshall must start recruiting better players and after firing Snyder it looks like the UM folks went out and hired not only a West Virginia native but one of the best recruiters in college football in Doc Holliday.  After coaching stints at West Virginia (under Don Nehlen) and Florida (under Urban Meyer) Doc Holliday has the experience to build a solid football program at Marshall and he will have to learn the ropes of becoming a head football coach while at the same time making the Thundering Herd into a force in the C-USA which is a conference where even small improvements can show up with even more wins in a hurry.  We expect Doc Holliday to recruit better players to Marshall and then it will be his job to turn those players into winners and we expect him to do just that.

Kansas

Turner Gill for Mark Mangino– Turner Gill did a remarkable job at Buffalo in turning around a moribund football program in a very short amount of time and after being up for the Nebraska and Auburn jobs in recent years Gill landed at a school in Kansas that seems like a perfect fit for his particular set of skills and background.  For years Kansas was not much of a power in college football, but Glen Mason first and then Mark Mangino both proved that KU can indeed win football games and it now falls to Gill to get the Jayhawks football program’s Mojo back after the ugly split with Mangino.  Kansas plays football in a very tough neighborhood even in the reduced “Big 12” and Gill will need to draw on all of his experience and strengths from his playing and coaching days to deal with the challenges that comes with a schedule filled with Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, etc. on a yearly basis.  Will Turner Gill win at Kansas?  Yes.  Will Turner Gill win big at Kansas?  That will be up to Turner Gill, his assistant coaches and his KU players and that is what makes the game of college football so great.  Not that we pull for coaches and schools here at Coaches Hot Seat, but we do wish Turner Gill well at KU in the coming years, but don’t think we won’t put you on the Hot Seat Turner!

Western Kentucky

Willie Taggart for David Elson– In the last few seasons we here at Coaches Hot Seat have had the opportunity to see Willie Taggart as an assistant coach at Stanford University and we always thought that he would have a great chance to be a successful head coach one day, but Willie has taken on a great challenge by taking over at his alma mater at Western Kentucky.  Wikipedia has a great summary of Taggart’s playing and coaching career to this point:

“Willie Taggart is an American football coach and the head football coach at Western Kentucky University.

He was named the Hilltoppers head football coach on November 23, 2009 and will start in the 2010 season, replacing the fired David Elson.

Taggart had been a star quarterback at WKU from 1995 through 1998, being one of only three WKU players in the previous 50 years to be a four-year starter at the position and one of only four Hilltoppers players to have his jersey retired. After graduating from WKU in 1998, he stayed on at the school as an assistant through 2006, notably serving as co-offensive coordinator under Jack Harbaugh on the Hilltoppers’ 2002 Division I-AA national champions. Taggart also worked alongside Harbaugh’s son Jim, who had been an unpaid consultant under his father in the final years of his NFL career.

When Jim Harbaugh was named head coach at Stanford following the 2006 season, he hired Taggart as his running backs coach. Taggart served in that role for the next two seasons, notably developing Doak Walker Award winner and Heisman runnerup, Toby Gerhart, into a star during that time. The younger Harbaugh also gave Taggart responsibility for recruiting in Taggart’s home state of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Riverside County, California.”

Wow!  Now that is a playing and coaching career and Taggart is still a very young man.  Taggart is taking over a big challenge at Western Kentucky which his predecessor David Elson learned in spades as he moved WKU from a I-AA football program to I-A and now to a member of the Sun Belt conference.  Like most successful I-AA schools things are very tough for awhile when they make the jump to I-A and that means Taggart will have his hands full with the Hilltoppers in the coming years.  We certainly believe here at Coaches Hot Seat that Taggart has all the skills and experience to be a successful head coach and if he can turn WKU into consistent winner in I-A he will have achieved a lot.  Good Luck to you Willie!

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With Conference Media Days underway that means it is time for Coaches Hot Seat to go on vacation and often to the backcountry and this year several of us here at CHS are/have been in Yosemite National Park and in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains. 

 

Yes, there are some people in Yosemite that walk by the Coaches Hot Seat RV with a large-screen TV sticking out the side with it tuned into SEC Media Days and mutter something  under their breath about “John Muir would not be thrilled with us” watching conference media days in the backcountry but we say the Hell with them!  One particular granola-eating, Prius-driving. Tofu-eating Candy Ass walked by the CHS RV and popped off with something about watching college football (a replay of a game for 30 years ago) with all of the “beauty around you” to which we could only say…

“Did you see the way that QB ran that option play?  Now that is a thing of beauty!  Would you like us to get you a beer, because we have 6 different kinds in the 3 refrigerators in the RV and if you like you can go inside and watch Brideshead Revisited on one of the 4 TVs inside the RV!”

No, that comment wasn’t received well either!

Yes, if you have never been to Yosemite National Park and the surrounding Sierra-Nevada Mountains you MUST GO in your lifetime.  Here are some videos about Yosemite National Park from our good friend Doug McConnell of Open Road TV:

 

 

Big Ten + Nebraska Conference Alignment

 

With the Big Ten set to meet how to divvy up their conference and talk about a site for the Big Ten Championship Game (Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis Jimmy and keep it there) it looks to us that the Big Ten might be considering some “different” type plans to try and weight the conference based upon the historical play of schools, but we believe the Big Ten would be better served long-term to just divide their conference the same way the SEC does.  The Big Ten does not have the issues that the Pac-10 is now facing with all the Pac-10 schools wanting to play in the Southern California area each year and thus we believe the Big Ten should draw a line down through the conference’s area and go with it.

If Jimmy Delany and the Big Ten folks gave Coaches Hot Seat a call (not going to happen!) we would recommend the following to divide up the Big Ten Conference:

Eastern

Indiana

Michigan

Michigan State

Ohio State

Penn State

Purdue

Western

Illinois

Iowa

Minnesota

Northwestern

Nebraska

Wisconsin

Some folks might say that with the above set-up the Big Ten’s Eastern Division would thus be heavily weighted over the Western Division, but if one looks at the past 25 years Big Ten champions, not just recent history, that is not the case…

2009 – Ohio State

2008 – Ohio State, Penn State

2007 – Ohio State

2006 – Ohio State

2005 – Ohio State, Penn State

2004 – Iowa, Michigan

2003 – Michigan

2002 – Iowa, Ohio State

2001 – Illinois

2000 – Michigan, Northwestern, Purdue

1999 – Wisconsin

1998 – Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin

1997 – Michigan

1996 – Northwestern, Ohio State

1995 – Northwestern

1994 – Penn State

1993 – Ohio State, Wisconsin

1992 – Michigan

1991 – Michigan

1990 – Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State

1989 – Michigan

1988 – Michigan

1987 – Michigan State

1986 – Michigan, Ohio State

1985 – Iowa

Big Ten Champions/Co-Champions Last 25 Years

Eastern Division

Outright Conference Championships – 10

Co-Conference Championships – 10

Western Division

Outright Conference Championships – 4

Co-Conference Championships – 7

With Nebraska being added to the Big Ten and to the new Western Division the Huskers add a lot of firepower to that side of the conference and if Nebraska had been playing in the Big Ten in recent years they would have won their share of conference titles that would have added to the above conference championship numbers.

Besides dividing the Big Ten Conference geographically we would also have….

Each team would play 8 conference games each year playing against the 5 teams in their division and 3 teams in the other division although we wouldn’t be opposed to moving to a 9-game conference schedule if that would generate more $$$$$$ for the schools. 

It really is too bad that the Big Ten didn’t go ahead and move to a 14-team conference by adding Missouri and Rutgers which would have been in the Western and Eastern Divisions of the Big Ten respectfully.  With Missouri and Rutgers added to the Big Ten, the conference could have moved to a 9 game conference schedule and have had an ever stronger conference than they have now.  Still, the Big Ten has a very nice collection of teams right now and adding Nebraska in the west will make the Big Ten regular season great entertainment and will set-up some great Big Ten Championship Games in the future (at Lucas Oil Stadium!)

Now that we are back at work in our days jobs we will back to the Analysis of the 2010 Head Coaching Changes soon…..

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Big Ten Championship Game

Former SEC commish Roy Kramer has been in the media recently talking about his ideas for a potential Big Ten championship game and Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune has a few words from Kramer on that issue:

Advice for Big Ten:  Pick 1 site for football title game

“The grandfather of college football’s first conference championship game believes if the Big Ten opts for a title game, as expected, the league would be wise to select a single host city.

“I would pick one site,” Roy Kramer said by telephone Tuesday. “I think it hurts you to rotate it, to be honest. And my personal opinion, I would recommend indoors.”

Officials from Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium), Detroit (Ford Field), Chicago ( Soldier Field), Cleveland ( Cleveland Browns Stadium), Minneapolis (Metrodome) and Green Bay (Lambeau Field) have expressed interest in the game. Lucas Oil, Ford Field and the Metrodome are climate-controlled.

Kramer took the lead in creating the SEC championship game in 1992 as the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.”

We agree completely with Roy Kramer on this issue and as the Big Ten starts thinking about the site and format for a Big Ten championship game they need to give some serious consideration to issues that they might not normally think about relative to such a matchup.

We here at Coaches Hot Seat never really realized what the SEC was building with their Championship Game until a conversation we had at dinner in the mid-1990s with a business executive in the South.  This particular fellow as an alum of Alabama and had been to the first few SEC Championship Games because Alabama had been in them against Florida, but he had increased his order of tickets to the SEC championship game in subsequent years because he was now using the game in Atlanta as a place to entertain and do business with clients/potential clients.  Also, over the years as we have attended the SEC Championship Game we have come to meet hundreds of fans from all of the SEC schools that go to the game each year also, regardless of whether their team is playing in the game or not which is another whole dimension to the SEC championship game that we never even gave a thought to when the game was first proposed.  We doubt the SEC did either….

Mike Slive and the folks at the SEC have turned the SEC Championship Game into something much more than just a matchup of the winners of the two SEC divisions, but an “event” which allows for the fans of the two teams playing in the game to see their school play for the SEC Title, but also a game that…

1.  Brings together SEC fans, officials, media, etc. into one place each year at the end of the SEC football season

2.  Attracts fans from each of the SEC schools each year whether their school is in the game or not

3.  Attracts business and entrepreneurs from around the South and United States much like the Super Bowl does each year, because the SEC Championship Game has become an event which is hosted in a very large and attractive city with Atlanta that is very conducive to both entertainment of clients/potential clients and for doing business.

4.  A game that because of its constant spot on the calendar and location in Atlanta creates an “event” that people and businesses can plan for far in advance which just creates that much more interest in the game

Besides being an annual event that brings together lots of different people to one place each year, that the SEC Championship Game is in Atlanta which his one of America’s great cities and has dozens of different things that fans can experience and businesses can do with their clients is one of the driving forces in making the great event that the SEC Championship Game has become in recent years.

From our personal perspective here at Coaches Hot Seat, we really look forward to attending the SEC Championship Game each year because we get to see friends and business associates that we often don’t see at other times during the year and we also know exactly where we are going to stay year-after-year and we know exactly what we are going to get from the SEC Conference, which is a high-quality event that never disappoints.

Yes, we agree completely with Roy Kramer on the Big Ten picking 1 spot for their Big Ten Championship Game and since we have been to all of the stadiums/cities mentioned in Teddy Greenstein’s article above if Jim Delany called us (not very likely!) we would tell Jim that hold the Big Ten Championship Game at…

Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana

 

 

The main reasons we would recommend Lucas Oil Stadium is that it is the closest set-up to what the SEC has with the Georgia Dome and World Congress Convention Center and that Lucas Oil is located near the downtown core of Indianapolis and thus there are lots of hotels nearby where the fans can easily walk to and from the game.  Throw in that the game would be played indoors which in Big Ten country in December should be a very important consideration if one wants to generate the largest crowd and interest possible and that Indianapolis is centrally located in the Big Ten area are two more good reasons for playing the game in Indy.  Also that the folks in Indy and at Lucas Oil Stadium already successfully put on lots of events and football games each year and that Indianapolis is like Atlanta a thriving and growing city and you have the perfect combination of what any conference would want in Lucas Oil Stadium and the Big Ten Championship Game. 

The indoor factor and being able to play without the weather interfering the game but more importantly the comfort of the fans of the teams and the fans/others that will attend the game cannot be overemphasized.  It’s usually pretty cold even in Atlanta in early December but people know that the SEC Championship Game is going to be played indoors and they also know that there are lots of indoor places nearby the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta where they can get out of the elements if necessary and that reality is one of the things that has driven the SEC title game forward in recent years.  Note that the ACC has had trouble in selling tickets for their championship game which has been caused by the ACC not building their title game into an “event” like the SEC has which brings together not only SEC fans but other folks that enjoy attending the game for a whole host of different reasons.  The ACC does not have an indoor facility in their area of the country (except the Georgia Dome, which is where we would move the ACC title game if the SEC would allow it.  What about a noon kickoff for the ACC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome and then the SEC Championship kicking off 3 hours after the ACC title game ends at the Georgia Dome!  Now that would be great and the Atlanta tourism folks would love it!) and they have not been able to draw a lot of the ACC fans that don’t have a team playing in the title game because they don’t see it for what the game should be, which should be a gathering of ACC fans, alums, media, etc. to celebrate the just ended regular season. 

Lucas Oil Stadium Jimmy.  Lucas Oil Stadium!

 

2010 Analysis Head Coaching Changes

We continue with Day 2 of the Coaches Hot Seat 2010 New Head Coaches Analysis with the second category of New Head Coaches.  That second category is….

Mediocre or Unknown hire.  We either think this hire is mediocre or we don’t know enough about this coach to have a strong opinion either way.

Vanderbilt

Robbie Caldwell for Bobby Johnson – If new Vanderbilt head coach Robbie Caldwell decides to get out of coaching he should know that he could make $25 K a week in Los Angeles comedy clubs doing exactly what he did at SEC Media Days in Thursday!  Those snobs and elitists in LA love laughing at people that don’t follow their obscene rules for life and Robbie could make a mint with them laughing at him and Caldwell laughing back and also all the way to the bank!  A few years ago about a dozen of us here at CHS loaded into a couple of limos and hit several comedy clubs in the LA area and we fell into conversation with a fairly well known comic later that night at a pool party that we Shanghaied our way into….

