COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

New Coaches Hot Seat – College Football on TV webpage – High-Quality of Big Ten Network, CBS College Sports and other cable channels, all which one can get on DirecTV

 

We would like to remind all subscribers to Coaches Hot Seat that we have a new internal Coaches Hot Seat page that has a listing of all college football TV programs for each day on it, College Football on TV, which you can find just above the Coaches Hot Seat News section.  There is so much college football on TV these days, re-runs of old games, preview shows, coaches shows, recruiting shows, etc., that we thought that compiling a daily list of what college football programs are on TV would be useful to our subscribers.  Almost since the inception of Coaches Hot Seat there has been a posted list of that day’s TV listings of college football programs on the wall at Coaches Hot Seat Central and it finally dawned on one of us that other people out there might be interested in that list of programs as well.  Just for example to see just how much college football programming is on TV these days, there are over 60 TV college football shows on today, Friday August 28!  Imagine what will be on TV once we actually get the college football season cranked-up!

 

Speaking of college football on TV, our recorders picked up a replay of the 2008 SEC Championship Game between Alabama and Florida that was on CBS College Sports early Friday morning.  A couple of us dropped into Coaches Hot Seat Central this morning on the way to the gym to put up this blog post and we have that Alabama – Florida game running now, and MAN was that two great football teams and football game or what?  Wow, what a game!  This SEC Championship Game only reminds us that we cannot wait to get this 2009 season underway!

 

Speaking of TV, we would like to remind all college football and sports fans out there in the country that if you really love the game of college football then you need to have DirecTV.  The sports package with DirecTV has jus about every football game that that is on TV and there is just no reason for a college football fan not to have all of these great sports channels, like the Big Ten Network, The Mtn., CBS College Sports, Versus, Fox Sports, etc., because there will literally be hundreds of college football games and programs on those channels this football season.  Add on ESPN GamePlan, the NFL package and we are talking lots and lots of great football!

 

Of the above mentioned cable channels, as we have mentioned in the past, the Big Ten Network is just one of the best channels on our TV.  The quality of the graphics, the programming, the on-air talent, the programs, etc., on The Big Ten Network is really only exceeded by ESPN’s channels on TV, and the people at the Big Ten Conference should be very proud of the great product they have created.  The Big Ten Network has even added several more football themed shows for the upcoming football season and combined with their line-up of live games, their pre and post game football programming and the people they have hosting and commenting on the Network, we and other college football fans have a terrific and very reliable resource now in the Big Ten Network.

 

CBS College Sports, which is obviously owned by the CBS Network, also has some great college football programming now and they a couple new college football programs scheduled for this fall, including one with former Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Tony Barnhart.  CBS College Sports nightly sports show is terrific and coupled with their new programming and the ability to show great football games from the past (which the Big Ten Network,. ESPNU, ESPN Classic, the Fox Sports channels, and the Mtn. channel rebroadcast as well), and college football fans have another great resource to go almost everyday of the year. 

 

All we can say is:  If you love college football, then get DirecTV and you will have all the college football and more than you could ever hope, or want to watch!

 

 

2009 Big 12 North Coach and Team Predictions

 

Big 12 Conference – What can one say about the Big 12 Conference, but that it now rivals the SEC as the best collection of football teams and head coaches in college football today.  There has been a noticeable lack of quality defense in the Big 12 in recent years, but that might be a function of how great the offenses in the conference are playing these days.  With even staid old Oklahoma throwing the ball all around the field these days, it is either score points or go home in the Big 12 and when a team in the conference is able to clamp down on defense and slow up the offenses, that team finds themselves winning a lot of football games, which Oklahoma and Texas have done in spades in recent years.  As for 2009, we expect more of the same, with Oklahoma and Texas fighting it out for the Big 12 South and Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado fighting for the right to get beat by the Texas – Oklahoma game winner in the title game.  Of course, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State are coming on fast and that will only make the Big 12 that much more difficult in the coming years and as the quality of play throughout the Big 12 gets better and better (as is now happening the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-10 as well), the fools that believe that having what is nothing less than a “roulette-wheel” with these bogus human and computer polls leading everyone around by the nose, will have to come to their senses and demand an American way to determine the National Champion in college football.  What is that American way?  The same system used by every other sport in intercollegiate athletics:  A PLAYOFF!  Yes, if you are not for a PLAYOFF in college football, then we wonder how you have the intelligence to even get the toothpaste on the brush each morning, because having a PLAYOFF in college football is about as a common sense idea as one can find in the world today.  If you are not for a PLAYOFF, then throw the little white ball in the roulette wheel and just wait to see which teams hit the bogus jackpot, because the BCS is nothing more than that, a bogus crap shoot that is built upon biased, foolish and “dweeb” polls.  Yes, that makes a lot of sense!  NOT!

 

OK, back to the Big 12 2009 Predictions…

 

2009 Prediction Big 12 North

 

Colorado – 8-4

Kansas – 8-4

Nebraska – 8-4

Missouri – 7-5

Iowa State – 4-8

Kansas State – 2-10

 

2009 Prediction Big 12 South

 

Oklahoma – 11-1

Oklahoma State – 10-2

Texas – 10-2

Texas Tech – 9-3

Baylor – 6-6

Texas A&M – 5-7

 

The above predictions will create the following match-up in the Big 12 Championship Game:

 

Colorado vs. Oklahoma

 

 

Big 12 North Coach and Team Predictions – Wins/Losses

 

 

Iowa State

Head Coach:  Paul Rhoads – If you don’t believe  in fate and that one never really knows when an apparent setback will turn into a great opportunity, look no further than the series of events that brought Paul Rhoads back to Iowa State as their new head coach.  In the 1990s Paul Rhoads, an Iowa native, coached under Dan McCarney at Iowa State for 5 seasons and after a few years at Pitt and 1 tumultuous year at Auburn, Rhoads basically did a switch with Gene Chizik, landing the Iowa State head coaching job.  Paul Rhoads has always fielded very solid defenses in his coaching career, but he really has his work cut out for him at Iowa State where the talent level between the Cyclones and the rest of the Big 12 is very wide indeed.  Gene Chizik only recruited at a mediocre level in his 2 seasons at Iowa State and Rhoads must find a way to make up for a big talent gap and that means that his Cyclones’ defense will have to play very well and the offense will needs to score lots of points.  We don’t see that happening in Year 1 though to any great extend, but Iowa State will have a chance to win a couple of Big 12 games at home, and they will need to win those games to get some momentum for 2010 and beyond.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

North Dakota State – W

            Iowa – L

            @ Kent State – W

            Army – W

            Kansas State – W

            @ Kansas – L

            Baylor – L

            @ Nebraska – L

            @ Texas A&M– L

            Oklahoma State – L

            Colorado– L

@ Missouri – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  4-8

Paul Rhoads back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Kansas

Head Coach:  Mark Mangino – It has never been easy for any head coach to win a lot of games as Kansas, but the 4 year record that Mark Mangino has put up, 33-17 (.660), over the past 4 seasons certainly rivals what Glen Mason accomplished at KU in the early 1990s.  The difference between Mangino and Mason’s accomplishments is that Mason did not have to deal with the modern day Big 12, which is one of the toughest places to play in college football today.  The Big 12 now rivals the SEC in amount of raw talent & head coaches and that Mangino has been able to keep Kansas playing at a very high level against almost every team in the conference, shows just what kind of job Mangino is doing in Lawrence.  The 2009 season will be a great opportunity for Kansas to get to the Big 12 Championship Game, but they will have to win almost all of their conference home games and pick off a few conference wins on the road.  The road game at Colorado and the home game against Nebraska will probably be the key matchups for Kansas and which will probably have a big hand in determining the Big 12 North winner, but that game against Missouri to end the season may be a big one as well.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Northern Colorado – W

            @ UTEP – W

            Duke – W

            Southern Miss – W

            Iowa State – W

            @ Colorado – L

            Oklahoma– L

            @ Texas Tech – L

            @ Kansas State– W

            Nebraska – W

            @ Texas– L

Missouri – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Mark Mangino back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Kansas State

Head Coach:  Bill Snyder – There can little argument on the fact that Bill Snyder is one of the best head college coaches in the last 50 years, because the job that Snyder did in building the KSU program during his 17 years with the program is pretty much unrivaled in the history of the game.  In the eleven seasons between 1993 and 2003, Snyder and Kansas State won at least 9 games in ten of those seasons and won at least 11 games in six seasons.  To really put what Snyder accomplished at Kansas State, take a look at this quote from his Wikipedia profile:

 

“When Snyder was hired at K-State for the first time in 1989, he took over a program that had lost 510 games and won only 299 games in 93 years of play. The program had been to only one bowl game (the 1982 Independence Bowl), won only one conference title (in 1934) and had enjoyed only two winning seasons in the prior 34 years. When Snyder was hired the program had gone winless in 27 consecutive games.

 

Prior to Snyder’s first season in 1989, Sports Illustrated published an article about Kansas State football entitled “Futility U,” which labeled the school “America’s most hapless team.” Snyder won only one game in his first season, beating North Texas State, but it was a significant win because it was the first for the team in three seasons. In Snyder’s second season, in 1990, the Wildcats improved to 5–6. The five wins posted by the team had been matched only twice in the prior 17 years at the school, in 1973 (5–6) and 1982 (6–5).”

 

Yes, we think it is well-established that Bill Snyder is a coaching legend, but what we have not yet figured out is why he is again the head football coach at Kansas State.  Clearly, Snyder wanted back in the game, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to us that Kansas State thought that the best thing for the future of Kansas State football was to bring back a guy of retirement, especially when there are so many highly-qualified head and assistant coaches out there that would walk to Manhattan for the KSU job.  The problem for Snyder and thus Kansas State is the Big 12 Conference has become a very tough place for any team to win a lot of games, especially for a second-tier conference team like Kansas State.  People seem to have forgotten that Snyder didn’t retire from Kansas State in a blaze of glory, but in fact limped out with records of 4-7 and 5-6 in his last two seasons at KSU.  Bill Snyder’s replacement, Ron Prince, didn’t do a whole lot better when he put up records of 7-6, 5-7, 5-7 in his 3 years at KSU.  (Of course, at Kansas State, when you put up mediocre records you get a new and secret contract with a big pay raise, but we digress….).  Over the last 5 years, two under Snyder and two under Prince, Kansas State is 26-33 (.441), and if anyone actually believes that Bill Snyder at 70 years of age (this October) or even Darryl Royal in his prime is going to be able to turn the KSU program around in anything remotely considered “timely,” then we believe that person is living in a fantasy world!  In fact, we believe that even Bill Snyder in his prime could not turn around this program, because the Big 12 Conference is a much different animal than when Snyder and KSU were putting up 10+ win seasons on a regular basis, and certainly the Big 12 was not filled then with coaches as accomplished as the current head coaching line-up in the conference.

 

Because we do not think Snyder will turn things around in Manhattan, and might very well have a disastrous 2009 season, we think there is a chance that Snyder may only coach 1, or at the most 2 years, during this return and that Kansas State will maybe be looking for a new head coach come December, or at the very latest after the 2010 season. 

 

Just how we see it, but we certainly wish Coach Snyder lots of luck! 

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Massachusetts – W

            @ La. Lafayette – L

            @ UCLA – L

            Tennessee Tech – W

            @ Iowa State – L

            @ Texas Tech – L

            Texas A&M– L

            Colorado – L

            @ Oklahoma– L

            Kansas – L

            Missouri– L

@ Nebraska – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  2-10

Bill Snyder back for 2010? – MAYBE

 

 

Missouri

Head Coach:  Gary Pinkel – Gary Pinkel has successfully made Missouri into a force in the Big 12 Conference, but now after the first coaching shake-up on his staff in years, Pinkel must find a way to both plug in new assistant coaches and find some players to replace some of the starts that the Tigers lost after last season.  After two seasons of putting up records of 12-2 and 10-4, Missouri should be able to keep things rolling in ’09, but we do believe that all the changes in Columbia and a very tough schedule will probably cause the Tigers to stumble a bit.  We shall see….

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Illinois – W

            Bowling Green – W

            Furman – W

            @ Nevada – L

            Nebraska – L

            @ Oklahoma State – L

            Texas– L

            @ Colorado – W

            Baylor– W

            @ Kansas State – W

            Iowa State – W

Kansas – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  7-5

Gary Pinkel back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Nebraska

Head Coach:  Bo Pelini – In only 1 year Bo Pelini has taken firm control of the Nebraska football program and the Huskers are on a path to become “the force” in the Big 12 North for the foreseeable future.  We have lots of friends in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska and the Big Red Nation is once again united behind their head coach and football program and as we have seen at a school like Alabama with Nick Saban, when a traditional power in college football gets the right coach at the right time, they almost always become a powerful force that must be dealt with by every team on their schedule. 

 

Watching Nebraska practice or warm-up before a game now compared to watching Nebraska under Bill Callahan is like night and day and from the way the Huskers practice, to the way they behave on and off the field, to the general feeling one gets when they are around the Husker football program, everything seems to be on just the right frequency.  Bo Pelini understands the Nebraska Nation and the Husker football program and he has very quickly changed the fortunes in Lincoln, and we expect this train to not only keep rolling but to pick up a continuous head of steam for years to come.  2009 would be a little early on the Pelini rebuilding schedule, but it could be the breakout season for the Huskers.  Nebraska faces a very difficult road schedule with games at Virginia Tech, at Missouri, at Baylor, at Kansas, and at Colorado to finish the season and if you throw in Oklahoma and Texas Tech at home then that is one difficult schedule, but we still believe that Nebraska will go to Boulder, Colorado on November 27 to play the Buffs with the opportunity to win that game and advance to the Big 12 title game.  Since we see Colorado and Nebraska as very even teams in 2009, there is a good chance that the Huskers could win that game in Boulder and the Big 12 North title and if somehow Pelini can get Nebraska into the Big 12 Championship Game in Year 2 on the job, then he will have really proved to everyone that the Huskers are back, and back in a big way.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Florida Atlantic – W

            Arkansas State – W

            @ Virginia Tech – L

            La. Lafayette – W

            @ Missouri – W

            Texas Tech– W

            Iowa State– W

            @ Baylor – W

            Oklahoma– L

            @ Kansas – L

            Kansas State – W

@ Colorado – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Bo Pelini back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Colorado

Head Coach:  Dan Hawkins –

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

2009 CHS Analysis of Dan Hawkins and Colorado

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Dan Hawkins back for 2010? – YES

 

 

As with the death of President Reagan in 2005, the death of Senator Kennedy has several of us thinking of the “homeland” of those two men, Ireland.  One cannot truly understand Ronald Reagan or Edward Kennedy without having their Irish heritage in mind.  Both men could tell jokes and laugh with the best of them and we all can learn a thing or two with how the Irish both view and take on the world.  Ronald Reagan reminded people often one that one should never take life too seriously, no matter how tough things get and one of us here at Coaches Hot Seat has the following photo blown up in his home office, which was taken in the Reagan White House in 1981, no doubt after someone told a very funny story:

 

 

 

 

Ireland truly is a stunning country with some of the most hardy people on the planet and for some of us one of the great things about living in California is being able to head up or down the rugged coast of this state to find the stunning landscapes that remind us of some of the beauty that one will see when visiting Ireland or Great Britain.  Here is a great, but short video, from a section of the Ireland from the Air series:

 

 

 

 

One of the great American movies made about Ireland was John Ford’s Quiet Man, starting John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara (1952):

 

 

 

 

 

How appropriate it is that Senator Kennedy will be buried near his brothers at Arlington Cemetery.  If you have not been to Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C., then we highly recommend that you make the trip and take the kids along as well.  When at Arlington Cemetery onne first visits the JFK Memorial and then you turn around and look back at Washington DC and see the view down and across the Potomac River and the Lincoln and Washington Memorials in the distance:

 

 

 

 

No doubt, in Edward Kennedy’s religion he will have probably have some things to answer for when he meets his Maker, but somehow the music of the Irish singer Sarah McLachlan seems appropriate:

 

 

 

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Coaches Hot Seat News Stories Update Changes and Schedule for 2009 Season

 

With the college football season only a week or so away, we here at Coaches Hot Seat are preparing for another great year and for our Third season on the Internet.  None of us here at Coaches Hot Seat every imagined that we would reach the point where the amount of time, effort, and money that we would be required to be put into the Coaches Hot Seat website would cause us to move to a “subscription” based model, but that is indeed what did happen last fall.  As our subscribers know, we spend a considerable amount of time and effort in providing a singular place where people can get news and opinion on the game of college football and we are committed to providing that same level of information into the future.  Since keeping a news website updated almost around the clock takes a considerable amount of time and effort we have hired a number of college students in recent years and spend a lot of time training them in what kind of stories on college football that both we as a group like to read, and stories that we believe our subscribers will find informational, helpful, and eye-opening to what is going on around the game of college football.  We don’t think there is any place on the Internet where one can go to and find such a diverse and large amount of news stories on the game of college football and we plan to continue working hard to make sure that our subscribers will be able to rely in Coaches Hot Seat to be that great resource in the future. 

 

With college classes now starting back we are going to streamline our news posting a little so that the college students we hire to keep the website up can keep up with their studies and also provide the kind and amount of information that our subscribers have come to expect.  Generally, we have someone at the Coaches Hot Seat desk updating news stories for our website 16 to 18 hours each day and beginning today we are going to break down our news updates into 2 identifiable sections so that our subscribers will be able to anticipate when the Coaches Hot Seat website will be updated during each 24 hour period. 

 

When you login today to Coaches Hot Seat you will see the normal Coaches Hot Seat News update section for that day, but you will see below that banner 2 new sections that will be labeled:

 

Coaches Hot Seat Morning Update

Coaches Hot Seat Afternoon Update

 

News stories that fall under the “Morning Update” will have been posted by our overnight crew, which begins posting news stories around 9PM PST, working thru the night and finishes up posting news stories around 7AM PST.  All of the stories during that time will fall under the “Morning Update” and then we will allow our college students to get to class and then our afternoon/evening crew will begin posting news stories under the “Afternoon Update” around 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM PST and they will continue to post news stories until 6:00 PM PST or so.  Coaches Hot Seat will then generally not post news stories again until the overnight crew arrives again, which is around 9PM PST and then those stories will be under the “Morning Update” for the next day.  Got all of that?  Here is a summary of our News posting:

 

Coaches Hot Seat News Stories Update Schedule

 

CHS News Morning Update – 9 PM to 7 AM PST

 

CHS News Afternoon Update – 11:30 AM to 6:00 PM PST

 

Then the posting of news stories for the next days begins at 9PM PST.

 

As one can imagine it takes a big commitment to have people on hand to post news stories here at Coaches Hot Seat for 16 to 18 hours a day, but we personally get a lot of out of the website and we hope our subscribers do as well.  It is not cheap to keep at least one person in front of a computer updating news stories and keeping the CHS website up for 16 to 18 hours each day and we certainly appreciate all of our subscribers continued commitment to the Coaches Hot Seat.

 

As always, if you have any questions about Coaches Hot Seat, send your questions to info@coacheshotseat.com.

 

Thanks again to all of our Coaches Hot Seat subscribers.