….and we were stunned to learn what one could make by packing in the crowds at LA comedy clubs.  As for Robbie Caldwell being the new head coach at Vandy, we haven’t a clue to what he will be able to do with the Commodores, but Bobby Johnson was looking at 2 to 4 wins in 2010 and that may be why Johnson is now no longer in the game!  Robbie Caldwell seems like just a good guy and a good ‘ole boy, but we would recommend to him that he find a way to get his Vandy players fired up and playing like crazy in a few games this year because he and his football team have NOTHING TO LOSE!  Good Luck to you Robbie Caldwell….Have fun and coach like this is your last year in the game…  (Memo to Robbie Caldwell:  If you need the number of a good agent that would have you booked quickly at some LA comedy clubs just drop us an email at info@coacheshotseat.com.  That “turkey” thing alone would be worth the price of admission just to see the LA folks go quiet with their mouths agape as the wondered if you were kidding or not.  You see most of these Westside LA folks think that chickens and turkeys just magically appear at the local Safeway stores and don’t have a clue to just how they actually “get” to market!   

East Carolina

Ruffin McNeill for Skip Holtz – It has been a tremendous rise for Ruffin McNeill over the past two years as he moved from the linebackers coach at Texas Tech, to the defensive coordinator at Tech, to the interim head coach that included a bowl win at Tech, and now the head football coach at his alma mater East Carolina.  McNeill stopped at 9 difference places as an assistant before arriving at Texas Tech 10 seasons ago with Mike Leach and now he gets the opportunity that most coaches want, a shot to prove himself as a head coach.  We don’t know a whole lot about Ruffin, but he seems to us as the type of coach that we would like to play for and send our kids to play for and McNeill just needs to turn his natural enthusiasm for the game into continuing the good work that Skip Holtz has done at ECU.  In 5 seasons at ECU Skip Holtz put up a pretty impressive 38 – 27 record including two C-USA conference titles and with that past winning comes pretty high expectations that McNeill will have to deal with as he makes the head coaching transition at ECU. If we had to guess on McNeill’s tenure with what little info we know about the man, we would predict success but winning in the C-USA is not an easy thing to do and that means Ruffin has his hands full as head towards his first season as a head coach.

Central Michigan

Dan Enos for Butch Jones – Dan Enos has dropped into one of the hottest coaching jobs in the country, with former Central Michigan head coaches Brian Kelly and Butch Jones putting up some gaudy win numbers and championships and that means the pressure will be on Enos right from the start of his first head coaching job.  In the last 4 seasons Central Michigan under Kelly and Jones CMU won 46 games and put up 3 MAC conference titles and the fans that we have spoken to this spring fully expect Enos to keep things rolling for the Chippewas.  Dan Enos has had a number of stops in his assistant coaching career, but his primary work has been with Mark Dantonio at Cincinnati and Michigan State over the past 6 years and Enos also played QB for Michigan State under George Perles.  Perles and Dantonio are two coaches that should have laid a very good foundation down for Enos and now we are all going to see if he can perform at a place that is now used to and expects to field a winning football team each and ever year.  Coach hard Dan!

San Jose State

Mike MacIntyre for Dick Tomey – Mike MacIntyre takes over one of the toughest jobs in I-A football with the San Jose State job and to display how tough of a job SJSU is, MacIntyre’s predecessor Dick Tomey put up a win/loss record of 25 – 35 in the previous 5 seasons and Tomey is a guy that put up a record of 158 – 110 – 7 in 24 seasons at Hawaii and Arizona.  San Jose State is a very difficult job for a number of reasons, but it is a place where there is an opportunity to mine the large number of very good high school/juco football players in the state of California that don’t end up BCS schools.  Jack Elway (John’s father) was the head coach at San Jose State from 1979 to 1983 and put up a record of 35 – 20 -1 including a few wins over Stanford and Coach Elway recruited a lot of the players from California that couldn’t get into the Pac-10 schools and convinced them that staying in state or in the SF Bay area and playing before family and friends would be a lot more fun than heading off to a school several hundred or thousands of miles away.  San Jose State sits in one of the largest cities in California in San Jose and the school and the campus should be conducive to recruiting more talent than SJSU has recruited in recent years and if MacIntyre wants to win some football games he will make hay or not on who he can recruit and keep in school.  Since Mike MacIntyre spent 6 seasons on David Cutcliffe’s staffs at Ole Miss and Duke we give him better than a 50 – 50 chance to be a success at San Jose State.

La. Monroe

Todd Berry for Charlie Weatherbie – Looking over Todd Berry’s assistant coaching career it looks like many that we see here at Coaches Hot Seat…

1983 1984 1985 1986-1988 1989-1990 1991 1992-1995 1996-1999 2000-2003 2004-2005 2006 2007-2009 2009-

Tennessee (TEs) Tulsa (WRs) Oklahoma State (QBs) Tennessee-Martin (OC/QBs) Mississippi St. (WRs) SE Missouri St. (OC/QBs) East Carolina (OC/RBs) Illinois State Army ULM (OC/QBs) Miami (FL) (QBs) UNLV (OC/QBs) ULM

….these days as college coaches end up at many different schools along the way as they work towards a head coaching job.  We know very little about Todd Berry as a coach, but we do know that La. Monroe is a very difficult place to field winning football teams and one can look at the record of his predecessor, Charlie Weatherbie’s record over the previous 7 seasons 31 – 51 to see this is not going to be an easy assignment.  Will Todd Berry win at La. Monroe?  We haven’t a clue but we wish him luck at a place that seems built to put head coaches on the Hot Seat!

Akron

Rob Ianello for JD Brookhart – Alum Rob Ianello takes over at Akron and he must have realized that since he left the school over 20 years ago his alma mater has put up a record of 100 – 146 – 3 which can’t be a very comforting thought.  Of course when you are talking about going back to the Jerry Faust days at Akron we are talking about a long time ago in the game of college football and it is the current perception of Akron as being a place that has a mediocre football program that will be one of Ianello’s biggest obstacles to success.  Ianello’s immediate predecessor, JD Brookhart put up record of 30 – 42 in 6 seasons with 1 MAC divisional title and only 2 winning seasons.  The task for Ianello is very clear, he must make Akron a perennial contender in the MAC conference and somehow get to Zips to a winning record every year which will open up postseason opportunities and more importantly drive-up interest in Akron football and the Zips athletic department.  We don’t envy Rob Ianello in what he faces at Akron because it really will take a game-changing like coach and approach, like Urban Meyer delivered to Bowling Green many years ago, to turn Akron into a winner and it is up to Ianello and Ianello alone to whether he can deliver the things that it will take to win at Akron.

Memphis

Larry Porter for Tommy West – We don’t know a lot about Larry Porter as a coach other than he spent 7 seasons on Les Miles’ staffs at Oklahoma State and LSU, but we do remember Larry Porter as being a very good running back in his playing days at Memphis in the early 1990s.  Everyone tells us that Porter is a very good running backs coach and a great recruiter and his recruiting skills is what will make or break his future at what is one of the toughest jobs in the country with Memphis Tigers football.  Yes, Memphis is a tough job, but it is a place where a coach has access to a tremendous amount of high school football talent within a 3 hour drive, but also has a large number of very good BCS schools that are recruiting those same players.  Porter will have to find the players that either do not academically qualify for BCS schools, underappreciated players or players that can be developed into college athletes that can play at the C-USA level.  Larry Porter does have that he grew up and played his college days in Memphis going for him and thus he should be able to connect with the local fans, alums, boosters and business community to try and raise the funds that will be critical to having the resources to build the facilities, recruit the players and field winning football teams.  If anyone can win at Memphis it should be Larry Porter and we wish him good luck.

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With SEC Media Days underway it can be said that the 2010 college football season is now underway and for the 3 rd year in a row, there really wasn’t any offseason to speak of.  We know that college football coaches have been going at it pretty hard for 11 months a year for a long time now, but now the media that cover the game are working their butts off year around also. 

As we always say:  Nothing wrong with working your butt off!

 

SEC Media Days

 

The SEC Media Days is truly a unique event and the passion of SEC football fans and the amount of media that cover the game in that part of the country are really unmatched anywhere else in the game and to that we say Bravo! to SEC fans!  The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover is our preferred place to stay when attending Alabama football games, because it is a great place to stay with a lot to do in the immediate vicinity and it is only a short jaunt down to Tuscaloosa on gameday and then back that night.  As always when there is something big going on in the game of college football, there is a CHS member nearby and we have one of our folks working quietly in the background at the Wynfrey and picking up lots of interesting info between trips to the bar and pool!  If you see someone drinking Anchor Steam Beer at the bar there you might be just be able to meet our CHS member on the scene!

 

Pat Haden new USC AD

 

It wasn’t a big surprise to us that USC moved to hire Pat Haden as the new AD for the Trojans, because there have been rumors flying around LA on a lot of things relative to Southern Cal since the NCAA put the hammer down on the USC athletic department.  We have run into Pat Haden a number of times over the years and of course Pat’s playing career with USC and the Los Angeles Rams is etched in our collective memories of all of us here at CHS.  As many people know, Pat Haden was a Rhoades Scholar and he spent a year at Oxford University before he played in the NFL.  We here at Coaches Hot Seat have worked with 15 to 20 Rhoades scholars during our working lives and our impression of these Rhoades folks is that they are very smart people but that some of them don’t have a lot of common sense.  Pat Haden has both high intelligence and common sense which has served him very well during his playing, business and broadcast careers and Haden will need both to deal with the plethora of problems now facing him at USC.

Overall we have a very positive view of Pat Haden and he certainly has carried on very successfully in life after his NFL career in both his business dealings and in his broadcast career.  We have thought in recent years that on the NBC Notre Dame football game broadcasts that Pat was either being muzzled (by someone at NBC) or that he was not being completely honest about what he really thought about the Notre Dame football team and its head coach(s).  As all of us here at CHS remember, Pat Haden was very aggressive and straight-forward with his color commentary comments when he was working for CBS with Ara Parseghian and Brent Musburger and later with Jim Nantz which really has made us wonder about his time at NBC.  Whether Haden was muzzled by NBC or he just didn’t want to rock the boat that comes with a TV network broadcasting the games of only one school, we noticed a big difference between Pat Haden pre-NBC Notre Dame football telecasts and his work at NBC covering the Irish games.  We have had the opportunity a few times in the last few years to ask Haden about that difference, but never quite in a place where we could do it and not be escorted out of the event/party by security, but it would be Damn interesting if one could get Haden out to dinner and see what he would say about his work covering Notre Dame at NBC….not that Pat would have told us or anyone else or that he will say anything controversial now that he is at USC!

As for Pat Haden being hired as the new USC AD we are of the opinion that Haden has a chance to right the ship at USC and to get control of some of the things that got out of control in recent years in Trojan-Land.  If there is one thing that we would be concerned about with Pat Haden is that Pat needs to make sure that he learns how to say “NO” even to people that he has known as friends and associates for years now.  Being a great athletic director is about a lot of things, but being able to say “No” at times and making sure that clear and definable goals for achievement and behavior are set for the coaches and employees of the athletic department is paramount for a winning athletic department.  The successful athletic director walks a very fine line between holding his coaches accountable and making sure that the coaches know that they have all the support he/she can possibly give them to achieve the goals set for their sports team.  At far too many college athletic departments the specific goals for the athletic teams (wins/losses, graduation rates, student-athlete behavior) is not spelled out clearly enough and the coaches far too often end up wondering if they are meeting expectations because the goals have not been spelled our clearly enough.  Holding coaches accountable for both on and off the field behavior is something Pat Haden has never done in his life and maintaining the important AD/coach relationship, especially with the USC football and basketball coaches will determine Pat’s ultimate success with the Trojans.

As to the other side of the AD business, the fans, alums and boosters at USC, Haden is widely connected across Los Angeles and around the country with USC folks and that should help Pat keep the dollars flowing that have flooded USC athletics in recent years.  Our USC friends are right now extremely disappointed with the departure of Pete Carroll, the hiring of Lane Kiffin, the revelations and penalties delivered by the NCAA and the general arrogant approach taken by many in the USC athletic department (and USC administration) in recent years.  Pat Haden does not have to kiss the asses of the USC fans, alumni and boosters he just needs to make sure that the USC athletic department returns their calls and works with people that want to support USC and its athletic department, because in recent years we have heard an earful from USC folks that they have often felt like they weren’t appreciated by the people in Heritage Hall.  USC has an incredibly strong alumni base that extends from one end of the United States to the other and they want to support their school and sports teams and Haden needs to make sure his athletic department employees find ways for them to do just that.

 

We believe that the hiring of Pat Haden is a positive move for USC and our only recommendation to Pat is that he needs to keep a laser beam focus on getting the USC athletic department into full compliance with the NCAA, making sure all of the USC coaches know completely what is expected of them and their student-athletes both on and off the field, and serving the ultimate customers of USC, which are the fans, alumni and boosters that are the people that pay a lot of the bills for USC athletics.  Our USC friends that have been concerned with things at Heritage Hall for years now and have been apoplectic since Pete Carroll left, Lane Kiffin was hired and the NCAA dropped the hammer on the Trojans are breathing a little easier today, but they are also expecting Pat Haden to step up to the plate and run the USC athletic department in a strong, straight-forward and ethical way.

We will keep readers of this blog updated on what we are hearing from out USC friends as thing develop at Heritage Hall in the coming months and years……Yes, this is going to be a very interesting time at USC (see below on Lane Kiffin).

 

Agents and College Student-Athletes

There is not a lot we can add to what several head football coaches have said in recent days when it comes to agents contacting and trying to influence college student-athletes, because the coaches are on the front-lines of trying keep these agents away from their student-athletes and teams.  20+ years ago a few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were around college athletes that ended up being high draft picks in the NFL and NBA and those athletes head coaches were incredibly strict and straight-forward with them about the consequences of interacting with agents.  Two members of CHS remember well playing pick-up basketball games in the summers on a university campus in the Los Angeles area with future NBA players and there were always agents in attendance at those games and it seems like nothing has changed in those 20 years.  Yes, agents are always around when there is money to be made and that means coaches need to incredibly vigilant as it pertains to agents and their desire to make $$$$$$ off of college athletes.

One incident remembered by a CHS member from 20+ years ago that stands out was an agent approaching one of the for-sure future NBA players during a break in the pick-up basketball game with future NBA player saying to the agent before he could even hand over a business card or start his spiel:

“Don’t even try.  I talk to you and my playing career at “X” is over so just get away from me.”

Later when asked about this future NBA player’s comment the future NBA player said that his coach had made it very clear that “ANY dealings with an agent” including even talking to an agent would be get the player in trouble and put at risk his playing time, membership on the team and status at the school. 

The CHS member does also remember that at those pick-up basketball games that there seemed to always be a member of the school’s athletic department in attendance who was well known to the guys, both student-athletes and just members of the general public that played in the games.  It never dawned on the CHS member until years later that maybe the athletic department person was keeping an eye on things around that pick-up games and also in local bars and restaurants that the student-athletes frequented, because the CHS member remembers having drinks with this fellow many times at the just off-campus bars.  It never hurts to have eyes on things and having people look into what student-athletes are up to in their time away from school and practice/games and from the sound of things the folks at USC are about to put down some markers for their athletes that will have them on notice 24 hours a day and from our perspective that approach is long overdue in college athletics. 