 

 

2009 ACC Coastal Coach and Team Predictions

 

ACC Conference – It doesn’t take a football genius to recognize that football in the ACC Conference in recent years has been down, but why it has been down is the real question.  One can start with the weakness of Florida State and Miami in recent years, which would be like Texas and Oklahoma dropping to the middle of the Big 12, and without the Hurricanes and Seminoles not leading the way, the ACC has lost its way as well.  Frank Beamer and his Hokies have been going along playing very good football and taking advantage of the weakness of the rest of the conference that has seen the rise of Wake Forest and Boston College in the ACC Atlantic, and now Georgia Tech and North Carolina in the Coastal division.  Turn the clock back a decade with Florida State and Miami as college football heavyweights and the ACC would be challenging the SEC and Big 12 for the best conferences in the country, but without those teams pulling their weight, the ACC has really struggled in recent years.  What the folks at Miami and Florida State should realize is that there is just no excuse in the world for either of those football programs to EVER be down (save NCAA sanctions which Miami did have several years ago), because there is just way too much football talent in the state of Florida that both schools should be getting their share of, and that talent should lead to a big advantage over other teams in the ACC.  With both Miami and Florida State down, the other ACC teams have really taken advantage of this window of opportunity and when Miami and FSU do become powers again the ACC might find that the entire conference will be better for this downturn.

 

 

2009 ACC Atlantic Predictions

 

Wake Forest – 9-3

NC State – 7-5

Clemson – 6-6

Florida State – 6-6

Boston College – 6-6

Maryland – 5-7

 

 

2009 ACC Coastal Predictions

 

Virginia Tech – 10-2

Georgia Tech – 11-1

North Carolina – 10-2

Miami – 6-6

Virginia – 4-8

Duke – 4-8

The above 2009 ACC Predictions would create the following:

2009 ACC Championship Game

Wake Forest vs. Virginia Tech

 

 

Boston College

Head Coach:  Frank Spaziani – We here at Coaches Hot Seat have still not figured out why Jeff Jagodzinksi was fired by Boston College, because if interviewing for another job is a firing offense then that pretty much blows up the entire idea of what the United States of America is about.  Yes, it can be frustrating when top employees interview for other jobs, but smart CEO’s recognize that only their best employees are pursued by other companies and Jagodzinksi’s interview with the New York Jets last year was just recognition of how good of a job that he had done in his two years at Boston College.  Evidently, BC athletic director Gene DeFillippo has never in his entire life interviewed for a job that he thought would be a step up for his career, because if he did then DeFillippo is an incredible hypocrite.  In two seasons at BC, Jagodzinski put up records of 11-3 and 9-5 and took the Eagles to two ACC title games, so why exactly was Jagodzinski fired?  We sure the Hell don’t know why, and if Frank Spaziani struggles in the next few years, Gene DeFillippo is going to look like one of the biggest morons and fools this side of Al Davis. 

 

As for Frank Spaziani, he has had a long and very successful career as an assistant coach and he had done a very good job with the BC defense for several years now.  Being a very good assistant coach and being a successful head coach are entirely different things though, and Spaziani will have to very quickly learn what it takes to be a head coach while trying to keep BC on top of the ACC Atlantic Division.  The ACC Atlantic hasn’t been a very strong division in recent years and thus Spaziani has an opportunity to keep BC rolling, but it is not going to be as easy as AD DeFillippo believes it will be..   We shall see…

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Northeastern – W

            Kent State – W

            @ Clemson – L

            Wake Forest – L

            Florida State – L

            @ Virginia Tech – L

            NC State – W

            @ Notre Dame – L

            Central Michigan– W

            @ Virginia – W

            North Carolina– L

Maryland – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  6-6

Frank Spaziani back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Clemson

Head Coach:  Dabo Swinney – Dabo Swinney was in the right place at the right time last season after the firing of Tommy Bowden, because Swinney jumped ahead of a lot of very good assistant and current head coaches that would have loved a shot at the head coaching job at Clemson.  Now that Swinney has the Clemson job though, he is going to have to perform and that means working like a man possessed in recruiting, taking control of his football players, and motivating his staff to perform, and those are not easy things to do.  Being a head football coach at a big time football school like Clemson is a pressure cooker and Swinney will be questioned more than a proven head coach and there will be a very small window of opportunity, 3 years at the most, for Swinney to prove he can perform at a high level, and if he doesn’t, Clemson will be out looking for a new head football coach.  The expectations for Swinney at Clemson are very clear:  Win the ACC Atlantic Division or come close to winning it every year, and beat South Carolina, almost every year.  Anything less than that…… can you say Hot Seat?

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Middle Tennessee State – W

            @ Georgia Tech – L

            Boston College – W

            TCU – L

            @ Maryland – L

            Wake Forest – W

            @ Miami – L

            Coastal Carolina – W

            Florida State– W

            @ NC State – L

            Virginia– W

@ South Carolina – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  6-6

Dabo Swinney back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Florida State

Head Coach:  Bobby Bowden – It is an over used cliché, but Bobby Bowden (like Joe Paterno) is a Living Legend.  All of us here at Coaches Hot Seat grew up watching Bobby Bowden win lots football games and championships at FSU and the run that Bowden had between 1987 and 2004, when the Seminoles won at least 10 games in 15 or 19 seasons, won 12 ACC titles, and 2 National Titles is still stunning to think about.  Yes, Bobby Bowden is a Living Legend, and a hellava guy to boot!  People will react to Bowden’s “Oh shucks” and other such comments, but if we were sent to a real shooting war we would be very confident in falling in line behind a Major Bowden, because Bobby Bowden is the kind of man that you know is going to do his “dangdest” to achieve the given goals and to do his best to get everyone out alive.  Even as great as Bobby Bowden’s coaching career has been, the last few years have been as struggle, with records of 8-5, 7-6, 7-6, 9-4 over the past 4 seasons, but still FSU still won 1 ACC title and went to 2 ACC title games in those years.  FSU did have a small, but noticeable uptick in 2008, but the 2009 schedule is very challenge with road games at BYU, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Wake Forest, and a season-ending game at Florida.  “Dadgum!”  No, that schedule is not easy, and the Seminoles may even play as well as they did in ’08, but could end up with a worse schedule.  Whatever happens, it is impossible for us to pull against Bobby Bowden (or Joe Paterno), and we hopes the Seminoles can make one more run for Coach Bowden. 

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Miami (FL) – W

            Jacksonville State – W

            @ BYU – L

            South Florida – W

            @ Boston College – W

            Georgia Tech – L

            @ North Carolina – L

            NC State – W

            @ Clemson– L

            @ Wake Forest – L

            Maryland– W

@ Florida – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  6-6

Bobby Bowden back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Maryland

Head Coach:  Ralph Friedgen – After a great assistant coaching career and a very hot start in his first 3 years at Maryland, 10-2, 11-3, and 10-3, Ralph Friedgen has stumbled very badly in the last 5 years.  Watching Maryland play in recent years it has seemed to us that something was just not right and we really haven’t been able to figure out what it is that is wrong.  Yes, we have seen some less than motivated play by some Terrapins in recent years with some players taking plays off, and some very foolish decisions being made on the field by players that cost Maryland yards, penalties and points, but just overall the Terps have just not played very good nor consistent football in recent years.  Maryland does have a very good head coach in Friedgen and a very good assistant coaching staff, so either the talent level has dropped off in recent years (maybe a little, but only a little), the ACC has gotten tougher in recent years (no, the ACC has gotten easier), or the coaching staff is just not doing a very good job of getting their players and team ready to play and they are not identifying leaders on the team that can help the Terps when they get into tough games and spots.  Since the latter is the only conclusion that makes sense, Ralph Friedgen and his coaching staff better get busy coaching their team up and finding some leaders or they are going to find themselves in hot water again in 2009.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

@ California – L

            James Madison – W

            Middle Tennessee State – W

            Rutgers – W

            Clemson – W

            @ Wake Forest – L

            Virginia – W

            @ Duke – L

            @ NC State– L

            Virginia Tech – L

            @ Florida State– L

Boston College – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  5-7

Ralph Friedgen back for 2010? – NO

 

 

NC State

Head Coach:  Tom O’Brien – Tom O’Brien did a very good job in his 10 seasons at Boston College, but he is finding the going considerably tougher at NC State and that is not something we are entirely surprised about.  The change in coaching style to O’Brien from Chuck Amato at NC State could not have been starker and we can understand that it took the Wolfpack players some time to adjust to O’Brien and for them to understand the level of commitment he wants from them on the field and in other parts of their lives.  NC State did start to play some better football towards the end of the ’08 season, winning their last 4 games and losing a close bowl game to Rutgers, and we expect that improvement to continue, but up against a very difficult schedule.  The ACC Coastal is becoming a very tough division and road games at Wake Forest, Florida State, Boston College, and Virginia Tech and a very tough home game with North Carolina to finish the season will make the going tough for NC State in ’09.  If the Wolfpack can win a couple of those road games, and beat UNC in the season ending game, then they will have a chance to play in the ACC Title Game come December.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

South Carolina – W

            Murray State – W

            Gardner-Webb – W

            Pittsburgh – W

            @ Wake Forest – L

            Duke – W

            @ Boston College – L

            @ Florida State – L

            Maryland– W

            Clemson – W

            @ Virginia Tech – L

North Carolina – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  7-5

Tom O’Brien back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Wake Forest

Head Coach:  Jim Grobe – Jim Grobe had 6 tough years after arriving at Wake Forest, but after 1 ACC Championship season in 2006 and 2 pretty good seasons the last 2 years, Grobe has Wake Forest positioned to remain a force in the ACC for the foreseeable future.  Grobe and the Deacons have benefited from the ACC being weaker in recent years, but now that some of the power teams in the conference are starting to wake up, Wake Forest may very well be ready to stay competitive and be a team that every team in the ACC will have do deal with when they show up on the schedule.  Wake Forest has a very manageable schedule in 2009 and with some decent play they very well may end up back in the ACC Title Game.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Baylor – L

            Stanford – W

            Elon – W

            @ Boston College – W

            NC State – W

            Maryland – W

            @ Clemson – L

            @ Navy – W

            Miami (FL)– W

            @ Georgia Tech – L

            Florida State – W

@ Duke – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  9-3

Jim Grobe back for 2010? – YES

 

 

For those of us that were born right around the time of the assassination of President Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, we were never able to take the measure of those two men while they were still alive, but we are familiar with Senator Edward Kennedy, who passed away last night at age 77.  For most of us here at Coaches Hot Seat the political views of Edward Kennedy and the way that he lived his personal life are very foreign and not completely understood by us, but no one can deny that Ted Kennedy lived a remarkable life.  On a more personal level, several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat had the opportunity to see Senator Kennedy operate politically in the Senate and elsewhere and we can affirm that the man was strongly committed to his liberal beliefs, and at least on a personal level, he was a Prince of a man.  Behind the scenes, Senator Kennedy could be warm, almost always funny, and sometimes out of control, but such is the nature of the human condition, especially for someone that saw his two older brothers shot down and murdered in cold blood.