As for the NFL and collegiate athletics/NCAA getting together on finding a way to punish agents that cross the line with student-athletes, if the professional leagues are willing to come up with some rules that will punish agents that don’t follow the rules with college athletes then more the power to everyone willing to go with that approach.  From our prospective though, college coaches need to really amp up not only the counseling of student-athletes about the problems and dangers that come with interacting with agents, but also make it very clear to all the athletes that any contact with agents or their representatives will be dealt with severely and WILL impact their membership on their sports team and even continued attendance at the school as a member of the athletic department and team.

The Rule on Agents at College Athletic Departments should be very simple: 

You, the student-athlete, interacts with an agent or his representative then YOU ARE DONE!

….and the coaches and athletic departments need to back that up that YOU ARE DONE by tossing any student-athlete that is involved with an agent off the team immediately and out of the school if possible.  If schools and athletic departments will just hold their student-athletes accountable and make it clear that there will be ZERO TOLERANCE for any involvement with agents this mess of Agents and College Athletes will be cleaned up because student-athletes will know they will no longer be allowed to cross the line without getting severe punishment.

 

 

Analysis of New 2010 Head Coaching Hires

Unlike in past years when analyzing the new head coaching hires we are not going to rank the new college head coaches from 1 to last on best and worst hires, but instead we are going to this year put the new head coaches into categories.

The 4 Categories will be:

Home Run Hire!  We are expecting great things from these new head coaches.

Solid Hire.  A solid coaching hire by the school and we expect the coach to win consistently and build a strong program at the school.

Mediocre or Unknown hire.  We either think this hire is mediocre or we don’t know enough about this coach to have a strong opinion either way.

What the Hell were they thinking?  We have no idea what these people were thinking when they hired this new head coach.  In other words, a disastrous hire!

Counting Bobby Johnson’s recent departure from Vanderbilt, there were 23 coaching changes for the 2010 college football season and we start today working from the bottom up with the coach that falls into the category….

What the Hell were they thinking?  We have no idea what these people were thinking when they hired this new head coach.  In other words, a disastrous hire!

 

USC

Lane Kiffin for Pete Carroll – There are certain things in US history where an event is so shocking that you will never forget where you were at when you first heard the news, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, the Berlin Wall coming down, 9/11, etc…, but for many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat the word that Lane Kiffin was being hired by USC to replace Pete Carroll certainly ranks right up there with the more shocking stories that we have heard in our lives.  One member of CHS was in Santa Monica on business and having dinner with an USC alum when their Blackberry’s started buzzing with the message that Kiffin was about to be hired by USC.  The CHS member recalls that the USC alum picked up his Blackberry, saw the story that Kiffin was to be the new head coach at USC and then promptly excused himself to go to the bathroom (To throw up?  The CHS member never got the full story, but he did report that when the USC alum got back to the table he had the waiter bring a “Maker’s Mark neat” which he downed immediately once it go to the table.  The USC alum then told the waiter to bring both of them “Sam Adams Boston Lager…bottles every 10 minutes until we tell you to stop.”  Yes, they took a cab home once the USC alum’s wife started calling to find out where they were at!)

No, we haven’t a clue to what USC was thinking when they hired Lane Kiffin, especially with the NCAA bearing down on the Trojans athletic department and knowing some of the “things” that went on with Kiffin at Tennessee.  If we all go back a few years to when Lane Kiffin was on the staff at USC when Norm Chow was still running the Trojans offense (before 2004), if someone would have told any of us that Lane Kiffin would have been the head coach at USC in 2010 the person making that statement would have been taken to the loony bin.  Move ahead to Kiffin’s tenure with the Oakland Raiders (2007-2008), if someone would have said that Lane Kiffin would be the USC head football coach in 2010that person would have been put on heavy medication and under 24 hour suicide watch, because clearly that would have been a person that had lost his mind.  Move ahead to December 2009 when the word came down that after getting run out of Oakland it was announced that Lane Kiffin had been hired by Tennessee to replace Phil Fulmer was yet another stunning moment which told us here at CHS that the folks in Knoxville had lost their minds.  That brings us to January 12, 2010 when the CHS member and his USC friend alum are having dinner in Santa Monica and here comes the word that yet another institution, this time the USC football program, had hired Lane Kiffin as their head coach and you have a series of events with Lane Kiffin that still defy belief today.

Very simply, if Lane Kiffin was a complete straight arrow, if we thought he had unquestioned integrity, if we believed that Kiffin acted with class and respect towards the game of college football and all that has comer before him…..

There is not a chance in Hell we would hire him to coach a Pee-Wee 75lb football team, forget about the head coaching job at a place like USC.

If you include in Kiffin’s behavior going back to the arrogance we first saw when he arrived at USC and the way he behaved and coached at Oakland and Tennessee, then we have to wonder….

Do these folks at USC know Up from Down?

Question:  Would anyone here at CHS hire Lane Kiffin to wash our cars?

Answer:  Not a chance in Hell because we do not TRUST Lane Kiffin.

Since Lane Kiffin is now the head football coach at USC we are now working under the assumption that the people involved in that decision, including new USC AD Pat Haden, disagree with us completely AND vehemently on our opinion of Lane Kiffin…..

Good, we all now know where we stand and where the folks at USC including Pat Haden stand.

Luckily because USC and Lane Kiffin must play the games we are all going to find out who was Right and who was Wrong about Lane Kiffin, with the only problem being that USC making the wrong decision in this spot can set their football program back a decade.

We shall all see….

Tomorrow, the next Category….

Mediocre or Unknown hire.  We either think this hire is mediocre or we don’t know enough about this coach to have a strong opinion either way.

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Bobby Johnson Conversation Continues….

One of the great things about the Internet is that anyone with a network connection can get access to an unlimited amount of news and information from all over the world and the same goes for getting info on the great game of college football.  Before we moved to a subscription based model here at Coaches Hot Seat in 2008 we really had no idea how many visitors to our website were from members of the US military serving overseas, but now we have subscribers in the military from all over the world including many that are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

 

After Bobby Johnson stepped down from the head coaching job at Vanderbilt last week saying that “football consumes your life,” we heard from a number of our subscribers in the US military that were somewhat indignant that someone coaching a sport on a college campus in the safety of America could be so completely overwhelmed with his job that he would quit right before the season was about to get underway.  Here was one comment we got:

 ”If Bobby Johnson thinks coaching football at Vanderbilt is tough, maybe he should join US troops here in Afghanistan thousands of miles away from our families and homes for months at a time while fighting a war against an enemy that is often invisible to us.  We can assure Bobby Johnson that he would find out very quickly that there are things that “consume one’s life” and then there are the hardships that brave Americans are willing to deal with 24 hours a day to defend our country.”

Well said.  Very well Damn said…and thank you for your grand and unselfish service to our Great Country.

We don’t really have a problem with Bobby Johnson stepping down at Vanderbilt because he thought that his heart and soul were no longer committed to the job, but there is a right time to leave a football program and there is a wrong time and the middle of July is the wrong time as everyone that knows anything about the game of college football understands completely.  Retire or get away from coaching if you like Bobby Johnson, but how about doing it during the time period when other head coaches step down, either just before the end of the season or just after the season is over.  

It seems though that having one’s life “consumed by football” was not the only thing driving Bobby Johnson to leave Vanderbilt but because of some things that went against Johnson during SEC football games. 

Tony Barnhart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution updated his blog after talking to Bobby Johnson late last week:

Updated:  Vandy, SEC lose a lot as Johnson walks away

Note: I talked to Bobby Johnson shortly after Noon on Thursday and updated this blog.

“It was Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005 and Bobby Johnson was not a happy camper. The truth is he was pretty damn mad.

The Saturday night before Johnson’s team had lost one of those gut-wrenchers that perennial underdogs like Vanderbilt always seem to lose: The Commodores, led by Jay Cutler and Earl Bennett, came up on the short end of a 49-42, double overtime game at Florida.

Vanderbilt was in position to win the game in regulation when Cutler threw a touchdown pass to Bennett with 54 seconds left to bring the Commodores to within one, 35-34. Before the score Johnson had already made up his mind that he was going to go for two points and the win.

But guess what? On the touchdown play Bennett was called for excessive celebration. It was a bogus call. After the game Johnson called it stupid. But stupid or not it pushed the ball back 15 yards so Vanderbilt had to kick the extra point to tie. Florida won the game in the second overtime.

I watched the game in New York where I was working for CBS. By the time I got back to Atlanta on Sunday Johnson had looked at the film and was steaming. I sent him an email because I thought the call was just horrible. He wrote me back and on the record would only say that his team was “disappointed because we had the opportunity to win.”

He shared a lot of thoughts off the record which I am not at liberty to disclose. Let’s just say that the head coach at Vanderbilt felt his team was not treated fairly on the road.”

Well, CRY US A RIVER BOBBY JOHNSON!

Tony Barnhart continues….

“It is an unusual time to walk away from coaching, to be sure. The first reaction from people around the league was concern that health might be an issue. It was not, said Johnson who, at 59, is in great shape and still hits a golf ball nine miles.

But to listen to Johnson’s press conference was to get little clues.  Over the course of eight seasons there were a lot of losses like the one to Florida in 2005. Johnson lost 66 games in eight years at Vanderbilt. Twenty-six of those losses were by seven points or less. That’s a lot of heartache.

“Football is not life but it’s a way of life and it consumes your life,” Johnson said. “You only have so many years to live and you want to see it a different way. In fact, I do. Some guys want to coach with one foot in the coffin. But I want to do some other things.”

I don’t have to tell you that Vanderbilt is a tough job. It’s a small, private school with high academic standards in a conference that has won four straight national championships and five of the last seven. Only three coaches in the history of the school (Dan McGugin, Art Guepe, Johnson) have held the job for eight or more years. It can be argued that at this point in history, when the SEC is so dominant, the Vanderbilt football job is more difficult than it has ever been.”

Tony, Tony, Tony!  Oh don’t say it…..now Tony is CRYING US A RIVER!

Barnhart continues and here is where the real selfishness of Bobby Johnson comes in, because when you decide to stay on in a job so that you handcuff your administration and bosses so they do not have time to hire a coach because the season is about to begin, then you get into major league selfishness.

“And about the timing of the decision? My take is that after all of those tough years together, Johnson felt his staff deserved a chance to carry on without him.  If he had left last December that probably doesn’t happen.  Now Caldwell and this staff have a year to prove to Vanderbilt that they can get the job done.

“They were owed that,” Johnson said.”

Oh, that’s Rich!  No Bobby, no one is owed anything in this life!  Maybe some Mark Twain is apt this spot after Bobby Johnson stuck it to the Vanderbilt administration, to his players, to the recruits he just signed in February and to the fans of Vanderbilt who had their head coach run out of them just before the 2010 season was about to begin.

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you nothing.  It was here first.”  Mark Twain

Maybe they don’t teach Twain at Clemson, Furman and Vanderbilt!We are calling Bullshit on Bobby Johnson quitting his football team just before the 2010 football season was about to begin.  Let’s face facts:  Bobby Johnson couldn’t handle the heat of the Vanderbilt job so he hit the road Jack and don’t he come back no more, no more, no more, no more, hit the road Bobby, and don’t come back no more!

The Great Ray Charles

 

Lots of Crying Over Vanderbilt Athletics in Recent Days

One thing that has dominated many of the stories about Bobby Johnson quitting his head coaching job at Vanderbilt just before the season was about to start (yes, that is what he did!), is all the reporters and columnists crying about Vanderbilt being a small, academically elite school, that just doesn’t have a chance to compete in the mighty SEC.

CRY US A RIVER AGAIN!

To this also we are calling Bullshit on, but if you really want to get to heart of the problems with Vanderbilt athletics it is that the folks running the school haven’t a clue to how one would combine a strong academic mission with strong athletic teams.  If there is anyone at Vanderbilt that believes that is impossibility, we present to you Clueless Morons…

STANFORD UNIVERSITY 

 

What is it, 16 STRAIGHT DIRECTORS’ CUPS for the best I-A college athletic department in the country?  Why yes, we believe we are right about that!

Is there anyone at Vanderbilt that believes the academics at Vandy are better than they are at Stanford? 

OH, WE ARE LAUGHING HARD ABOUT THAT ONE!

Maybe we should go back a few years at Vanderbilt to find the hands of one of the Biggest Candy Asses in America today, Gordon Gee, the current president at Ohio State, who was spinning his BS at Vandy.  It was Gordon “I love to put on a bow tie in the morning” Gee that disbanded the Vanderbilt athletic department in 2003.  Here’s the AP story on the tragedy and the stupidity of disbanding the Vanderbilt athletic department:

“As president of Vanderbilt University and four other prominent schools before that, Gordon Gee perceived an unhappy trend: Student-athletes were drifting away from the core of university life. They lived, ate and studied in a jock bubble.

Sure, most went to class. But they missed out on virtually every other important college experience, from studying abroad to Greek life.

Five years ago this week, Gee decided he’d had enough. At loggerheads with his athletic director, he summoned his top administrators and stunned them with the news: He planned to disband Vanderbilt’s athletic department, and fold it into the division of student life.”

Uhhh……Gordo “I feel naked without a bow tie” Gee:  If you thought that the athletic department at Vanderbilt should have been disbanded then WHY THE HELL HAVEN’T YOU DONE IT AT OHIO STATE?  What’s good for Vandy is bad for the Buckeyes?  Or is your logic, which supports the Bogus BCS, so twisted that you don’t know Up from Down?  We are going with the latter!

Very good Damn question!  Gordon Gee has been the president at Ohio State since October 2007 and it seems to us that Ohio State still had an AD and athletic department!  What is it Gordo?  Lost your nerve?  Busy buying bowties?  It has to be something!

Not that we would expect anything to be remotely consistent with Gordon Gee, because Gordon Gee is one of these BCS Lovers that actually stands for a Bogus postseason system in college football that treats one group of Americans in an unequal way to another group of Americans.  The BCS is about as UN-AMERICAN as one can get in our great country, where multiple college football teams can end the season with the same or undefeated records and not have a chance to win the National Championship on the field of play.  Could then be anything more American, than a system that doesn’t allow a sports championship to be won on the field of play?  No, we can’t have teams playing each other in college in the postseason in a playoff tournament, because that wouldn’t be “academic.”  Oh, that’s a Hoot!

Uhhhh….Gordo:  Every college sport on the Ohio State campus decides their National Champion on the field of play, except for football of course….

Not that Gordon Gee would understand anything relative to how the Real World works or the Principles of the American Republic, because the man has worked his entire life on a college campus! 

Yes, that was a great decision by Gordon Gee to disband the Vanderbilt athletic department because it has done such great things for the Vandy sports teams…

Let’s see here, Stanford finished FIRST in the Directors’ Cup Standings, Florida was Second, Virginia was Third….where is Vanderbilt?

Oh, there they are!  59 th!  Behind Villanova and Cornell!

Yes, there really is not limit to the damage that the BCS Lovers can do to our country if they get their hands on things, but then All Americans should count themselves lucky that the BCS Lovers have such a small amount of influence on American society. 

After all, if the BCS Boys were running the country everyone would gather together at Sunset each night and hold hands and sing Kumbaya and for sure all the young American men and women would not earn championships on the field of play….and certainly not be in college athletic departments either!

On a very personal level it is our opinion here at Coaches Hot Seat that if the likes of Gordon Gee every gained power in America they would indeed destroy the country because Gee is just like others in US history that have believed one group of Americans are not equal to others just like the football players at Boise State, TCU, Utah, BYU, Cincinnati, do not have the same rights as the players at “BCS” schools.  No, that is not American.  We believe in the Declaration of Independence here at Coaches Hot Seat.  One can only wonder what Gordon Gee believes in…..

Memo to Gordon Gee:  You stand for the very worst in the history of America and that you are a liberal who claims to stand for liberal ideas make your hypocrisy even worse, not that your giant ego gives two rips about anything but your own rear-end. 

If you stand and support the BCS then you support clowns like Gordon Gee so think about that fact the next time someone is spouting Bullshit about the BCS, because it folks like Gordon Gee that have not worked a day in their adult lives in the Real World that come up with such Bullshit ideas like the Bogus BCS.

That is our opinion and since we are Americans we are Damn proud to say exactly what we think about people of Gee’s ilk and that we can do that is what makes America….America.

Yes, just so you don’t forget here is the BS of the BCS straight from the horse’s mouth:

If you support that Absolute Nonsense being spouted by Bill Hancock please drop your passport at the border and head for Cuba because your Bullshit ideas would be celebrated in Communist Cuba!

Yes, you have Americans that believe in the Principles of the American Republic, starting with the Principle that All Men (and Women) Are Created Equal or you are a Damn Communist that believes Communistic Dribble!

What is it?  Are you an American or a Communist?  If you believe in the BCS, in our opinion, you are a Communist!

Oh, you say that even Communist Fidel Castro sends the Cuban National Baseball team to play in competitions where the championship of the tournament is won and decided on the field of play? 

Yes, the BCS Bastards are EVER WORSE THAN FIDEL CASTRO!

Phil Steel’s Coaches Hot Seat Top 13 for 2010

We read anything and everything we can get our hands on relating to college football here at Coaches Hot Seat, we are always very interested to see Phil Steele’s thoughts about this great game and we read with great interest his 2010 Coaches Hot Seat Top 13 List.  Here they are:

Phil Steele’s 2010 Coaches Hot Seat Top 13 List

1.  Rich Rodriguez, Michigan

2.  Ron Zook, Illinois

3.  Les Miles, LSU

4.  Dan Hawkins, Colorado

5.  Tim Brewster, Minnesota

6.  Todd Dodge, North Texas

7.  Ralph Friedgen, Maryland

8.  Bill Lynch, Indiana

9.  Tom O’Brien, NC State

10.  Doug Martin, Kent State

11.  Dennis Erickson, Arizona State

12.  Steve Roberts, Arkansas State

13.  Mike Sherman, Texas A&M

While we certainly agree with Phil Steele that all of the above head coaches are feeling a certain amount of heat on their rear-end, we would exclude a few of the above and change the order a bit.  The Coaches Hot Seat Top 13 Coaches on the Hot Seat as of right now is…

1.  Dan Hawkins, Colorado

2.  Ralph Friedgen, Maryland

3.  Mike Sherman, Texas A&M

4.  Rich Rodriguez, Michigan

5.  Lane Kiffin, USC

6.  Dennis Ericson, Arizona State

7.  Ron Zook, Illinois

8.  Greg McMackin, Hawaii

9.  Tim Brewster, Minnesota

10.  Paul Wulff, Washington State

11.  Todd Dodge, North Texas

12.  Bill Lynch, Indiana

13.  Bob Toledo, Tulane

Looking over Phil Steele’s Hot Seat list and listening to conversation around the country, but especially in SEC country, is the Hot or Not Seat of Les Miles at LSU and Mark Richt at Georgia. 

Let’s look at Richt and Miles’ win/loss conference records:

Mark Richt, Georgia

Overall Record:  90-27 (.769)

at Georgia:  90-27  (.769)

in SEC:  50-22  (.694)

2 SEC Conference Titles in 9 seasons

4 SEC Eastern Division Co or Outright Titles

9 Bowl Games – 7-2 bowl record

2 Time SEC Coach of the Year

Biggest Eyesore:  2-7 record against Florida

Les Miles, LSU

Overall Record:  79-36 (.687)

at LSU:  51-15  (.773)

in SEC:  27-13  (.675)

1 National Championship

1 SEC Conference Title in 6 seasons

2 SEC Eastern Division Titles

8 bowl games – 5-3 bowl record

Biggest Eyesore:  Only 8-8 in SEC over past two seasons.

The Question:  Is Mark Richt or Les Miles on the Hot Seat?

We would say NO for both as the 2010 season gets underway, but both coaches could find themselves under a tremendous amount of pressure if they get off to bad starts and Florida and Alabama maintain their dominance of the SEC.

Could either Miles or Richt be fired after the 2010 season?  Yes, both could be fired if they ended up with losing records with Richt probably having a little more slack to play with, but good to average seasons will see both men back at their schools in 2011.

Wildcard Happenings with Richt and Miles:  We don’t really expect Mark Richt to do anything beyond just continue to coach at Georgia until they ask him to leave or he retires, but Les Miles might very well be tempted by the Michigan job if it opens up again, whether Rich Rodriguez is fired at Michigan or Rodriguez takes a job at another school.  Which school might Rodriguez leave Michigan for?  Well, there are plenty of schools out there that would hire Rich Rodriguez based upon his coaching record at West Virginia while also keeping mind that Rich Rod wasn’t the best fit in Ann Arbor.  Just look at Phil Steele’s and Coaches Hot Seat’s Coaches Hot Seat Top 13 Lists to find some schools where Rodriguez might land in December 2010.  Which gets us back to Michigan bringing one of their own home to coach the Wolverines with Les Miles.  Yes, “it’s definitely doable.”

Who would get the LSU job if Miles headed off to Michigan you ask?  Well, let’s just say Texas might not have a “Coach-in-waiting” any longer if the LSU job opens up!

Not that any of the current SEC head coaches want to see Muschamp at LSU!

A reminder of what really matters

Tom Stienstra, the Outdoors writer for the San Francisco Chronicle who is one Helluva Outdoorsman and Writer, wrote a great piece on Sunday in the SF Chronicle about what really matters in life:

“In a flash, your world can be shattered. You never see it coming.

That moment came this past week for my family: In Afghanistan, my nephew, Gary Davis, was driving a seven-ton military truck when a roadside bomb exploded beneath him and flipped the truck. The soldier on his right was killed.

Three others were severely injured.

When Gary was rescued, he was unconscious but alive, bleeding heavily. Medics had difficulty locating his rare blood type but tracked it down and saved his life.

At the hospital, doctors amputated Gary’s lower legs, then stabilized him for spinal fractures in the lower back and neck.

The best news: no brain damage. At midweek, Gary regained coherence in a hospital in Germany and phoned his parents, Monte and Nancy. Gary’s positive spirit shone through, said Monte, who provided details of the event. He said Gary is already looking ahead with optimism to a full life: “His attitude is amazing.”

In a catastrophe, you realize your family and friends provide safe harbor, and that your health is a vital link to a future with hope.

There’s a lesson here for those who love the outdoors. For the greatest benefits from the outdoor experience, no matter what your pursuits, connect these three elements: adventure, friends/family and health. That’s the secret.

And do it now. Grab life when you have a chance. You don’t always get paid back in the future for sacrifices you’re making now.

One of my longtime pals, Dan Furniss, a college roommate, fishing buddy and by profession a lawyer, one of the top litigators in America — he helped win a $1.1 billion antitrust settlement from Microsoft — never seemed to have enough time. His life was always packed and overflowing, undertaking the equivalent of what several people might do, all the time. Last fall he told me how much he loved his wife and family, how he wanted to travel with them, take part in adventures, but he wasn’t sure if he could afford to quit working so much.

So we planned a fishing trip for spring, and Dan said he’d try to figure out how to get away from his law office for a day or two. But in February, at 58, he had a heart attack and died. Again, like the first call about Gary, it was devastating.

You think you have all the time in the world, then you find out you don’t.

There is no future payback. There is only the now. Today is not a dress rehearsal but rather the only sure thing we all have.”

Amen to that Tom!  For those of us here at Coaches Hot Seat that spend a lot of time in the great outdoors and out in some of the great wild country of America and cherish our daily trips out of the office even if it is for a quick boat ride or hike, Tom’s writings are music to our ears.

Tom concludes his column by writing:

“Therefore, with those long odds, consider every day alive a gift.

In the same light, honor yourself. People who hike, bike or exercise three times a week and generally cut out the bad habits will live 14 years longer than those who do not, according to a study.

Mountain climber Hans Florine dropped me a line this past week and passed along this adage: “If you don’t make time for exercise now, make time for illness later.”

Which gets us back to the core premise: Grab life now. Share adventures with people you care for. Get healthy.

These are the greatest rewards of the outdoors.”

“Grab life now.”  No truer words have ever been written.

Tom’s above Sunday column, A reminder of what really matters, will not be available to non-SF Chronicle subscribers until later this week, but Tom’s past columns are always great reading.

Tom Stienstra, San Francisco Chronicle

The British Open, the American Century Celebrity Championship at Lake Tahoe and the Tour de France

The British Open was great fun to watch even though one had to go down to 7 th place to find the first American player, with Phil Michelson and Tiger Woods just not getting it done when it really counted at St. Andrews.

Clearly, whether Tiger Woods would admit it or not, Woods’ is still struggling a bit with his golf swing and with the fallout from all the off-the-golf course stuff in his life.  Tiger Woods has now gone 7 majors that he played in (he skipped the last 2 majors in 2008 because of knee surgery) without a win which is not quite to the 12 major winless streak that Jack Nicklaus suffered through between 1967 and 1970.  Jack Nicklaus was a little younger, 27 to Tiger’s 33, when his winless major streak started and Jack was just playing bad golf, not dealing with a whole host of personal issues that have been swirling around Tiger since last Thanksgiving.

Tiger Woods now has won 14 professional majors to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major wins and we have no doubt that Tiger will catch and pass Nicklaus once he gets his personal life in order and his golf swing refined a bit more.  Tiger has at least 10 years of playing golf a very high level which is 40 major opportunities and we would bet a lot of money if we were bettors that he can win 10 percent of the majors he plays in over the next decade.  To this point Tiger Woods has played in 53 major golf championships since he turned pro in 1997 and he has won 14 or 26.4 percent of those tournaments.   Wow!

We hope everyone got to watch the American Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe yesterday on NBC Sports because great fun was had by the CHS members that were out on the golf course…and beach!  Billy Joe Tolliver destroyed the field at the Edgewood Golf Course with some incredible golf and as always the level of golf played by some of the athletes is something to see.  Although there are a few of us here at CHS that would love the chance to play Tony Romo on the golf course…..looks like Tony can be gotten to if you throw a few needles his way!

As for Charles Barkley….Uhhhhhh, Chuck…..what about bowling?  No, then we couldn’t go to the American Celebrity Golf Championship and give Chuck a hard time each year!

Memo to Charles Barkley:  Forget Hank Haney!  Just drop us an email here at CHS and we will meet you in Vegas for some serious golf lessons and no, you will not be hitting ball after ball on the driving range!  It is our opinion here at Coaches Hot Seat that the problem with your golf game is entirely mental and we have a trick or two that we can teach you on the mental side of the game of golf.  Yes, some serious shock treatment is in order for Barkley’s golf game and no, what you have been doing doesn’t feed the bulldog!  A few holes with CHS and your golf game would be transformed!

The Tour de France continues on the Versus channel and the bicycle riders are now in the Pyrenees Mountains in the south of France and many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat are up early in the morning watching CNBC’s Squawk Box on one TV and the Tour de France on the other.

Sadly, Lance Armstrong has dropped way down the overall standings and is slopping his way all the way to Paris and Lance is lucky that no one from Coaches Hot Seat is there in France to chew Armstrong’s butt out! 

Come on Lance Armstrong…..GET OFF  YOUR BUTT!

Thanks again to everyone at Versus and French TV for doing a great job broadcasting/covering the Tour de France. 

Note on bicycle riding:  If you want to get your butt in shape jump on a bicycle every day and ride for 10 or so miles.  Throw in a few hills and you can really burn some calories and get yourself into shape, just be Damn careful if you are riding on roads. 

One of our favorite rides here at Coaches Hot Seat is to ride around Lake Tahoe in one day which is about 72 miles of beautiful scenery and plenty of places to jump in the Lake and cool off! 

We here at Coaches Hot Seat have a very simple plan to bike around Lake Tahoe:  Start very early around 6AM, bike until lunch and stop for wings and beer, get back on the bikes to sweat the beer out, stop for a “nature break” a few times to also help get rid of the beer, end the day at a restaurant on the Lake that serves very cold beer and a place where our wives can come pick us up and take us and the bikes home!

Have a great week!

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Bobby Johnson – Ride (Flies) Like the Wind

There have been a lot of stories singing the praises of the now former Vanderbilt head football coach Bobby Johnson and we agree with all the comments about Johnson the man (a very good man he is) and some of the comments on the job he did at Vanderbilt (only a little above average in our mind), but leaving one’s football team so close to the season just doesn’t sit right with us. 

Bobby Johnson said at his press conference on Wednesday:

“Football is not life, but it’s a way of life, and it consumes your life,” Johnson said. “You only have so many years to live, and you want to see a different way, at least I do. Some guys will coach until one foot is in the coffin, but I want to do some other things.”

OK…..well if you believe that Bobby on July 14, 2010 then we are betting you thought the very same thing on January 10 or February 10 of this year and that is when you should have held a press conference and walked away from your football team, not in the middle of July. 

We are a big believer in the importance of pursuing one’s Happiness in the very short life that we are given, but if you don’t want to coach, then get out at an appropriate time so your bosses can conduct a full and thorough search for your successor.  We are guessing, no we know, that Bobby Johnson knew that being a college head coach can “consume your life” a long time ago, and from where we sit that Johnson wasn’t fully prepared to coach the 2010 season is something he should have dealt with several months ago, especially before he signed another recruiting class at Vanderbilt that surely thought that Johnson would be their head coach for several seasons not just the upcoming one.