 

So much, both good and bad, could be written about Senator Kennedy, but on thing for sure, Edward Kennedy like everyone else in the Kennedy family loved life and lived that life with great intensity.  Joe Kennedy, the father of Edward Kennedy, was a man of incredible ambition for both himself and his children and in so many ways the Kennedy’s shaped America in the past century and that is not something that can be said about very many people. 

 

One can only wonder how different our country would be today if President Kennedy had not been shot down in Dallas in 1963, or if Robert F. Kennedy had not been shot and killed in Los Angeles in 1968, but there was something about the Kennedy’s that made people sit up and notice.  Raw ambition coupled with great wealth and power, all wrapped around a father that was very demanding and set high goals for his children, certainly spun out children that thought they could change the world for the better, and some of them actually did just that.

 

As Senator Patrick Moynihan once said:

 

“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” 

 

Yes, the Kennedy’s, and the country have had their heart broken many times in the past 50 years, but with the passing of Edward Kennedy at 77, at least the man had the opportunity to live a long and fruitful life. 

 

Not long after President Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963, the Washington Post columnist Mary McGory said:

 

“We shall never smile again.”

 

Senator Patrick Moynihan responded:

 

“No Mary, we will smile again, but we will never be young again.”

 

By the time most of us came along in the mid to late 1960s America had seemed to lost its innocence and was spinning into the debacle of the Vietnam War, followed by Watergate, followed by the gas shortages, followed by high interest rates and high inflation, followed by the Iranian Hostage Crisis, followed by oh so much more.  If there ever was a time in US history where Americans could “smile” and were “young,” we certainly don’t seem to remember it….

 

With the death of Senator Edward Kennedy a curtain is drawn up a period in US history and all the good and bad that came along with it.  One thing all of the Kennedy’s could do was give a great speech, and Edward Kennedy certainly delivered that great speech in the eulogy for his brother Robert F. Kennedy in June 1963 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. 

 

Listen to that eulogy for RFK below and imagine what Edward Kennedy must have been going thru after losing his second brother to assassination.  It is a stunning speech.

 

 

 

 

God Speed to you Edward Kennedy

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The Greeks, The Romans, media coverage and the absurdity of the SEC’s new media policy

 

Sometime around 80 AD the first “games” were held in the Roman Colosseum, as detailed in the Wikipedia entry:

 

“The Colosseum was used to host gladiatorial shows as well as a variety of other events. The shows, called munera, were always given by private individuals rather than the state. They had a strong religious element but were also demonstration of power and family prestige, and were immensely popular with the population. Another popular type of show was the animal hunt, or venatio. This utilized a great variety of wild beasts, mainly imported from Africa and the Middle East, and included creatures such as rhinoceros, hippopotamuses, elephants, giraffes, aurochs, wisents, barbary lions, panthers, leopards, bears, caspian tigers, alligators, crocodiles and ostriches. Battles and hunts were often staged amid elaborate sets with movable trees and buildings. Such events were occasionally on a huge scale; Trajan is said to have celebrated his victories in Dacia in 107 with contests involving 11,000 animals and 10,000 gladiators over the course of 123 days.

 

During the early days of the Colosseum, ancient writers recorded that the building was used for naumachiae (more properly known as navalia proelia) or simulated sea battles. Accounts of the inaugural games held by Titus in AD 80 describe it being filled with water for a display of specially trained swimming horses and bulls. There is also an account of a re-enactment of a famous sea battle between the Corcyrean (Corfiot) Greeks and the Corinthians.”

 

It is not hard to conjure up with one’s imagination the following from the same Wikipedia entry on the Colosseum:

 

“Occupying a site just east of the Roman Forum, its construction started between 70 and 72 AD[1] under the emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 AD under Titus, with further modifications being made during Domitian’s reign (81–96).  The name “Amphitheatrum Flavium” derives from both Vespasian’s and Titus’s family name (Flavius, from the gens Flavia).

 

Capable of seating 50,000 spectators, the Colosseum was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles. As well as the gladiatorial games, other public spectacles were held there, such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology. The building ceased to be used for entertainment in the early medieval era. It was later reused for such purposes as housing, workshops, quarters for a religious order, a fortress, a quarry, and a Christian shrine.”

 

 

 

 

Yes, those must of have been some incredible events at the Roman Colosseum and no doubt they attracted great crowds that enjoyed attending the events and telling their family, friends, and others they ran into about the latest Gladiator battle or fight to the death with a tiger.  No doubt, the newsmen of the day watched closely and later detailed the events and news of the “games” and then later disseminated that information to the Roman Empire and beyond.  Yes, these events at the Roman Colosseum began almost 1900 years ago and were watched by the citizens of Roman and reported on by the newsmen of the day, but alas, we can go back even further….

 

As detailed in the Wikipedia entry for the Ancient Olympic Games:

 

“The Olympic Games’ or Olympia as they were called at the time (Olympiakoi Agones; Greek: pronounced Olýmpia with the accent on y) were a series of athletic competitions held for representatives of various city-states of Ancient Greece. Records indicate that they began in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece. They were celebrated until 393 AD.  The Games were usually held every four years, or olympiad, as the unit of time came to be known. During a celebration of the Games, an Olympic Truce was enacted to enable athletes to travel from their countries to Olympia in safety. The prizes for the victors were laurel wreaths, palm branches, woolen ribbons and sometimes even food for life. The ancient Olympics were rather different from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete (even though a woman is also mentioned as a winner), athletes from any country / city (famous athletes from as far as Rome and Armenia are mentioned). The Games were always held at Olympia instead of moving around to different places at each separate Olympic event as is the case for modern Olympics.”

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine that, in 776 BC or almost 2800 years ago the first recorded large sports event were held on the Earth and we have no doubt that there were attended by many regular citizens and that the newsmen of the day reported the facts and results of the Ancient Olympic Games were disseminated to the world beyond Greece.

 

All of this ancient sporting events and contests bring us to the very curious case of the SEC Conference and their unbelievable position that they have taken on both the behavior of fans and how the media can cover the news that SEC teams make on sports playing fields.  As detailed by Rick Cleveland in the Clarion-Ledger today, after much criticism the SEC revised its policy on how ticket buying fans can describe and use what they see and with photos taken during games, but even the revised policy seems high-handed to us.  The SEC’s policy towards the credential media is still at issue though, with the AP and several other news organizations still protesting what we believe to be an outrageous and arrogant media policy by the SEC that seems to believe that news coverage of their events is a bad thing. 

 

How anyone beyond a wing-tipped attorney that has never worked a day in his life in the real world could come up with such a ham-handed media policy is beyond us, but that may be the relevant point here.  The problem with college sports is that there are way too many lawyers sitting around and actually convincing themselves that they are the one’s responsible for the great success of college football and other intercollegiate sports, but they forget that it is the athletes, coaches, and the support staff that actually make things happen, attract millions of fans to the sport, and are the real generators of the billions of dollars that flow to entities like the SEC. 

 

We give Mike Slive credit for doing what the SEC commissioners that preceded him should have done, telling the athletic coaches and ADs in the conferences to start acting like adults and spend time worrying about running their own programs, rather than turning each other in over recruiting violations.  Yes, it was very dark days in the SEC when Mike Slive arrived, but Slive has not thrown one pass, spent one minute on a practice field in the heat of August, or scored one point on a basketball court.  It is the athletes and coaches of the SEC conference that have made the SEC what it is, not the efforts of a bunch of Brooks Brothers wearing lawyers in Birmingham and elsewhere that haven’t done a honest days work in years and from our perspective after looking over the SEC’s new media policy, have way too much time on their hands to dream up ways to stick it to the people paying their salaries and the news folks that are covering their sporting events. 

 

From the Coaches Hot Seat perspective, we cannot remember a time when any of us ever took a photo at any football game or encroached anywhere near the SEC’s initial or revised policy for ticket-buying fans, but we have seen plenty of fans both in person and on the Internet that seem to get great fun and entertainment from expressing their opinions and from sharing the various types of media they have shot/captured at sporting events.  Why the clueless lawyers and media hacks at the SEC conference ever thought that these fans exercising their First Amendment rights could possibly harm the conference is beyond us, because we actually see that all of this fan interest on the Internet and elsewhere as a huge positive and plus for the SEC, not the huge negative as the conference seems it to be.

 

As for the news media, credentialed media representatives the companies they work for that spend good money to send reporters and photographers to SEC sporting events should be treated as some of the most important people at those events, because they are the one’s that are disseminating the news of the sporting events to the general public.  How the SEC has come to see these media folks as threats to the conference and that they could possibly be some kind of threat to the conference’s media partners just shows how ignorant the lawyers that are running the SEC are on the way the real world works. 

 

Yes, here we are, about 2800 years from the first Olympic Games and 1900 years and some from the first “games” at the Roman Colosseum we have now reached the point where an entity in the SEC conference actually believes that they have become so big, they have signed such lucrative contracts, they have become so confident that they are bigger than the “games” themselves, that they have the audacity and the arrogance to give the big middle finger to the fans and media and tell them to go to Hell!  Thanks to all the fans for spending thousands of dollars buying tickets, merchandise, and loads of other crap, and thanks to the media for covering the games all those years, but now that we have CBS and ESPN in our back pocket, we don’t need the minions any more.

 

Yes, what arrogance and how unbelievably outrageous for the SEC to come up with such a disturbing and in our minds, borderline illegal media policy, but we here at Coaches Hot Seat are not surprised, no, not surprised at all.  The winged-tip shoe wearing lawyers that dreamed up this new SEC media policy, and any other attorney that has done nothing in his/her life but practice law, hasn’t a clue in the world to how the real world works and that original SEC media policy document just reflects how out of touch these idiots really are from the American people.  A few years in the military, working in a real job where they can interact with real Americans, instead of sitting in air conditioned offices and alternating between luxury suites boxes and 5-star resorts would do all of these fools a lot of good. 

 

We certainly hope that the media organizations continue to press for their right to cover the news that is an SEC sports event and if a media organization, or a fan in the stands for that matter, makes an effort to cover, report and photograph an SEC sports event, these same folks should have a right to disseminate their work to the rest of the world as they see fit.  For some reason the people in the SEC office that wouldn’t know a hot dog with relish and slaw on it if it hit them in the face (because they have been gorging themselves on caviar, pate, and foie gras), seem to believe that they own the teams playing on the sporting fields, even though 11 of 12 SEC schools are public and all the schools in the conference are supported by the taxpaying public in the states and at the federal level.  That is unbelievable arrogance by the people in the SEC offices in Birmingham, Alabama, and it points to just how out of touch with the real world these folks at the SEC and others in decision making positions across college sports are from the real world. 

 

Maybe today the people wearing the $2,000 dollars suites at the SEC offices in Birmingham could actually interact with the common folk at lunch, and instead of taking a $300 dollar lunch, they might drive their gold-plated asses over the Southside of Birmingham and have lunch at Dreamland Barbeque (One of Coaches Hot Seat’s favorite places to eat when passing through Alabama headed to SEC football games).

 

 

 

 

Yes, actually interacting with real people, instead of a bunch of attorneys sitting around at a white table restaurant debating the finer points of whatever kind of bullshit they have dreamed of how to stick it to the common man, would be good for these folks at the SEC.  Get a booth, order some Sweet Tea, put a napkin in your collar like Jed Clampett, order a slab of ribs, bakes beans, cole slaw and some banana pudding for desert.  See how the real world and how real Americans live and maybe, just maybe, you will start to get an appreciation to how stupid and arrogant this new SEC media policy really is….

 

If anyone sees Mike Slive and a bunch of winged-tip shoe wearing lawyers eating lunch at Dreamland Barbeque today, give them a piece of your mind and whip out your cell phone camera, take a video of Slive with barbeque sauce on his face and then immediately go home and post it on YouTube.com.  That will show these bastards how the new media and Internet works, because right now they haven’t a clue!

 

 

 

2009 Coach & Team Predictions for Navy & Army and ACC Coastal Division

 

2009 Army & Navy Predictions

 

Navy – 8-5

Army – 5-7

 

 

Navy

Head Coach:  Ken Niumatalolo – Ken Niumatalolo had a very tough act to following replacing Paul Johnson at Navy (54 – 33  (.621) in 6 seasons at the Naval Academy) and the Midshipman did struggle last season early with losses to Ball State and Duke, but they recovered nicely to win 7 of their last 10 games, including giving Notre Dame everything they wanted before losing a close 27 – 21 game.  8-5 last season was a pretty good result considering the difficulty of Navy’s schedule and Niumatalolo faces another tough slate in 2009, including an opening game against the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus.  Throw in a games on the road at Pitt, Notre Dame and Hawaii and home games against La. Tech, Wake Forest and Temple, and it will not be easy for Navy to do a whole lot better than the ’08 results.  One thing that Niumatalolo will work very hard to defend is Navy’s 6 year streak of winning the Commander in Chief’s Trophy and the Week 4 game against Air Force at home will be critical to win to keep that streak alive.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

@ Ohio State – L

            La. Tech – W

            @ Pitt – L

            Western Kentucky – W

            Air Force – L

            @ Rice – W

            @ SMU – W

            Wake Forest – L

            Temple – W

            @ Notre Dame – W

            Delaware– W

@ Hawaii – L

Army – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-5

Ken Niumatalolo back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Army

Head Coach:  Rich Ellerson – The one thing that Army really needed was a proven head coach that knew how to run the option offense successfully and that is exactly what Army got in their new head coach Rich Ellerson.  In 8 seasons at Cal Poly, Rich Ellerson put up a record of 56 – 34 (.622), but more importantly Cal Poly was a very competitive football team in almost every game and his teams always came to play for each contest.  Army football can be as good Air Force and Navy are today, which can play with about 90 percent of the teams in I-A football, and we fully expect for Rich Ellerson to make Army very quickly a team that is going to have be dealt with by every team on their schedule.  Yes, Ellerson’s positive impact is already being felt at The Point and it will be felt in his first season with the Cadets.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

@ Eastern Michigan – W

            Duke – L

            Ball State – W

            @ Iowa State – L

            Tulane – W

            Vanderbilt – L

            @ Temple – L

            Rutgers – L

            @ Air Force – L

            VMI – W

            @ North Texas– W

Navy – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  5-7

Rich Ellerson back for 2010? – YES

 

 

2009 ACC Coastal Coach and Team Predictions

 

2009 ACC Coastal Predictions

 

Virginia Tech – 10-2

Georgia Tech – 11-1

North Carolina – 10-2

Miami – 6-6

Virginia – 4-8

Duke – 4-8

 

 

Virginia Tech

Head Coach:  Frank Beamer – Frank Beamer has had quite a run at Virginia Tech, putting up a record of 176-89-2  (.659) in 18 seasons, including 6 conference titles between the Big East and ACC conferences.  Beamer and the Hokies have also won 10 or more games 9 of the last 14 seasons and have won at least 10 games in the last 5 years.  Yes, the ACC has been down since the decline of FSU and Miami, but since Virginia Tech joined the ACC in 2004 they have played in the ACC championship game 4 times in 5 years and won 4 ACC titles.  Those are stunning numbers in today’s world of very competitive college football and we fully expect Beamer to keep things rolling at Virginia Tech as long as he decides to keep coaching, but if the ACC strengthens in coming years as we expect, it will not be as easy to both win the ACC Coastal Division and thus get an opportunity to win ACC titles.  The 2009 Virginia Tech schedule is very challenging, starting with an opening game against Alabama, and a win against the Tide in Atlanta will  be no easy feat.  We shall see….. 

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Alabama – L

            Marshall – W

            Nebraska – W

            Miami (FL) – W

            @ Duke – W

            Boston College – W

            @ Georgia Tech – W

            North Carolina – W

            @ East Carolina – L

            @ Maryland – W

            NC State– W

@ Virginia – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  10-2

Frank Beamer back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Duke

Head Coach:  David Cutcliffe – David Cutcliffe has had a big impact upon the Duke football program and now Cutcliffe is starting to make some real inroads on the recruiting trail (Duke 2010 commitment list, Rivals.com).  The biggest challenge for Cutcliffe and Duke to become at team that can go to a postseason bowl game each year and challenge for ACC title on a regular basis is to get better athletes and football players on campus and even then it is not going to be easy for the Blue Devils to compete against large state schools that have a lot less academic requirements.  The ACC that Steve Spurrier won an ACC title in is not the same ACC that the Blue Devils are playing in today, but it is going to be a lot of fun watching Cutcliffe and Duke causing havoc in coming years, because no longer is Duke a game that any team in I-A football can take for granted.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Richmond – W

            @ Army – W

            @ Kansas – L

            NC Central – W

            Virginia Tech – L

            @ NC State – L

            Maryland – W

            @ Virginia – L

            @ North Carolina – L

            Georgia Tech – L

            @ Miami (FL)– L

Wake Forest – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  4-8

David Cutcliffe back for 2010? – YES

 

 

North Carolina

Head Coach:  Butch Davis – Butch Davis has turned the fortunes in Chapel Hill pretty quickly, but no quicker than we thought he would be able to do.  Except for the debacle against NC State, Davis and the Tar Heels could have won every game on their ’08 regular season schedule and we expect North Carolina to win or be very competitive in every game they play in 2009.  The biggest problem for Butch Davis is that he is now coaching in a division, the ACC Coastal, that has some very established winning coaches in it and it going to be for the foreseeable future very difficult for any team in this division to get to the ACC title game on a regular basis.  With Virginia Tech being a very strong force and Paul Johnson coming on strong at Georgia Tech, it is going to very entertaining to watch the battles in the ACC Coastal in the coming years, and we can only wish Davis all the luck in the world…….because he and the Tar Heels are going to need it!