Let’s say you are the Captain of a US Naval Ship that is in the Red Sea on the way to the Persian Gulf and Desert Storm and you decide that the US Navy consumes your life and that you need to do something else?  Uhhh…, not quite, and that is why there is a BIG difference between being a college football coach and serving in the US military.  Bobby Johnson can pack it in with the season only a few weeks away, but if you are leaving a US Naval Ship on the way to battle you are probably going out horizontal.  Not that there were a few squirrely one’s that didn’t try like Hell to get out of their duty to their country mind you (One idiot we recall “accidently” took a sledge hammer to his wrist which the Doc quickly set and then sent him back to work!).

As has been said and written by many people in the last 24 hours, a College Hall of Fame coach would have trouble winning football games at Vanderbilt, at least the way things have been approached by the folks at Vandy in the past.  If we were one of the decision makers at Vanderbilt we would certainly put on our schedule a trip to Stanford to see what Jim Harbaugh has going on The Farm, or a trip to Chicago to see the folks at Northwestern and see what Pat Fitzgerald has cooking with the NU football program.  Vanderbilt can become a winning football program, even in the SEC conference, but not with its current approach that just undermines what a very good coach could do at Vandy while still not undermining the academics of the school in any way.  Will Vanderbilt go out and hire a coach that can win on the football field and still hold to the high academic standards at the school?  We would guess NO, because we don’t think there is anyone at Vanderbilt that has a clue to what it really takes to run an athletic department (Oh, that’s right Vanderbilt disbanded their athletic department!  Yes, a very stupid idea, unless Vandy is little more than a Plato debating society and if that is so then they should drop all scholarship sports and join the Ivy League!) that can win championships in intercollegiate athletics.

Make a note to ourselves:  The US Navy should not hire Bobby Johnson to be the Captain of a US Naval Ship because Captain cannot jump ship on the way to battle.  If a Captain is going to jump ship or give up his command then he/she had better Damn do it long before you put out to sea and Vandy football being on 7 weeks to its first game is OUT AT SEA!

Good Luck to you Bobby Johnson!

Review of Coaches Hot Seat Analysis of the 2009 New Head Coach Hirings

Before we get to fully evaluating the New Head Coaching Hires for the 2010 season, let’s quickly look back at what Coaches Hot Seat thought of the 2009 Hires.  Below are the CHS Rankings of the 2009 New Head Coaching Hires followed by their 2009 season record

Ranking 22 Head Coaching Changes 2008-09

(Coaches Hot Seat Blog Analysis of Hirings)

    1.  Dave Christensen, Wyoming – 7-6

    2.  Dan Mullen, Mississippi State – 5-7

    3.  Rich Ellerson, Army – 5-7

    4.  Dabo Swinney, Clemson – 9-5

    5.  Brady Hoke, San Diego State – 4-8

    6.  Steve Sarkisian, Washington – 5-7

    7.  Doug Marrone, Syracuse – 4-8

    8.  Danny Hope, Purdue – 5-7

    9.  Mike Locksley, New Mexico – 1-11

    10.  Ron English, Eastern Michigan – 0-12

    11.  Mike Haywood, Miami (OH) – 1-11

    12.  DeWayne Walker, New Mexico State – 3-10

    13.  Chip Kelly, Oregon – 10-3

    14.  Paul Rhoads, Iowa State – 7-6

    15.  Gene Chizik, Auburn – 8-5

    16.  Gary Anderson, Utah State – 4-8

    17.  Frank Spaziani, Boston College – 8-5

    18.  Tim Beckman, Toledo – 5-7

    19.  Stan Parrish, Ball State – 2-10

    20.  Dave Clawson, Bowling Green – 7-6

    21.  Bill Snyder, Kansas State – 6-6

    22.  Lane Kiffin, Tennessee – 7-6

Looking at the CHS Analysis of the 2009 Coaching Hires and what records the Head Coaches and their Teams finally ended up posting last season the Head Coaches fell into the follow three categories:

Over-Achievers

Dave Christensen, Wyoming – A bowl game in his first year at Wyoming?  Wow!  A very strong season by Christensen and the Cowboys and they have some real momentum heading into the 2010 season.

Dan Mullen, Mississippi State – By all rights Mississippi State could have won a couple more games easily in 2009 and even 5-7 was certainly a big accomplishment for Mullen and the Dogs.  The only problem:  No rest for the weary in the SEC!

Dabo Swinney, Clemson – We wavered a bit on this one between Average and Over-Achiever, mainly because of the loss to South Carolina, make that a beatdown, to end the regular season, but still 9 wins in your first go around as a head coach is pretty Damn good.  Now the pressure just goes up that more because the Clemson folks are hungry for a conference championship and they are no longer in the mood for ANY excuses.

Steve Sarkisian, Washington – Coaches Hot Seat only predicted 2 wins for Washington in 2010 in what was clearly a rebuilding year and program changing season for the Huskies 5 wins and a victory over USC was beyond BIG!  Sarkisian has created a very nice base for things at UW and now with the Pac-10 in flux this is the time for the Huskies to make a Big Move while the opportunity is there.

Danny Hope, Purdue – For someone reason we here at Coaches Hot Seat only predicted 1 win for Hope and Purdue in 2010 which makes their 5 wins (which should have been 6 with a win over the Irish) a heady accomplishment.  Purdue picked up the intensity a bit in Hope’s first year and it looks like the Boilermakers are going to again be a thorn in the side of Big Ten schools again.

Chip Kelly, Oregon – We had the Ducks struggling a bit in Kelly’s first season (8 wins predicted) so 10 wins and the Pac-10 title was quite an accomplishment.  Oregon played with a lot of fire and speed in 2010 and if not for some miscues against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and some piss-poor defense against Stanford, Kelly and Ducks could have had 12 wins in 2009.

Paul Rhoads, Iowa State – A win over Nebraska and a bowl win in Rhoads first season at Iowa State?  Never would have thunk it!  Iowa State played some very good football at times in ’09 and if Rhoads and the Cyclones can keep this up they may start to become a real problem to their friends in the Little 10….we mean Big Tex and the 9 Dwarfs….we mean the Big 12 (Which has 10 teams!  Yes, this all makes just perfect sense!  Why not just call it the Dysfunctional 10 and be done with it!)

Gene Chizik, Auburn – Chizik didn’t exactly take over “chopped liver” at Auburn from Tuberville, but there were a lot of changes with the new coaching staff and 8 wins including a very close win in the bowl game merits Over-Achievement.  Of course, the real positive thing about Chizik and the Tigers in 2009 was that they had a decent chance to win 3 more games (Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama) which if done would have made for a Blockbuster season.  Just like with the Dan Mullen at Miss. State…no time to rest in the SEC! (Just ask Bobby Johnson!)

Frank Spaziani, Boston College – For some reason we here at Coaches Hot Seat expected Spaziani to struggle in his first season at BC (predicted 6-6), but Frank and the Eagles got 8 wins and could have gotten 2 more at least (Notre Dame and the bowl game against USC).  We just underestimated Spaziani’s ability to transition to being a head coach which was certainly helped out by him being at BC since 1997 as an assistant coach.  BC at times in 2009 looked like a team that could win an ACC conference title, but at other times got blown out and in ’10 Frank must make BC a much more consistent team if they hope to contend for a championship.

Tim Beckman, Toledo – Since we here at CHS only predicted one win for Beckman and Toledo and they ended up with 5 wins that certainly puts Beckman in the Over-Achiever category.  Toledo looked like a very well-coached football team in ’09 and we expect Beckman to keep things rolling with the Rockets into the future.

Dave Clawson, Bowling Green – After a tough season as the OC at Tennessee and after some impressive seasons as the HC at Richmond, Clawson got right back on the horse and put up a very impressive first season at Bowling Green in 2009.  We only had BG down for 4 wins in ‘09 and Clawson got 7 including a loss in the bowl game to Idaho that they should have been a win.  Looks like Clawson has BG heading in the right direction which will only make the MAC that much tougher in the coming years.

Gary Anderson, Utah – The Utah State head coach before Gary Anderson, Brent Guy, won 9 games in 4 seasons at Utah State, so 4 wins and a 3-5 record in the WAC was a BIG accomplishment.  Anderson was at Utah for several years under Meyer and Whittingham as the DC so he is used to winning a lot of games and we expect his Utah State teams to only get better in the coming years!

Only Average

Rich Ellerson, Army – Rich Ellerson achieved a lot at Army in his first year at West Point and we expect the Cadets to get better in 2010 and in 2011 and so on, because Ellerson has proved in his past coaching stints that he is a very good football coach.  Only a tough loss to Tulane kept Ellerson and Army out of a bowl game and even the annual Army – Navy game looked like a different affair in 2009, with the Cadets playing a very good Navy team very tough throughout, which cannot be good news to Air Force and Navy going forward.

Lane Kiffin, Tennessee – Oh, we so badly wanted to put Lane Kiffin’s one year at Tennessee into the Below Average category, but 7 overall wins and a 4-4 record in the SEC isn’t too bad for a first year coach in that conference.  Of course, with 8 home games, that included wins in Knoxville over Western Kentucky, Ohio and Memphis it is not a stretch to say that any random drunkard from The Bar on The Strip in Knoxville could have won 7 games as the head coach at Tennessee in 2009!  Yes, Kiffin was “Average” at best in 2009 at Tennessee, but if we counted in all the off-the-field Crapola that he pulled we would have his rear-end in the “Is there anyone on the Planet stupid enough to hire this guy again” category!  Oh….that’s right USC hired Kiffin after all that Crapola he pulled!  Yes, that move, especially with the NCAA breathing down the Trojans’ neck, made PERFECT SENSE!   NOT!

Memo to Lane Kiffin:  With the amount of talent on the 2010 USC football team a Dolphin from Sea World in San Diego could win 9 games in 2010 as the head coach at USC…..and still do his three shows a day in the water tank!  That’s right, for Lane Kiffin to beat the Sea World dolphin, he will need 10 wins in 2010!  Fire it up Kiffin….Fire it up!  Anything less than 8 wins in 2010 (or only 8 wins and a loss to UCLA) and USC will be looking for a new head football coach come December and you can take that factoid to the Bank of America main branch in Los Angeles and that check will be cashed in an instant.  No, the USC natives are not happy and they are not going to tolerate any of the Crapola that the Tennessee folks were all to happy get down on their hands and knees and eat up….although they are talking a whole new game with Derek Dooley in town!  Makes you wonder if things are “fungible” there in Knoxville depending upon who the head coach happens to be at any moment.  Yes, Derek Dooley has a Pillsbury Dough Boy-awful mess on his hands.

Bill Snyder, Kansas State – Hey, we have as much respect for Bill Snyder as the next guy, but we still believe it wasn’t the best idea FOR Bill Snyder to come back to the head coaching position at KSU and we guess we will see if we or Bill are right on that in the next couple of seasons.  In 2009 Kansas State did post a 6-6 record, but Snyder/KSU beat two I-AA teams (UMass and Tennessee Tech) which for those of us that believe I-A teams should play I-A teams Kansas State was 4-6 against Big Boy schools. 

Brady Hoke, San Diego State – Chuck Long won 9 games in three seasons at San Diego State and following on that Brady Hoke and the Aztecs had a decent 2009 season by putting up a 4-8 record.  Chuck Long proved that winning at SDSU is not an easy thing to do and Hoke will have to turn up the intensity some more to compete in the Mountain West Conference which is becoming one of the toughest conferences in college football.

Doug Marrone, Syracuse – Greg Robinson only won 10 games in the 4 previous seasons to Marrone taking over at SU and although there were some real ups and downs throughout the year, the Orange looked decent and competitive at times in ‘09.  That November 21 whipping of Rutgers has to have the Orange fans thinking good things as they look to 2010, but the Big East is not an easy place to build a winning football program.

DeWayne Walker, New Mexico State – We predicted a 3-10 record for Walker/NMSU and that is exactly what they got including a Big Win over New Mexico in Week 4.  Walker now must find a way to build on the 2009 season and he must keep in mind that the WAC conference is a place where small improvements can lead to lots more wins.  Just ask Boise State about that ….

Under-Achievers

Mike Locksley, New Mexico – 1-11

Ron English, Eastern Michigan – 0-12

Mike Haywood, Miami (OH) – 1-11

Stan Parrish, Ball State – 2-10

The above four head coaches need to get things going in 2010 to keep themselves off the Hot Seat which is not a fun place to be when you are also trying to build a football program!

Another Great Week of Sports on Tap!

While we are writing this CHS Blog Post the British Open in on live on ESPN and we have 4 days of golf to look forward to at the Home of Golf, the St. Andrews Golf Links.  Hard to beat St. Andrews and the British Open…..Unless….

You were able to watch the British Open in the morning and go to the American Century Celebrity Tournament at Lake Tahoe  (On NBC Sports over the weekend) in the afternoon and hit the parties at the event that night!  Oh, Life can be very, very good at times!

Steve Spurrier is in the field and goes off later today at 7:15 AM at the Edgewood at Tahoe Golf Course.

John Daly -7 on the Road Hole in First Round!  Keep it up Big John!

Next up…..well, after a fun week of watching the British Open on TV, the Lake Tahoe in person and the action of the Tahoe parties we will be….resting…..and then the 2010 New Head Coaches Analysis.

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The Fighting “Incidents” at Tennessee and “This is not 1980 anymore”

 

Tennessee is certainly not the only school that has dealt with issues relating to student-athletes getting into trouble, but the events in Knoxville in the last day provide an opportunity to get our thoughts here at Coaches Hot Seat down on what football teams and athletic departments are doing wrong when it comes to monitoring their student-athletes.

To say that world has change in the last 30 years as it pertains to collegiate student-athletes is something akin to saying that the way we communicate has changed a good bit during the same time period.  We tell our children of the time when there were no cell phones, there was one phone in our house, it hung on the wall and it was dialed in a rotary fashion, there were 3 channels on the TV and there was no such thing even dreamed of like the Internet and they mouth falls open and they wonder if we lived in the Stone Ages.  Yes, life was a lot simpler 30 years ago, but the basic principles of life, the basics of attending college and playing collegiate athletics and the basics of coaching student-athletes has changed very little.

30 years ago the relationship between the head coach and the student-athlete was very simple.  The head coach was in charge and as the student-athlete we had better Damn do what the coach asks of us to do or we expected a severe if not terminal reaction from the coach.  No doubt, Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley was thinking that very thing when he had to dismiss one player and suspend another two on Friday after an early morning fight.  Of course, the problems at Tennessee did not start with the fight on “The Strip” in Knoxville, but started when these football players first arrived on campus at Tennessee either under Phil Fulmer, Lane Kiffin or Derek Dooley.  Stories from Chris Low of ESPN.com on the Tennessee “incident.”