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Citadel – W

            @ Connecticut – W

            East Carolina – W

            @ Georgia Tech – L

            Virginia – W

            Georgia Southern – W

            Florida State – W

            @ Virginia Tech – L

            Duke – W

            Miami (FL) – W

            @ Boston College – W

@ NC State – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  10-2

Butch Davis back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Georgia Tech

Head Coach:  Paul Johnson

 

Link to Analysis:  Paul Johnson & Georgia Tech 2009

 

2009 Predicted Record:  11-1

Butch Davis back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Miami

Head Coach:  Randy Shannon

 

Link to Analysis:  Randy Shannon & Miami 2009

 

2009 Predicted Record:  6-6

Randy Shannon back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Virginia

Head Coach:  Al Groh

 

Link to Analysis:  Al Groh & Virginia 2009

 

2009 Predicted Record:  4-8

Al Groh back for 2010? – NO

 

 

 

There is some good news to report on the Robin Williams front, because as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, Williams is back making movies with his good buddy Bobcat Goldthwait after having open heart surgery in March. 

 

Robin Williams grew up in southern Marin and we see him around from time to time, either at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley doing stand-up or flying by us on his bicycle on local trails.  A month or so back one of us was out jogging way up on a hill above the San Francisco Bay and he noticed a bicycle rider coming up a very steep hill really pushing it and then when that person got to the top of the hill he stopped, takes off his helmet and says, “Damn!”  Yes, it was Robin Williams! 

 

Robin Williams is a very funny man and we wish him all the luck with his new films and for when he gets his stand-up routine going again.  Yes, Robin Williams is a very funny man, as he is in this routine on golf (don’t hit the play button on this video if you don’t like cursing.  We warned you!)

 

 

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2009 Big East Coach and Team Predictions

 

Big East Conference – There has been a general feeling around the game of college football recently that Big East football has been down, and we believe that the Big East has been down the last couple of years is indeed a fact.  Yes, there is a lot of parity in the Big East right now, with every team in the conference having at least a decent chance of winning the conference title in ’09, but the level of football that was showcased in that great West Virginia – Louisville game in 2006 is just not being played in the Big East right now.  The loss of head coaches Rodriguez and Petrino were a big hit to the Big East, but there are still some very good coaches in the conference and even today every Big East team can at least give a very good game to most other BCS conference schools, but beating the top teams in those conferences is another thing altogether.  Can the Big East get its “Mojo” back in 2009?  Probably not, because the Big East teams are so even that they will beat each other up and we believe that the conference will be lucky to have more than team with less than 3 losses come December.

 

2009 Big East Predicted Standings

 

Cincinnati – 9-3

Pitt – 8-4

Rutgers – 8-4

Connecticut – 7-5

South Florida – 7-5

West Virginia – 7-5

Louisville – 5-7

Syracuse – 2-10

 

 

Cincinnati

Head Coach:  Brian Kelly – What is that crazy movie with Brett Farve in it?  There’s Something About Mary?  Well, there’s something about Brian Kelly that we cannot quite put our finger on, but what we do know is that Brian Kelly wins a lot of football games wherever he coaches.  Two years at Cincinnati, two records of 10-3 and 11-3, and a Big East conference title last season.  Yes, there is something about Brian Kelly and we expect Kelly to keep things rolling with the Bearcats in 2009 with another Big East title.  The real question that Brian Kelly may have to answer come December is if he wants the Notre Dame job or not, because we believe Kelly will be one of the top five candidates for the Irish job if Charlie Weis if fired.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

@ Rutgers – W

            SE Missouri State – W

            @ Oregon State – L

            Fresno State – W

            @ Miami (OH) – W

            @ South Florida – L

            Louisville – W

            @ Syracuse – W

            Connecticut – W

            West Virginia – W

            Illinois – W

@ Pitt – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  9-3

Brian Kelly back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Connecticut

Head Coach:  Randy Edsall – We had Randy Edsall on the Hot Seat entering the 2007 season after two straight losing season at UConn, but records of 9-4 and 8-5 over the past couple of seasons have gotten the Huskies back onto the map in the college football world.  UConn is not an easy place to recruit to nor is it place where winning a lot of games happens on a regular basis, note Edsall’s overall record at UConn of 58-60 in 10 seasons, and if Edsall can keep the Huskies competitive in the Big East and in a postseason game each year, then he will be surpassing expectations.  Can UConn take the next step and win the Big East?  Maybe, but probably not in 2009.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

@ Ohio – W

            North Carolina –             L

            @ Baylor – L

            Rhode Island – W

            @ Pitt – L

            Louisville – W

            @ West Virginia – L

            Rutgers– W

            @ Cincinnati– L

            @ Notre Dame – W

            Syracuse – W

South Florida – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  7-5

Randy Edsall back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Louisville

Head Coach:  Steve Kragthorpe – Steve Kragthorpe has not had an easy time of it since he replaced Bobby Petrino at Louisville after the 2006 season.  Petrino won 41 games in 4 seasons at Louisville and Kragthorpe has put up records of 6-6 and 5-7 and that has the Cardinal natives restless.  None of us here at Coaches Hot Seat ever thought that Kragthorpe was a good fit for the Louisville football program, because Steve grew up in Idaho and spent most of his coaching career in the state of Texas, and Louisville is just a totally different type of environment and the recruiting is much different than what one would experience out West or in the South. 

 

Kragthorpe was a very good fit at Tulsa and after winning 29 games in 4 seasons as the head coach at Tulsa, Steve probably jumped a little too quickly on the Louisville job without giving some thought to if it was the right place for him to be the head football coach.  A bad fit with Kragthorpe at Louisville has led to some, at least in our mind, a mismatched style of coaching to the players Steve took over from Petrino and that disconnect between the players and their head coach/coaching staff, had led directly to the mediocre record in the first 2 years.  The bad fit between Kragthorpe and Louisville can be overcome, but only if Steve and his staff are willing to adapt his coaching style to the players he has on his football team, and that boils down to finding a way to relate to his players in a more direct and personal way than the way Kragthorpe has experienced and coached during most of his career.  There is not a big difference between how Kragthorpe has coached in the past and how he must coach now if he hopes to win at Louisville, because Bobby Petrino grew up in the West in Montana and is as hard-nosed as any coach in college football, but the players knew that when you got down to where the rubber meets the road, Petrino gave a damn about the players and he is pulling for them to succeed.  We don’t think the Louisville players feel that way about Kragthorpe right now, and maybe Steve’s decision to take his football team to experience Ft. Knox recently can make some inroads, but clearly a different approach is needed by Kragthorpe and his staff if they hope to get things turned around at Louisville.  If we had to give one piece of advice to Kragthorpe right now is that he should continue to be as tough as he has during his coaching career, but that he should make sure he includes enough things in practice and around the Louisville program so that it is a more enjoyable place for the players to show up everyday and prepare to win football games.  It doesn’t need to be a barrel of laughs, but there is plenty of room to add some fun to practice and to put the focus on competition and the players achieving personal and team goals, instead of focusing on punitive measures, that if are used exclusively, can do some real damage to the morale of the team.  One thing that has jumped out at us when seeing Louisville games in person or on television is that it doesn’t look like the players are having very much fun playing the game of football, and if they aren’t having fun, then they won’t play hard and give it their all, and if they won’t play hard and give it their all…..well, can you say 6-6 and 5-7?     

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Indiana State – W

            @ Kentucky – L

            @ Utah – L

            Pitt – W

            Southern Miss – L

            @ Connecticut – L

            @ Cincinnati – L

            Arkansas State– W

            @ West Virginia– L

            Syracuse – W

            @ South Florida – L

Rutgers – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  5-7

Steve Kragthorpe back for 2010? – MAYBE*

 

*If Kragthorpe and Louisville do go 5-7 in 2009 and it looks like they are getting better as a football team, AD Tom Jurich will probably give Kragthorpe one more year to see if he can get things back on track, but 2010 would then be a make or break year for Steve at Louisville.  Anything worse than 5-7, and we believe Louisville will be looking for a new head football coach come December.

 

 

Pitt

Head Coach:  Dave Wannstedt – Dave Wannstedt and Pitt have been on something of a roll of late, winning 10 of their last 14 games, and this current run goes right back to that very unlikely upset of West Virginia in Morgantown on December 1, 2007.  That Pitt win over West Virginia was big in a lot of ways, one being that Rich Rodriguez would probably still be the head coach of the Mountaineers if they had beat Pitt that night and went on to play in the national title game, but it was an equally big win for Dave Wannstedt, who’s rear-end was hotter than the Sun going into that game.  Wannstedt went right back on the Hot Seat after losing the opening game of the ’08 season to Bowling Green, but Pitt rebounded to win 6 straight games and finished the season at 9-4, finishing the year with a bad taste in their mouth after a 3-0 loss to Oregon State in the Sun Bowl.  Now with Dave Wannstedt starting the season off of the Hot Seat for almost the first time in his career, Pitt has a chance to be competitive in the Big East IF they can continue their good play into the ’09 season.  Except for the Sun Bowl, Pitt scored a lot of points on offense in ’08 and if they can just get a little better play on the defensive side of the ball, the Panthers will have a chance to have another successful season this fall.  With that in mind let’s take a look at the ’09 games in detail.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Youngstown State – W

            @ Buffalo – W

            Navy – W

            @ NC State – L

            @ Louisville– L

Connecticut – W

            @ Rutgers – L

            South Florida– W

            Syracuse– W

            Notre Dame – W

            @ West Virginia – L

Cincinnati – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Dave Wannstedt back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Rutgers

Head Coach:  Greg Schiano – If indeed Greg Schiano turned down the Michigan job in 2007, he is a better and more loyal man than anyone here at Coaches Hot Seat.  Rutgers is a nice school and has the potential to have a strong football program, but Michigan is Michigan and if we had grown up in New Jersey, but we had heard about Michigan football for all of our life, it would have been hard for us to leave Rutgers, but we would have left.  With the Michigan job turned down, Schiano put up another pretty solid season at Rutgers in 2008, which is Schiano’s fourth straight winning season at a place that no one has been able to win at in a long, long time.  If not for a bad 0-3 start last season and a close loss at Cincinnati, Rutgers would have been the Big East champion in 2008 and that would have been an incredible accomplishment, considering what Schiano took over in 2001.  We see another solid season out of Schiano and Rutgers in 2009, and if they can get a win at home against Cincinnati in Week 1, the Scarlett Knights will have a decent chance to make a big run in 2009.  We shall see…