Vols’ Dooley kicks Myles off team

Dooley’s job just got harder

From reading through the various news reports on the fight involving the Tennessee football players, it seems that many if not all of the players were under the legal drinking age of 21 (more on that in a moment) which means that even if these players were not involved in the fight they were breaking the law by being in the bar in the first place.  That there are underage college kids in bars illegally does not surprise us here at Coaches Hot Seat, because we have some people here at CHS that were able to drink at 18 and some that entered college just after the drinking age was raised to 21 so we have retold many stories about how those that were under 21 got into bars and got access to alcohol (Again, more on the drinking age in a moment) while in college.

Getting back to the problem at hand as it relates to these Tennessee players and to all student-athletes in college, it has been our impression from talking to former athletes and to some coaches that there is a disconnect if not even a flat-out denial of just what our young people are up to when they are at college, student-athlete or not. 

Newsflash:  Drinking age at 21 or not, a lot of these kids are drinking alcohol and doing drugs, and that makes it vital that head coaches and athletic department personnel address the potential problems of alcohol on the very first day that the student-athletes arrives on campus and in a very direct and even threatening manner. 

When most of us here at CHS arrived on campus to begin our college and athletic careers, often in the summer before the fall session, there was a short welcome by the head coach, a short introduction to the school, someone showed us where we would be living and they pretty much cut us loose to do what we wanted and as long as we stayed out of trouble and worked out that summer we were left alone.  Here’s the difference between us here at CHS arriving on a college campus in the late 1970s and early 1980s and some of these kids that are arriving on college campuses today:  When we arrived on the college campus we had already been fed a constant drumbeat of what was right and what was wrong during our teenage years by our parents (note parents plural) and we knew that if we crossed “the line” holy Hell would break loose.  Yes, we arrived on the college campus 30 years ago knowing that the head coach was in charge, but that the ultimate measure of whether we were succeeding or not rested with our parents who were back home and expecting that not only would we follow the rules laid down by the coach and the school, but that crossing the lines that were drawn for us by our parents during our upbringing, even at college, was something one did not do.  That’s not to say that those of us here at Coaches Hot Seat didn’t have one Hell of a time in college, because we did, but it is saying that we had one Hell of a time and no one got arrested, no one got a DUI, no one got picked up by the cops, no one made an ass of himself in public and most of all no one embarrassed his coach, his athletic team, his school, and most of all his parents while in college (Unless you count that night we stole the mascot outfit and were riding around in that convertible…….)

As the warden said in Cool Hand Luke:  “What we have here is a failure to communicate” which is indeed the problem that leads to underage Tennessee football players breaking the law, getting themselves into a fight and then getting themselves arrested.  Clearly, Derek Dooley and other people at UT fell down on their job to “communicate” the facts of life as they would be for anyone that wants to play football for the University of Tennessee because if the facts of life had been laid down to these players on how they would be expected to behave in public they would have never been in that bar in the first place.  Even though we here at CHS believe that having the drinking age at 21 is an absolute absurdity (if you can fight for your country and you can vote in elections then you are damn sure old enough to have a beer), the drinking age is 21 in the United States right now and that means that student-athletes in college that are not 21 should not be in bars.  Is that simple enough?  Good.  If you are a student-athlete that is under the age of 21 and you are in a bar then you are breaking the law and student-athletes breaking the law is not something that should be allowed by college athletic departments.  Is that simple enough?  Good.

The problem as we see it here at Coaches Hot Seat is very simple and has been written about by Alabama lawyer Donald Maurice Jackson in his book Fourth Down and Twenty Five Years To Go:  The African American and the Justice System.  (http://www.thesportsgroup.org/)

 

Mr. Jackson appears regularly on the Paul Finebaum Radio Network which originates out of Birmingham, Alabama each weekday which is one of the radio shows across the country that we tune into at CHS Central each day.  On this Friday’s show, Mr. Jackson talked about many of the issues that he raised in his book on the issues around young black Americans and how often their background and upbringing impacts them directly when the arrive on the modern college campus.  (You can listen to the podcast of Paul Finebaum’s Friday show at www.finebaum.com)  What is very clear to us here at Coaches Hot Seat is that we have a whole of young black Americans that are arriving on our college campuses to play football and basketball primarily, that have had a lot different upbringing to what we here at CHS experienced 30 years ago and to what even young black Americans experienced themselves 30 years ago. 

Very simply, there are a lot of young black Americans that are tremendous athletes that arrive on college campuses unprepared to deal with many of the problems and temptations they will face because they often have not had a strong father in their lives.  Consider this set of facts by Washington Post columnist William Raspberry (an African-American himself, Pulitzer Prize winner for his writing and a very nice man to boot!):

 

Poverty and the Father Factor

“I first heard the numbers from sociologist Andrew Billingsley:

In 1890, 80 percent of black American households were headed by husbands and wives. That’s just 25 years after the end of the Civil War.

In 1900, the percentage was mostly unchanged, and so it remained — between the high 70s and the low 80s — for 1910, 1920, 1930, for every decennial census report until 1970, when it was down to 64.

For the 2000 Census, the percentage of black families headed by married couples was 38. The only good news is that it was also 38 percent in 1990, suggesting that the trend may have stopped getting worse.

Now consider this: Fatherless families are America’s single largest source of poverty. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s “Kids Count” once reported that Americans who failed to complete high school, to get married and to reach age 20 before having their first child were nearly 10 times as likely to live in poverty as those who did these three things.

Poverty, it goes without saying, is associated with poorer academic outcomes, which, in turn, are associated with poorer job prospects. That means, among other things, reduced ability to choose neighborhoods to bring children up in safety. Non-marriage has consequences.”

The above numbers are just stunning to read and these “fatherless” families point directly to a lot of the problems of poverty, drugs, crime that are around African-American families in some of our largest cities and the fact is that there are a lot of young black Americans that arrive on college campuses each year to play athletics that come from families that did not have a strong father influence in their lives.  That’s not to say that African-American women are not in most cases doing a Hellava job raising these kids, because to get a young black American man to college today whether he is playing sports or not is a very worthy achievement, but what our interest here at CHS is what is happening to these young black American men once they arrive on campus because what they do or don’t on that campus will determine how successful they will be for the rest of their lives.

The basic premise that we believe in here at CHS is very simple and it was given as an order by the Captain of a United States warship over 20 years ago to a current member of Coaches Hot Seat:

Captain:  “I want you to handle the newly arriving sailors.  I want you to put a special emphasis on the kids arriving from tough backgrounds that might have problems adjusting to the ship or military life.  Make sure they have everything they need and that they understand all the rules and if any problems comes up that concern you with the new sailors, too much drinking, drug use, women problems, whatever, let me know about.  Understand?”

CHS Member:  “Yes, sir.”

With that order a member of Coaches Hot Seat was tasked to do the very same thing that he experienced when arriving at college and on his US Naval ship, but this time he was in the position of making sure that newly arriving sailors knew what was expected of them, what they could and could not do, how they should behave, where they should sleep, what division are they in, who will they report to, and on and on….which are many of the things that the student-athlete arriving on the college campus is faced with today.

As Mr. Jackson argues in the above book and during his appearances on the Finebaum Radio Show, kids that come from tough backgrounds need extra attention to make sure they make a successful transition to college and to their athletic team and Jackson also argues that if a school is going to recruit and give scholarships to kids that come from very tough backgrounds then the school needs a strong system in place that will address many of the things that will come up in the first couple of years on campus that the young man might not be prepared fully for.  Guess what?  There is a reason that boot camp and Officer’s Candidate School in the US military is so tough and that is because to get someone ready to serve his or her country under very tough circumstances, maybe in war, means that the first few weeks in the military better be a Damn good wake-up call.  It should be the same for newly arriving student-athletes arriving on the college campus.  A big-time wake-up call that gets their attention and holds it!

The CHS Member that was tasked with welcoming over a dozen new sailors to his ship each month was faced with a history of young black and white Americans from poor backgrounds often getting themselves into various types of trouble around the US Naval Base where the ship was homeported that ranged from drinking, to drugs, to financial issues which led our member to set-up a system where any new sailor that arrived from boot camp that had come from a background with a tough environment or that exhibited any of the signs of someone that would have trouble adjusting to the ship would receive an extra amount of attention from our CHS Member along with the sailor’s Division Officer, Chief Petty Officer and Lead Petty Officers. 

When we say “extra attention” we mean lots of extra attention, because the US Navy at that time was looking to cut down on the amount of sailors that were getting into trouble which was just ending up costing the Defense Department and thus the US Taxpayer that much more money.  That “extra attention” started with a very comprehensive first interview and orientation to the ship, the Naval Base and the surrounding area and continual checking in with the sailor, the sailors in his division, his superior officers and even plenty of legwork in the community like checking up on the young sailors when they went out in the surrounding area.  Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was work worth doing because just one person taking the time to check-up on a regular basis how the new sailors were doing lowered the incident rate of over a dozen “incidents” each month to no “incidents” after only a few months, all mainly because the new sailors came to know that someone was checking up on them constantly and that they could come to the CHS Member when and if they had a problem they could not solve themselves.

The moral of the above story for college athletic departments is very simple:  “It’s not 1980 anymore.”

Across the United States there are lots of young black and white American arriving on campuses to begin their college and athletic careers and for “X” amount of these new student-athletes they bring with them a much different set of values and view of the world that will sometimes not easily mesh into a college environment where there is a lot of freedom and unsupervised time away from adults and that is why college athletic departments need to make Damn sure that if they are going to recruit young men to their campus (not many women out there getting into fights!) that they have a system in place that can introduce, monitor, keep an eye on, correct, give advice to, counsel and all manner of other things that might come up for some of these kids that come from some of these tough backgrounds.

Luckily, there are a number of college athletic departments around the country that do have very strong systems in place for new student-athletes, (Alabama has put in some strong set of procedures under Nick Saban; Jim Tressel and the folks at Ohio State keep their eyes on lots of things are two that come to mind) but there is so much more that could be done that would avoid incidents like Tennessee is now having to deal with. 

Try to imagine for a moment just how much this “fighting” incident has cost the University of Tennessee, the Tennessee football program and first year head coach Derek Dooley and one will see that the dollar number and the bad PR associated with the incident far dwarf what it would cost to have someone to take the time to put a system in place that would address many of the issues that caused the incident in the first place.  First of all, there is no reason that college students that are underage should be a bar where there is alcohol being served.  That should be one of the first things told to student-athletes when they arrive on campus, THE DRINKING AGE IS 21 – STAY OUT OF BARS UNTIL YOU ARE 21!, and when they are being told about the dangers of alcohol and drugs.  If you are underage and we find out you have been in a bar….have you seen Neyland Stadium?  Good, start running stadiums!

Wrapping up this Tennessee incident and what college athletic departments should be doing to preemptively address some of these “incidents” before they happen, it is our opinion here at Coaches Hot Seat that there are a lot of young black and white Americans that are arriving on college campuses that do not have backgrounds that have prepared them for college life and that if a college is going to recruit and offer scholarships to these young men that might have problems once they arrive on campus then those colleges had better Damn have a system in place to address some of serious issues that are going to come up.

Clearly, Derek Dooley is putting in a “system” at Tennessee similar to what his old boss Nick Saban has at Alabama, but what Derek has forgotten is that there are players on his team right now that need very strong direction on how they should behave in the community and what is expected of them.  At Derek Dooley’s introductory news conference he said (paraphrased):  “The current players need to realize that we are working on a lot of things and that I may not have a lot of time to spend with them right now.”  Sorry Derek, that is not acceptable.  Yes, recruiting and getting coaches hired was paramount, but just like Saban had a number of incidents in his first year at Alabama including a player on the team that he did not recruit selling drugs right outside the athletic building, Dooley is now facing the reality that some of his football players were breaking the law by entering bars underage, where they (and other Tennessee players?) evidently were getting “VIP” treatment, and were arrested for fighting.  Sorry, but if you hire anyone here at Coaches Hot Seat as the head coach at Tennessee we are going to know with 72 hours what ever Damn bar in Knoxville is up to as it pertains to “OUR” football players because we are going to have someone either working for the university or a private eye checking up on the bars and even some of the players if we thought it was necessary. 

Now, we haven’t a clue to what Derek Dooley has told the Tennessee football players since he arrived in Knoxville, but he surely has told them the set of rules that they must live under and that they should act right in the community, but telling college kids to do something individually or in a group is not a replacement for having a very strong system in place that can head off these problems before they ever happen.  Not that Mike Hamilton is going to call anyone here at Coaches Hot Seat for advice, but if one of us was hired tomorrow at Tennessee to work with Derek Dooley to put in place the system that we assume he is now working on, you can bet you rear-end that we would know more about Knoxville, the behavior of the Tennessee football players in public over the past few years, what bars the Tennessee players frequent, if any of the players are doing drugs or drinking too much, and all manner of other things within a week of arriving.  We wouldn’t give a Damn if any of the Tennessee football players thought we were looking into their private lives, because our overriding goal would be to find out what the Hell has been going on in Knoxville in the last few years and above all to head off “incidents” like the one that happened this week.  Besides, we could gather all of that info without talking to a Tennessee player, though we would talk to every one of them on a continuous basis to make sure that things were going right in their life and dig around for anything that might be causing them problems on or off the football field.  Hey, maybe all that training that was very useful in helping to take down the Soviet Union is good for something!  The Coaches Hot Seat “Get College Athletic Departments” Straightened Out Division.  Hey, that has a nice ring to it!

The Bottom-Line:  If you are going to wear the uniform of and represent a college or university in an athletic endeavor, especially on scholarship, then the school, the athletic department and the head coach had better Damn know if there is a possibility that you might do something to hurt the school and to do everything possible to head those problems off before they happen and become public.  No, “talking” to student-athletes is not enough.  Probing, investigating, checking up on, talking to, asking about, looking into, etc., are what all colleges should be doing relative to their student-athletes, especially student-athletes that they have concerns about.  Yes, when you get right down to heading off “incidents” like the one that happened this week in Knoxville, what we are really talking about is putting a special emphasis on the student-athletes that the head coach and athletic department think might lead to problems down the road.  Not only is that idea and approach right for the athletic department and school, but it is also right for the young man, because the more that young man knows that people are watching, listening and checking up on him the more likely he is going to do the right thing when and if he finds himself in a bad situation, or better yet not get into that situation in the first place. 

As Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev:  “Trust, but verify.”

The same should be true for collegiate student-athletes.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Predictions/Expectations

Before we start on our Team/Coach Predictions – Expectations for the 2010 season, we here at Coaches Hot Seat look back at how we did with our predictions – expectations for the 2009 regular season.  We look at our predictions each season thru the prism of how many games the head coach and football team are expected to win which is often one of the determining factors on a head coach’s job status.