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Cincinnati – L

            Howard – W

            FIU – W

            @ Maryland – L

            Texas Southern – W

            Pitt – W

            @ Army– W

            @ Connecticut– L

            South Florida– W

            @ Syracuse – W

            @ Louisville – L

West Virginia – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Greg Schiano back for 2010? – YES

 

 

South Florida

Head Coach:  Jim Leavitt – Jim Leavitt built the South Florida football program from nothing and he and the Bulls put up another solid season in 2008, including a win in the bowl game to cap another successful year..  To imagine for a moment that Jim Leavitt probably turned down the Alabama job only a few years back is to understand just what Leavitt has accomplished in Tampa and we fully expect South Florida to keep rolling along into the future.  A tough game at Florida State, trips to Pitt, Rutgers and UConn, and a very interesting game against Miami at home will be the key games for South Florida in ’09.  If the Bulls can win a few of those critical games, they will have a chance to have a big year, but they will have to beat some very good teams on the road to win the Big East this season.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Wofford – W

            @ Western Kentucky – W

            Charleston Southern – W

            @ Florida State – L

            @ Syracuse – W

            Cincinnati – W

            @ Pitt– L

            West Virginia– W

            @ Rutgers– L

            Louisville – W

            Miami (FL) – L

@ Connecticut– L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  7-5

Jim Leavitt back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Syracuse
Head Coach:  Doug Marrone – We have been very impressed with what we have been hearing and reading about what Marrone has been doing since he arrived at Syracuse, and we fully expect Marrone to turn the Orange back into a winner, just not in 2009.  Anything more than 2 wins in 2009 would be an accomplishment, but more wins and winning season will be expected in the coming years for Doug Marrone at Syracuse.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Minnesota – L

            @ Penn State – L

            Northwestern – L

            Maine – W

            South Florida – L

            West Virginia – L

            Akron– W

            Cincinnati– L

            @ Pitt – L

            @ Louisville – L

            Rutgers – L

@ Connecticut– L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  2-10

Doug Marrone back for 2010? – YES

 

 

West Virginia
Head Coach:  Bill Stewart – All-in-all, we would say that Bill Stewart did just about what was expected of him and the Mountaineers in 2008, but now the pressure will be on Stewart to keep the train rolling that Rich Rodriguez jumped off of for a connection to Michigan.  Big wins over Rutgers, Auburn, South Florida, and a 1 point win over North Carolina in the bowl game, added up to a 9-4 record, but Stewart should know and understand that 9-4 is the lower end of the expectations at West Virginia these days.  Rich Rodriguez had WVU one decently played game away from the bogus BSC National Title game 2 years ago and the Mountaineer fans know there is plenty of talent within this program and Stewart and his staff will have to do some very good coaching in 2009, or some rear-ends might start heating up in Morgantown.  A tough out-of-conference schedule, at Auburn and East Carolina and Colorado at home, means it will be hard to get to 8 regular season wins this season, and 8 wins might be the lower end of expectations again…..  We shall see…..

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

Liberty – W

            East Carolina – L

            @ Auburn – L

            Colorado – W

            @ Syracuse – W

            Marshall – W

            Connecticut– W

            @ South Florida– L

            Louisville – W

            @ Cincinnati – L

            Pittsburgh – W

@ Rutgers– L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  7-5

Bill Stewart back for 2010? – YES

 

 

The news business and America lost two giants this week with the deaths of Robert Novak and Don Hewitt.

 

Many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat remember Bob Novak facing off against Tom Braden on CNN’s Crossfire in the 1980s and then a couple of us remembering running into Mr. Novak along the Presidential campaign trail where the man was always hard at work.  It is quite a sight to be sitting in an all-night diner in snowy New Hampshire in the lead-up to the New Hampshire primary and see Bob Novak and Washington Post columnist David Broder walk-in and sit down in the next booth over.  That those two giants in the news business not only would give you the time of day, but wanted information on the campaign we were working on (“Now, Mr. Novak if we told you that, it would probably be in your column, wouldn’t it?  Novak smiles and say nothing….  ”OK, we have to get back to work.”), is still burned into our minds, but then how one could ever forget Bob Novak. 

 

God Speed to you Robert Novak. It was great fun to watch you on TV and there was never a journalist with as much real and hard information in his columns and that is saying a lot in today’s world of a lot of chattering, but not a whole lot of real and hard news. 

 

 

 

 

 

The other great loss this week was the Great Don Hewitt of CBS News and of course the creator of 60 Minutes.  The TV show 60 Minutes is such a part of all of our lives that it is easy to dismiss the impact the show has had on our lives as we knew there was always a place on Sunday nights where we could turn to find interesting, informational, and entertaining “stories” on the events of the day.  Throw in Andy Rooney, and you have one hellava show, and 60 Minutes was and is such a great TV show due to one man, Mr. Don Hewitt.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for some great entertainment Mr. Hewitt.

 

 

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Coaches Hot Seat has returned to the San Francisco Bay area after a week or Rest & Relaxation at beautiful Lake Tahoe.  Around the fun we had a lot of interesting discussions on many subjects and we hope to bring you those topics and some of our conclusions in the coming weeks in the run-up to the 2009 college football season. 

 

Our discussions and seminars among Coaches Hot Seat this past week included everything from the Expectations for New and Current Head Football Coaches,  the Most Important Things One Must Do to Build a Great Organization, to the Greatest College Football Head Coaches in College Football since 1980 – Active and Retired/Deceased, to the Top 100+ Assistant Coaches in College Football.  Yes, those are some very interesting discussions, but much more fun was the time spent at Lake Tahoe which is easily one of the greatest places on Earth.  Where else can one find such an incredible Lake, large and wild mountains, great places to eat, go out, and even to gamble at if one choose to, and such great weather.  If you know of a place that can match Lake Tahoe, please let us know!

 

A few photos from Lake Tahoe:

 

 

Beach Scene Lake Tahoe

 

 

 

Beach Scene Lake Tahoe

 

 

 

Beach Scene Lake Tahoe

 

 

 

Golf at Lake Tahoe

 

 

 

Dinner at Lake Tahoe

 

 

 

 

 and some of the photos of beautiful Lake Tahoe that we used on the website last week….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to our discussions on many different topics this past week, we here at Coaches Hot Seat also finished our predictions for Coaches and Teams for the 2009 college football season.  As we have been saying since we cranked up Coaches Hot Seat in January 2007, there are dozens of college football teams playing great to very good football in the game today, and that great play points to the absolute absurdity that is the BCS.  Right now we have what is nothing less than a “roulette wheel” to determine who gets to play in 1 game for that National Title in college football, and that is not only beyond stupid, it would take a special group of Morons to both think up and defend something like the BCS.  Yes indeed, we actually do have a very special group of Morons in the BCS Boys!  To call the BCS Boys Buffoons slights Buffoons everywhere, but we digress….

 

Let’s get to some our predictions from our fun-filled week at Lake Tahoe…….

 

 

2009 Coach and Team Predictions – Mountain West Conference

 

Mountain West Conference – The MWC has become one of the top college football conferences in the country in recent years and if Boise State was a member of the MWC, we would put the MWC up against any conference in the country, save the Big 12 and SEC.  Utah proved in the Sugar Bowl that if a team from the SEC is not ready and motivated to play (and what team like Alabama could possibly be motivated to play in a meaningless exhibition game that means nothing) it will get beat by a MWC team.  The top 3 teams in the MWC:  TCU, BYU and Utah are very good, but the teams right behind them in Air Force and Colorado State have proved that they can play with the majority of teams from “BCS” conferences, and we only expect the MWC to get stronger as new coaches at San Diego State, New Mexico, and Wyoming improve their teams fortunes in the coming years. 

 

Let’s get to our Coach and Team MWC Predictions for 2009:

 

2009 West Conference Predictions

 

BYU – 11-1

TCU – 11-1

Utah – 9-3

Colorado State – 8-4

Air Force – 8-4

San Diego State – 5-7

Wyoming – 3-9

UNLV – 3-9

New Mexico – 2-10

 

 

Air Force

Head Coach:  Troy Calhoun – Entering his third season at Air Force, Troy Calhoun has changed the overall tone and tenor of the Falcons’ program and Air Force is once again a “force” in the MWC.  Fisher DeBerry had a great 23 season run at Air Force, but his last three teams had losing seasons and there was a general sense that the Falcons football program was adrift when Calhoun showed up three years ago.  After putting up records of 9-4 and 8-5, and coming very close to winning the 2 bowl games the Falcons have played in, Air Force football is now a team that must be accounted for and that will only make the MWC that much stronger into the future.  The next goal for Calhoun and the Falcons is to win the Commander in Chief’s Trophy and to do that Air Force will need to get their first win over Navy, which is on the road at Annapolis this season.  The Falcons better get busy though if they want that trophy, because with Rich Ellerson at Army now, all three service academies should have very good football programs in the coming years.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            Nicholls State – W

            @ Minnesota – W

            @ New Mexico – W

            San Diego State – W

            @ Navy – W

            TCU – L

            Wyoming – W

            @ Utah – L

            @ Colorado State – L

            Army – W

            UNLV – W

@ BYU – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Troy Calhoun back for 2010? – YES

 

 