Below you will find the particulars of the coaches and teams relative our predictions for the ’09 season where we had…

53 head coaches/teams that Beat Coaches Hot Seat Expectations

21 head coaches/teams that Met Coaches Hot Seat Expectations

46 head coaches/teams that Missed Coaches Hot Seat Expectations

Coach/Team Beat – Met – Missed CHS Expectations for 2009

Beat Expectations by 6 games  =  1

Beat Expectations by 5 games  =  1

Beat Expectations by 4 games  =  4

Beat Expectations by 3 games  =  11

Beat Expectations by 2 games  =  15

Beat Expectations by 1 game  =  21

Met Expectations  =  21

Missed Expectations by 1 game  =  16

Missed Expectations by 2 games  =  14

Missed Expectations by 3 games  =  8

Missed Expectations by 4 games  =  6

Missed Expectations by 5 games  =  2

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 6 Games

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Ohio	Frank Solich	3-9	9-3	6

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 5 Games

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Idaho	Robb Akey	2-10	7-5	5

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 4 Games

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Central Michigan	Butch Jones	6-6	10-2	4
Kansas State	Bill Snyder	2-10	6-6	4
Purdue	Danny Hope	1-11	5-7	4
Toledo	Tim Beckman	1-11	5-7	4

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 3 Games

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Cincinnati	Brian Kelly	9-3	12-0	3
Middle Tennessee	Rick Stockstill	6-6	9-3	3
Miami	Randy Shannon	6-6	9-3	3
UCF	George O’Leary	5-7	8-4	3
Bowling Green	Dave Clawson	4-8	7-5	3
SMU	June Jones	4-8	7-5	3
Wyoming	Dave Christensen	3-9	6-6	3
Mississippi State	Dan Mullen	2-10	5-7	3
Washington	Steve Sarkisian	2-10	5-7	3
Hawaii	Greg McMakcin	3-10	6-7	3
UAB	Neil Callaway	2-10	5-7	3

 

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 2 Games

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Texas	Mack Brown	10-2	12-0	2
Oregon	Chip Kelly	8-4	10-2	2
Iowa	Kirk Ferentz	8-4	10-2	2
West Virginia	Bill Stewart	7-5	9-3	2
Wisconsin	Bret Bielema	7-5	9-3	2
Clemson	Dabo Swinney	6-6	8-4	2
Boston College	Frank Spaziani	6-6	8-4	2
Auburn	Gene Chizik	5-7	7-5	2
Tennessee	Lane Kiffin	5-7	7-5	2
Iowa State	Paul Rhoads	4-8	6-6	2
La. Monroe	Charlie Weatherbie	4-8	6-6	2
Kent State	Doug Martin	3-9	5-7	2
UNLV	Mike Sanford	3-9	5-7	2
Syracuse	Doug Marrone	2-10	4-8	2
Utah State	Gary Anderson	2-10	4-8	2

 

Beat CHS Expectations – Plus 1 Game

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Florida	Urban Meyer	11-1	12-0	1
Alabama	Nick Saban	11-1	12-0	1
Ohio State	Jim Tressel	11-1	10-2	1
Georgia Tech	Paul Johnson	11-1	10-2	1
BYU	B. Mendenhall	11-1	10-2	1
TCU	Gary Patterson	11-1	12-0	1
Houston	Kevin Sumlin	9-3	10-2	1
Pitt	Dave Wannstedt	8-4	9-3	1
Nebraska	Bo Pelini	8-4	9-3	1
Navy	K. Niumatalolo	8-5	9-4	1
Temple	Al Golden	8-4	9-3	1
Arizona	Mike Stoops	7-5	8-4	1
Missouri	Gary Pinkel	7-5	8-4	1
Stanford	Jim Harbaugh	7-5	8-4	1
Fresno State	Pat Hill	7-5	8-4	1
Notre Dame	Charlie Weis	5-7	6-6	1
Texas A&M	Mike Sherman	5-7	6-6	1
UCLA	Rick Neuheisel	5-7	6-6	1
Minnesota	Tim Brewster	5-7	6-6	1
Marshall	Mark Snyder	5-7	6-6	1
Duke	David Cutcliffe	4-8	5-7	1

 

Met CHS Expectations in 2009

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Boise State	Chris Petersen	13-0	13-0	0
Penn State	Joe Paterno	11-1	11-1	0
LSU	Les Miles	9-3	9-3	0
Texas Tech	Mike Leach	9-3	9-3	0
Utah	K. Whittingham	9-3	9-3	0
Air Force	Troy Calhoun	8-4	8-4	0
Oregon State	Mike Riley	8-4	8-4	0
Rutgers	Greg Schiano	8-4	8-4	0
Northwestern	Pat Fitzgerald	8-4	8-4	0
Nevada	Chris Ault	8-4	8-4	0
South Carolina	Steve Spurrier	7-5	7-5	0
Connecticut	Randy Edsall	7-5	7-5	0
South Florida	Jim Leavitt	7-5	7-5	0
FSU	Bobby Bowden	6-6	6-6	0
La. Lafayette	Ricky Bustle	6-6	6-6	0
Army	Rich Ellerson	5-7	5-7	0
Indiana	Bill Lynch	4-8	4-8	0
UTEP	Mike Price	4-8	4-8	0
Tulane	Bob Toledo	3-9	3-9	0
FIU	Mario Cristobal	3-9	3-9	0
New Mexico St.	DeWayne Walker	3-10	3-10	0

 

Missed CHS Expectations – Minus 1 Game 

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Oklahoma State	Mike Gundy	10-2	9-3	1
Virginia Tech	Frank Beamer	10-2	9-3	1
Troy	Larry Blakeney	10-2	9-3	1
East Carolina	Skip Holtz	9-3	8-4	1
Arkansas	Bobby Petrino	8-4	7-5	1
Georgia	Mark Richt	8-4	7-5	1
Kentucky	Rich Brooks	8-4	7-5	1
San Diego State	Brady Hoke	5-7	4-8	1
Louisville	Steve Kragthorpe	5-7	4-8	1
Virginia	Al Groh	4-8	3-9	1
North Texas	Todd Dodge	3-9	2-10	1
New Mexico	Mike Locksley	2-10	1-11	1
Washington State	Paul Wulff	2-10	1-11	1
Miami (OH)	Mike Haywood	2-10	1-11	1
Eastern Michigan	Ron English	1-11	0-12	1
Western Kentucky	David Elson	1-11	0-12	1

 

Missed CHS Expectations – Minus 2 Games 

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
USC	Pete Carroll	11-1	9-3	2
North Carolina	Butch Davis	10-2	8-4	2
Mississippi	Houston Nutt	10-2	8-4	2
Cal	Jeff Tedford	10-2	8-4	2
Southern Miss	Larry Fedora	9-3	7-5	2
NC State	Tom O’Brien	7-5	5-7	2
Michigan	Rich Rodriguez	7-5	5-7	2
FAU	H. Schnellenberger	7-5	5-7	2
Baylor	Art Briles	6-6	4-8	2
Arizona State	Dennis Erickson	6-6	4-8	2
Arkansas State	Steve Roberts	6-6	4-8	2
Akron	JD Brookhart	5-7	3-9	2
Rice	David Bailiff	4-8	2-10	2
San Jose State	Dick Tomey	4-8	2-10	2

 

Missed CHS Expectations – Minus 3 Games 

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Northern Illinois	Jerry Kill	10-2	7-5	3
Kansas	Mark Mangino	8-4	5-7	3
Buffalo	Turner Gill	8-4	5-7	3
La. Tech	Derek Dooley	7-5	4-8	3
Illinois	Ron Zook	6-6	3-9	3
Vanderbilt	Bobby Johnson	5-7	2-10	3
Maryland	Ralph Friedgen	5-7	2-10	3
Memphis	Tommy West	5-7	2-10	3

 

Missed CHS Expectations – Minus 4 Games 

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Oklahoma	Bob Stoops	11-1	7-5	4
Michigan State	Mark Dantonio	10-2	6-6	4
Wake Forest	Jim Grobe	9-3	5-7	4
Tulsa	Todd Graham	9-3	5-7	4
W. Michigan	Bill Cubit	9-3	5-7	4
Ball State	Stan Parrish	6-6	2-10	4

 

Missed CHS Expectations – Minus 5 Games 

School	Coach	’09 Prediction	’09 Actual	+/- Games
Colorado	Dan Hawkins	8-4	3-9	5
Colorado State	Steve Fairchild	8-4	3-9	5

 

What the Hell does all of the above mean?  Who the Hell knows beyond some of the coaches met our Expectations and some….Didn’t!

Meeting Expectations is better than NOT!

Next up…..

The Coaches Hot Seat Rankings/Evaluations of the 22 New Head Coaches for the 2010 Season.  Oh, that promises to be very entertaining and we have been debating those 22 new head coaching hires the last few days at…..

Aspen Ideas Festival -  www.aifestival.org

The Atlantic – Aspen Ideas Festival Special Report

 

Several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been in Aspen, Colorado this week for the Aspen Ideas Festival which is always a great place to here a lot of interesting people and also where one can pin down some of our “public servants!”  One cannot help but wonder if these bigwigs are thinking when we have them pinned down on something:  “How did these yahoos get in here?” 

Aspen, Colorado is a great place anytime of the year, but especially in the Summer where the weather makes being in the high Rocky Mountains a very good thing.  If anyone is in the Aspen, Colorado area this weekend and you would like to hang out with some of the Coaches Hot Seat gang, just drop by the J-Bar at the Hotel Jerome and ask for the Hunter S. Thompson campaign team.  They will know who you are asking for!

Hotel Jerome – Aspen, Colorado

Speaking of Hunter S. Thompson, for some reason alcohol leaps to mind, a few nights ago we sent a CHS Member to the grocery store in Aspen to pick-up some red wine for our pork chop, corn on the cob and potato dinner and our wives and we put him on a budget:  6 bottles of a good red wine for under $100 bucks.

What did our fine CHS Member come back with you ask?  A very good red wine from Argentina, Alamos Winery – Malbec, which is now on the Coaches Hot Seat Wine List.  Besides bringing back 6 bottles of Alamos – Malbec he also was able to squeeze in two 6 packs of Anchor Steam beer, which makes him a Hero in our books!  Yes, we can polish off 6 bottles of win, two 6 packs of beer and not get into a fight here at Coaches Hot Seat!

Alamos Winery – Malbec

 

Anchor Steam Beer

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We have a lot of Rankings of College Football Coaches here at Coaches Hot Seat (a few public but most are private), but by far our favorite is the Winningest Active Coaches in I-A football.  We have been working our way through a number of things here at CHS, and we now have the Winningest Active Coaches list ready for the 120 Head Coaches in I-A football and it is mighty entertaining viewing.

Subscribers to Coaches Hot Seat can see the entire list at the below link….

2010 Winningest Active Coaches I-A

 ….and here are the Top 25 Winningest Active Coaches in I-A College Football heading into the 2010 college football season.  

#	Coach	School	Age	Conf	Salary	Yrs	W	L	T	Win%
1	Chris Petersen	Boise State	46	WAC	$1,500,000	4	49	4	0	.925
2	Urban Meyer	Florida	46	SEC	$4,100,000	9	96	18	0	.842
3	Mike London	Virginia	50	ACC	$1,800,000	2	24	5	0	.828
4	Bobby Hauck	UNLV	46	MWC	$500,000	7	80	17	0	.825
5	Bob Stoops	Oklahoma	50	Big 12	$4,100,000	11	117	29	0	.801
6	Chip Kelly	Oregon	47	Pac 10	$1,950,000	1	10	3	0	.769
7	Mark Richt	Georgia	50	SEC	$3,400,000	9	90	27	0	.769
8	B. Mendenhall	BYU	44	MWC	$725,000	5	49	15	0	.766
9	Gary Patterson	TCU	50	MWC	$2,500,000	10	85	28	0	.752
10	Joe Paterno	Penn State	84	Big Ten	$1,500,000	44	394	129	3	.749
11	Brian Kelly	Notre Dame	49	Big East	$2,750,000	19	171	57	2	.743
12	Jim Tressel	Ohio State	58	Big Ten	$3,800,000	24	229	78	2	.741
13	Paul Johnson	Georgia Tech	53	ACC	$2,500,000	13	127	46	0	.734
14	K. Whittingham	Utah	51	MWC	$1,300,000	5	47	17	0	.734
15	Bret Bielema	Wisconsin	40	Big Ten	$1,600,000	4	38	14	0	.731
16	Bobby Petrino	Arkansas	49	SEC	$2,950,000	6	54	21	0	.720
17	Steve Spurrier	South Carolina	65	SEC	$2,200,000	20	177	68	2	.717
18	Bo Pelini	Nebraska	43	Big 12	$2,100,000	3	20	8	0	.714
19	Nick Saban	Alabama	59	SEC	$4,633,000	14	125	50	1	.710
20	Les Miles	LSU	57	SEC	$3,900,000	9	79	36	0	.687
21	Chris Ault	Nevada	64	WAC	$400,000	25	206	96	1	.680
22	Mack Brown	Texas	59	Big 12	$5,100,000	26	214	101	1	.677
23	Butch Jones	Cincinnati	42	Big East	$1,400,000	3	27	13	0	.675
24	Kevin Sumlin	Houston	46	CUSA	$1,200,000	2	18	9	0	.667
25	K. Niumatalolo	Navy	45	Ind.	$1,115,000	2	18	9	0	.667

 

 

As you can see Chris Petersen at Boise State is putting up some stunning win/loss numbers with only 4 losses in 4 seasons and we don’t care who you are playing, 49 wins in 4 seasons is just an incredible number of wins.  By the way, Chris Petersen and Boise State have played 5 “BCS” schools in the last 4 seasons and the Broncos are 4-1 in those games.  Chris Petersen is on a roll similar to the one that Knute Rockne put up in 13 seasons at Notre Dame (1918 – 1930) when The Rock’s/Irish record was 105 – 12 (.881)!  Wow!  As is Urban Meyer at Florida and Bob Stoops at OU (even with that subpar 2009 for the Sooners!).  One must also recognize Mike London at Virginia and Bobby Hauck at UNLV coming out of the I-AA football division with some great winning records as well.  One thing to note, we have looked at the win/loss records of the truly great coaches in the history of college football and  the .700 winning percentage number is a pretty good determining factor for a head coach that is winning a lot of football games and often headed to the College Football Hall of Fame.

2006

WIN – Oregon State – 42 – 14

WIN – Oklahoma – 43 – 42

2007

LOSS – Washington – 10 – 24

2008

WIN – Oregon – 37 – 32

2009

WIN – Oregon – 19 – 8

That makes that September 6 game this year in Washington DC between Boise State and Virginia Tech very Damn interesting!  Talk about an fascinating matchup, the Broncos vs. the Hokies promises to be very entertaining with talent all over the field and very good head coaches and coaching staffs on both sidelines.

According to the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, courtesy of Tomahawk Nation, Boise State is a 2.5 favorite over Virginia Tech!  Wow!  That tells you a lot about how much talent Petersen has recruited to Boise and how well his football team is coached that BSU is favored when traveling across the country to play one of the best teams in the ACC.

Not that we gamble much beyond the blackjack tables and our weekly pokers games, but we like Boise State over Virginia Tech which means that VT DC Bud Foster better be spending a lot of time figuring out a way to slow down QB Kellen Moore!

2010 Tour de France

 

 

The 2010 Tour de France got underway over the weekend and after the first three stages Lance Armstrong is right in the thick of things as the Tour heads into France from Belgium today. 

We get a great kick out of watching the Tour de France here at Coaches Hot Seat because of all the great places the Tour travels in France and neighboring European countries.  The 2010 Tour de France is traveling through some incredible sections of France including the French Alps along the Swiss and Italian borders….

 before swinging down to southern France and the Pyrenees Mountains on the border of Spain.  After the Pyrenees Mountain section the race heads north through the Bordeaux region of France.

Talk about some beautiful country, the Bordeaux region of France is a must-see if you are traveling in that part of the world.  The New York Times recently published an interesting travel story on following Thomas Jefferson’s footsteps when he was the envoy to France in the late 1780s, Following Jefferson Through the Vineyards, which gives one a good idea of what the Bordeaux region of France is like.

The Versus Network (Channel 603 on DirecTV)  has the coverage of the Tour de France and along with French TV they are doing a great job of providing some incredible video and the terrific commentators at Versus, with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin calling the live action, are all doing a great job of covering this fascinating race.  (Some of the folks doing the play-by-play and color commentary in college football  today could learn a lot by watching/listening to how Liggett and Sherwin call the Tour de France, as they could learn a lot by getting out tapes of Keith Jackson or Al Michaels for that matter.  All of these announcers cover/covered the game they were sitting at always keeping the focus on the game that is unfolding in front of them, which is what the TV audience is really interested in…..)

Yes, even the French settle their championships on the Field of Play unlike those Candy Ass BCS Bastards!  One of us here at Coaches Hot Seat has a good friend that has been working in Paris, France for the past 3 years and he reports that over the New Year’s he tried to explain to some French friends of his the college football postseason, but his friends kept coming back to and asking about taking a “month off at the end of the regular college football season” and “why play any of these bowl games….they mean nothing.”  Man, if the French can’t understand the BCS and think it is Total Bullshit then you know that you are dealing with something incredibly Bogus! 

How do you say Candy Ass BCS Bastards in French you ask?

“Confire l’ane BCS batards!”

Or you can always just go with the Johnny Cash straight-forward approach when dealing with these BCS Boys!

Why does that make us feel so good

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It is so very easy to overlook the Freedom that we have in the United States of America today, the Freedoms that millions of Americans have lived and died for in our country’s history that all of us here at Coaches Hot Seat make Damn sure that our families, our children and even ourselves keep uppermost in our minds, especially on this great day…

Independence Day, July 4 th

July 4 th, 2010 is the 234 th Anniversary of our country’s Declaration of Independence and We are very proud to call ourselves Americans on this greatest of days.

 

The Declaration of Independence did not merely declare that the 13 Colonies were declaring their Independence from Great Britain, but after thousands of years of despot and elitist rule that indeed…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That may seem like old hat to some Americans in the 21 st Century, but Thomas Jefferson’s above words are so much more.  Those words are the throwing off of the chains of bondage, of kings and queens, of anyone that would lay claim to someone else’s life, and the very simple declaration that all Men (and women) have the right to live their lives as they see fit.

Mr. Jefferson affirms the above words by declaring how we will guarantee “these truths” by…..

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The words of Declaration of Independence are the words of genius, because they empower All Of Us to live our lives as we choose, to pursue our own individual happiness and that WE THE PEOPLE have the right to form a government that will “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  Those are the words of revolution, the American Revolution which forever changed the world and forged the Greatest Country in the history of the planet.

Amen to Thomas Jefferson and his tremendous Declaration and to our Brave Founding Fathers that had to guts and courage to stand up to and throw off the despots of Great Britain and the Old World. 

 

Much like in the days of earlier America we here at Coaches Hot Seat read the words of Declaration of Independence and tell our children about the great men that wrote it and risked all for the Freedom they enjoy today and all Americans should take a moment to read those great words themselves on this day.

Thank You for our magnificent American Republic and God Bless the United States of America.

Yes, We here at Coaches Hot Seat take Thomas Jefferson’s words and the Founders that approved the Declaration of Independence very seriously and anyone that believes in the Founding Document of our country would also be outraged with anything like the Bogus and Un-American Bowl Championship.  To the Americans that support the Absurd and Un-American BCS we can only hope that one day you wake-up and remember what country that you live in…..Of course, we have noted that 99 percent of the people that are behind and support the BCS have not spent a day of their lives in the US military or have rarely done anything of any significance for their country, so it is not surprising that they would support something as repulsive and Un-American as the BCS. 

There are a lot of things we can disagree with other Americans about from political viewpoints to which beer is better on a hot summer day (more on alcohol in a moment), but something that we cannot and will not tolerate is any person claiming to be an American and then to say or do things that does not recognize the very simple fact that All Americans Are Created Equal.  The BCS violates that principle in spades and the Evil SOBs behind the BCS should be ashamed that in a country as grand as ours that is Founded upon A Principle that changed the world that they can dare stand behind something that says that “This American” is not Equal to “That American.”  That is OUTRAGEOUS!

We can understand the greedy bowl executives and even some of these Candy Asses conference commissioners that don’t have the guts to have national championships won and earned on the field of play, but by far the most outrageous violators of the Our Founding Principle of Our Country that All Men (and Women) Are Created Equal, are these Sorry Ass College Presidents that ironically are some of the most politically-correct people on Planet Earth.  These hypocritical college presidents will fight like Hell to make sure that this or that person doesn’t get slighted or bothered (a terrible outcome of PC BS!), but they will support something like the BCS that treats American student-athletes in different, unequal and Un-American ways.  That is Outrageous and Incredibly Un-American.

To All of You Sorry Ass and Hypocritical College Presidents that support the Bogus BCS here is a special 4 th of July Message to you from Real Americans. 

Note:  No way a Real American would or could never support the Bogus BCS.

Not that most College Presidents even know that they are Politically-Correct, because most of them are so busy negotiating which professor gets what parking spot that they forget and often don’t seem to give a Damn about the Principles that our Republic was Founded upon.

Thank Goodness that the Vast Majority of Americans believe that Championships and anything else worth having in our Republic are won and earned on the Field of Play and for you folks that don’t believe that fundamental principle of our country we can only wonder who the Hell raised you and where possibly could you have gone to school.

We wait breathlessly here at Coaches Hot Seat for the release of…..

Oh, that should be a VERY GOOD BOOK!  Death to the BCS, Amazon.com release date of October 14, 2010

 

George AD Damon Evans DUI arrest

 

We haven’t a clue to what Damon Evans was up to in Atlanta earlier this week when he was arrested for Driving Under the Influence, but Evans clearly does not know about the Coaches Hot Seat Adult Beverage Policy or how public officials are supposed to act when in public.

The thing about Adult Beverages (alcohol, liquor, beer, etc..) is that they are a very powerful and potent drug and responsible adults that have things in life that are bigger than themselves, important jobs, families that count on them, a future worth living for, must be very clear what they will do and will not do when consuming Adult Beverages.

Here at Coaches Hot Seat we have a few very simple rules that we all follow which has kept us in good stead over the years when drinking Adult Beverages, with no DUI, DWI or any other arrests related to alcohol (or arrests for anything else for that matter!). 

The CHS Adult Beverage Policy is very simple:

1.  Maximum 2 drinks (beer, liquor, etc.) when at an event with our family, anything work related, or when in public around people we do not know or normally socialize with.

2.  If a member of CHS is at an event or someone’s house and has MORE than 2 drinks (beer, liquor, etc.) that person’s car does not move that night.  In fact, we have a strict policy that when someone has more than 2 alcohol drinks, the keys to that person’s car are put into a drawer that will not be opened until the morning.  How does that person that has had more than 2 drinks get home you ask?  Well, his wife might come pick him up (not always a good option as one can imagine!), a non-drinker that night will take him home, call a taxi/cab to take them home, the person will walk home, or the person will bed down for the night where he is at (if at friend’s home).  Whatever the outcome, the one hard and fast rule is that a person’s car never moves after someone has had more than 2 alcohol drinks, even if it is only 2 blocks up the street. 

Drinking alcohol is something not to be played around with, and if you are going to drink alcohol, which all adults can choose to or not, then one had better Damn have a personal or group policy in place when someone decides to have a few drinks or at some raucous party decides to “tie one on for the night!”

More than 2 drinks = The car does not move that night, or sometimes even in the morning!  Certainly not until the person driving that car is cold, stone sober!

As for Georgia AD Damon Evans, the DUI was bad enough, the 28 year old in the car with her panties between his legs when you are married with two children was worse, but the comments made by Evans and his “friend” during the arrest make Evans look like a fool and if Damon Evans is the athletic director at Georgia by next Wednesday then the University of Georgia will have sacrificed any standing it has claimed relative to its students and student-athletes going out and drinking, getting drunk, driving drunk, etc…

Of course Damon Evans will either resign or be fired, we just hope that Damon can get his life straight, save his marriage and family and come back and get what was a very promising career in college athletics back.  We have no doubt that Evans can come back from a firing at Georgia, but is Evans that will have to know he can come back and eventually get his good name restored.

Relative to holding a position like athletic director or head coach at a major university, if someone put any of us at Coaches Hot Seat into that type of  position tomorrow, needless to say we would always be on guard about our personal behavior and how we carried ourselves in the community, because an AD or head coach is ALWAYS representing the school he works, is setting an example for the young men and women he leads, and should be a great example of proper behavior for others to emulate. 

In the last few years we have heard about and even seen some disturbing and disappointing behavior by college presidents, ADs, head coaches, assistant coaches and college athletic department employees when they were in public, often far away from cameras or lots of peoples’ eyes and we have always wondered why that individual chose to act in a way that brings a lot of discredit on himself and the institution he works for.  Actually, a couple of years ago we witnessed an “event” with a fairly well known college athletic person and we debated for over a week if whether we should report that person’s behavior on the Coaches Hot Seat Blog.  We finally came down on the side of focusing the CHS Blog on our opinion of head coaches and people in collegiate athletics on the things they do in the public domain that has been seen by a large portion or all of the general population and we decided on that approach because a “rumor” even if it is something we saw personally, is much different than our opinion of a person or school.  Besides, often something we have been told, heard, or even seen personally ends up in our opinions and Coaches Hot Seat Rankings and how we view a head football coach or AD.

Getting back to Damon Evans and any other athletic director, head football coach, or anyone else working at a college athletic department, how in the world could you have gotten into a car drunk, and with a woman that was not your wife?  That set of facts just defies belief and shows incredibly poor judgment on Evans’ part and poor judgment and stupid decisions is just something that cannot be tolerated by someone that is supposed to leading our young men and women in this great country of ours.

 

The Great Don Coryell

There is so much we could write about the Great Don Coryell, who passed away this week at the age of 85.  His incredible record at San Diego State (104-192-2) and the amazing run he had with the San Diego Chargers with Dan Fouts playing QB for the Bolts (By the way, on the subject of the Great Dan Fouts, who is one of our all-time favorite players and people here at Coaches Hot Seat, we could not understand why Fouts did not have a spot somewhere last year calling college football on TV.  We did catch Dan on a few NFL games and in some MWC games, but Dan Fouts passion for and knowledge of the game of college football is just unmatched and if Dan Fouts still wants to do college games, we haven’t asked him mind you, why hasn’t one of the networks of big cable channels hired the guy?  Very strange indeed…)

…..are the deeds of a great football coach.

Don Coryell was an amazing football coach who should already be in the NFL Hall of Fame, but rather than us trying to bang out some chicken scratch on the Great Man, John Maffei of the North County Times did that very thing recently a lot better than we ever could.

Memories of a shared history with Coryell

“When you work in a college sports information office, the phone rings constantly.

So when I answered a call in my San Diego State office early on a January morning in 1973, it was no big deal. What I heard from the other end knocked me off my feet.

“Hi, John. This is Irving Carp (not his real name) of the St. Louis Cardinals. We’re ready to announce Don Coryell as our new coach, and Don wanted me to give you a call so we could coordinate the announcement with you and the San Diego media.”

Coryell interviewing for a job with the NFL’s Cardinals was one of the best-kept secrets in the history of secrets.

Everyone at the school knew that Coach was upset with the lack of respect his team got from the academic side of campus. And we all knew he was fuming because his football players weren’t guaranteed preregistration for classes.

But no one — not the athletic director, not his assistant coaches, not his players and certainly not his stunned sports information director — knew he was in St. Louis.

Coryell died Thursday at age 85 after a long and storied career, and my phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

I first met Coach in 1969 and consider myself better for the association. I was working for the Daily Aztec, the college paper, playing baseball and living in an apartment complex with several of the star football players back in ‘69.

It was a simpler time back then. The athletes respected each other and hung out together. The media, whether the downtown dailies or the student paper, had open access to the athletes and coaches.

And I had triple access to Coach — I was an athlete, I worked for the school paper and I was taking his football class. So I saw him nearly every day — not in class, though, because he told me just to show up the final day and remind him to give me an A.

I took him up on that offer.

Coach was beyond the valley of intense. You never wanted to drive with him because he talked with his hands and never watched the road. That we didn’t lose him in an auto accident is amazing.

At the end of the 1969, my bond with Coach was forged.

The Aztecs were playing Boston University in the Rose Bowl. Before the team left for Pasadena, Coach approached me. He knew I had played at Pasadena City College, and he wondered if I knew three football players the Aztecs were recruiting.

At Pasadena City in those days, the football and baseball teams had lockers next to each other. So at the workout the day before the game, I delivered offensive lineman Martin Imhoff, running back Larry Mitchell and tight end Mike Reed to Coach.

Coach was stunned, and when the Aztecs landed all three players — all of whom would make an impact in the program — I was his man.”

That is some great writing John Maffei and everyone should read the rest of John’s column to get a full picture of just what an incredible football coach and man that Don Coryell was during his well-lived life.

Memories of a shared history with Coryell

God Speed to you Coach Coryell and be assured we will never forget some of those incredible football games you coached in your great career.

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