BYU

Head Coach:  Bronco Mendenhall – You know you have arrived as a successful head football coach when your team goes 10-3 and it is a “disappointment.”  That is exactly what happened to BYU in 2008, with losses at TCU and then at Utah and against Arizona in the bowl game, but again, when 10-3 is a disappointment, you are doing a hellava job with your football program.  BYU looks to have another strong team in 2009, and with a very experienced QB back and a determination to make-up for last season, the Cougars should be very tough this fall.  The opening game against Oklahoma will be one of the more interesting games of the early season and the Sooners better have their helmets strapped on, because BYU will come out and hit them and OU better be ready to hit back.  The key game for BYU will probably by TCU in Provo in Week 8, because a win against the Horned Frogs and the Cougars will have a good shot to run the table in the MWC.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            Oklahoma (Dallas) – L

            @ Tulane – W

            Florida State – W

            Colorado State – W

            Utah State – W

            @ UNLV – W

            @ San Diego State – W

            TCU – W

            @ Wyoming – W

            @ New Mexico – W

            Air Force – W

Utah – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  11-1

Bronco Mendenhall back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Colorado State

Head Coach:  Steve Fairchild – Steve Fairchild did a very nice job of changing the direction of the Colorado State football program in a very short amount of time, because things were not so great at CSU when Fairchild arrived in Fort Collins.  Sonny Lubick won a lot of games at Colorado State, but he did not have a winning season in his last 4 seasons at CSU, and there was a general sense that the Rams’ program was going backwards and when a new coach takes over such a program it is not easy to reverse that slide.  Steve Fairchild did just that in 2008 though, going 6-6, with big wins over Houston and New Mexico and in the bowl game against Fresno State.  Now with a base in place, Fairchild will need to build on what was accomplished last season and Colorado State has the kind of schedule in ‘09 where they will have an opportunity to win a lot of games.  We shall see…..

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            @ Colorado – L

            Weber State – W

            Nevada – W

            @ Brigham Young – L

            @ Idaho – W

            Utah – W

            @ TCU – L

            San Diego State – W

            Air Force – W

            @ UNLV – L

            @ New Mexico – W

Wyoming – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  8-4

Steve Fairchild back for 2010? – YES

 

 

New Mexico

Head Coach:  Mike Locksley – Mike Locksley will have his work cut-out for him as he takes over the New Mexico football program from Rocky Long and it will probably be a struggle for the Lobos while they adapt to their new offensive and defensive systems.  Rocky Long had a great run at New Mexico, with only 1 losing season (2008) out of the last 8 and Locksley will have to quickly change the Lobos over to his coaching style and philosophy, while competing in the very tough MWC.  2009 could be a very tough year for the Lobos, especially with out-of-conference games against Texas A&M, Tulsa, and Texas Tech, followed by some very good football teams in the MWC.  We shall see…

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            @ Texas A&M – L

            Tulsa – L

            Air Force – L

            New Mexico State – W

            @ Texas Tech – L

            @ Wyoming – L

            UNLV – W

            @ San Diego State – L

            @ Utah – L

            Brigham Young – L

            Colorado State – L

@ TCU – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  2-10

Mike Locksley back for 2010? – YES

 

 

San Diego State

Head Coach:  Brady Hoke – We have to admit that Brady Hoke’s hiring at San Diego State was surprising to us, because we thought that the Aztecs would have gone with someone that had more experience on the West Coast.  Hoke predecessor, Chuck Long, spent all of his coaching career in the Midwest and although Hoke spent 6 years at Oregon State and recruited southern California when he was an assistant at Michigan, Hoke still did not fit the mold we were thinking of for SDSU’s new coach, but then we are not the AD of the Aztecs.  Just from talking with some of the fans and members of the media in San Diego, it sounds like to us that Hoke has completely changed the culture at San Diego State and that the Aztecs will be playing a completely different style of football, to the good, compared to how they played under Long.  With a very good coaching staff in place, including Al Borges at OC and Rocky Long at DC, San Diego State could be able to make a little noise in 2009, but probably not enough to get to a postseason game.  One thing for sure, San Diego State has proved in the past that it can have a very good football program and if Brady Hoke can combine solid coaching with great recruiting, the Aztecs could become a power in the MWC.  The last thing that the head coaches at the other MWC schools want to see is a San Diego State football program that is playing good football, because they know that there is plenty of football talent around southern California, and if Hoke can get just some of those guys to play close to home, that will only make the MWC that much tougher in the coming years.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            @ UCLA – L

            Southern Utah – W

            @ Idaho – W

            @ Air Force – L

            New Mexico State – W

            Brigham Young – L

            @ Colorado State – L

            New Mexico – W

            TCU – L

            Wyoming – W

            @ Utah – L

@ UNLV – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  5-7

Brady Hoke back for 2010? – YES

 

 

TCU

Head Coach:  Gary Patterson – Easily the most underrated head football coach in college football is TCU’s Gary Patterson.  With a record of 73 – 27 (.730) in 8 seasons at TCU, including five 10 win plus seasons, Patterson has been toiling in relative obscurity, but people in the know understand that when TCU is on the schedule, one better get ready to play some serious football if you hope to come out with a win.  Patterson is known for his defensive teams at TCU, but the Horned Frogs have been very innovative and aggressive on offense in recent years and if only a few plays in a few key games had gone the other way, TCU would have probably already played in a BCS bowl game.  Patterson returns a loaded TCU team for 2009 and even with a tough out-of-conference schedule, including at Virginia, at Clemson, the Horned Frogs have a very good chance to run the table in 2009.  One thing for sure, we would not want to play TCU this season, because from what we have been able to gather around Ft. Worth, this Horned Frog team is determined to do something special this year. 

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            @ Virginia – W

            Texas State – W

            @ Clemson – W

            SMU – W

            @ Air Force – W

            Colorado State – W

            @ Brigham Young – L

            UNLV – W

            @ San Diego State – W

            Utah – W

            @ Wyoming – W

New Mexico – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  11-1

Gary Patterson back for 2010? – YES

 

 

UNLV

Head Coach:  Mike Sanford – Since taking over the UNLV football program in 2005, Mike Sanford has had a very tough time putting up records of 2-9, 2-10, 2-10, and then 5-7 in 2008.  After a big win over Arizona State on the road in Week 3, UNLV got another big win against Iowa State at home, but the Rebels lost 6 of their last 8 games to miss a postseason bowl trip.  Even with some improvement in 2008, Mike Sanford enters the 2009 season on the Hot Seat and we believe a .500 record by the Rebels or better in ’09 will be needed for Sanford to hang onto his job.  As tough as the MWC is these days, that may be very difficult to achieve.

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            Sacramento State – W

            Oregon State – L

            Hawaii – W

            @ Wyoming – L

            @ Nevada – L

            Brigham Young – L

            Utah – L

            @ New Mexico – W

            @ TCU – L

            Colorado State – L

            @ Air Force – L

San Diego State – W

           

2009 Predicted Record:  3-9

Mike Sanford back for 2010? – NO

 

 

Utah

Head Coach:  Kyle Whittingham – After a rough start in his first two seasons, 7-5 and 8-5 , taking over for Urban Meyer at Utah, Whittingham and the Utes hit their stride in 2009 by putting up a perfect 13-0 record.  (Why is Utah not the No. 1 team in the land after finishing the season beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl being the only undefeated team left standing last year?  Because the BCS is the most Candy Ass thing on the face of the Earth and for the Candy Ass folks that defend the outrageous BCS, we would love for them to explain what we are supposed to do with a team like Utah that goes undefeated and beats a very good team in their postseason game.  Yes, please try to explain that, but anyone Candy Ass enough to support the BCS probably can’t tie their shows in the morning…. ) Now that Whittingham has Utah rolling, 2009 will be a big challenge, because they lost a lot off the “should have been National Champions” team and they also face a very tough schedule in the MWC, but also a game on the road at Oregon in Week 3.  With their toughest two MWC games, TCU and BYU, on the road in 2009, it will be very difficult for the Utes to defend their MWC championship, but we would not put it past them….  We shall see….  (Please all Candy Asses still fumbling around trying to explain how Utah didn’t get a chance to play for the National Title last season, because of the Candy Ass BCS, please form a line to the right where we will teach you to tie your shoes, because there is not a chance in Hell anyone that can tie his shoes would think the BCS is anything more than a fraud.)

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            Utah State – W

            @ San Jose State – W

            @ Oregon – L

            Louisville – W

            @ Colorado State – W

            @ UNLV – W

            Air Force – W

            Wyoming – W

            New Mexico – W

            @ TCU – L

            San Diego State – W

@ Brigham Young – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  9-3

Kyle Whittingham back for 2010? – YES

 

 

Wyoming

Head Coach:  Dave Christensen – Dave Christensen has got his work cut out for him at Wyoming, because even a very good football coach in Joe Glenn was only able to put up two .500 or better records in 6 seasons in Laramie.  It is just very hard to win football games at Wyoming, and it is doubly-hard to win games at Wyoming because the MWC Conference is a bear of place to play football.  With 3 teams, BYU, Utah, and TCU, the MWC could right now be very competitive in almost any conference in the country, save the SEC and Big 12, and finding a way to get to .500 or better at Wyoming may be one of the most difficult things to achieve in the game of college football.  With Texas on the schedule this season and a trip to play at Florida Atlantic, the Cowboys will find it hard to get a lot of wins in ’09, but again, we shall see……

 

2009 Coaches Hot Seat Schedule & Predictions

 

            Weber State – W

            Texas – L

            @ Colorado – L

            UNLV – W

            @ Florida Atlantic – L

            New Mexico – W

            @ Air Force – L

            @ Utah – L

            Brigham Young – L

            @ TCU – L

            @ San Diego State – L

@ Colorado State – L

           

2009 Predicted Record:  3-9

Dave Christensen back for 2010? – YES

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