Sporting News ranks the Big XII Coaches [Archive]

View Full Version : Sporting News ranks the Big XII Coaches

Octavian

4/6/2007, 07:21 PM

Ranking the Big XII Coaches

1. Bob Stoops, Oklahoma. Last season was his best coaching job yet -- and he didn't win a national championship. Stoops has done a masterful job of restoring the luster to one of American's greatest programs. Building good staffs has been key, as Stoops has spawned head coaches Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, Mike Stoops and Chuck Long. Kevin Sumlin and Brent Venables are next.

2. Mack Brown, Texas. The stately Brown is the quintessential CEO head coach who entrusts his assistants to do their job. He and USC's Pete Carroll are the nation's best recruiters. But there's more pressure in Austin than Los Angeles. And you never see Brown sweat in a job that can cause a coach to cave.

3. Bill Callahan, Nebraska. Give him kudos for daring to change the culture in option-football mad Lincoln. It hasn't gone smoothly, but Callahan has the Huskers poised for a breakthrough. No one knows the game better than Callahan, the only Big 12 boss who has coached a Super Bowl team.

4. Mike Leach, Texas Tech. Yeah, he's crazy -- crazy smart. College football's Mad Scientist, Leach's fast-twitch mind has made Tech a program that matters. And he's done it with a dizzying array of Xs and Os that many thought couldn't lead to big success. Ha.

5. Mark Mangino, Kansas. Few know how to build a better offense than Mangino, who's one of the nation's most underrated coaches. The Jayhawk big boss is a demanding coach who has paid his dues and proven he can win with less-than-stellar talent at a place that's not football crazy.

6. Dennis Franchione, Texas A&M. He's the ultimate climb-the-ladder coach, having proven himself along stops at Pittsburg State, Southwest Texas State, New Mexico, TCU and Alabama. Coach Fran is too good not to succeed in Aggieland.

7. Dan Hawkins, Colorado. Last year's 2-10 mark was out of character for a coach who helped build the Boise State mystique. Hawkins is a Zen master, but he's also a hard-nosed coach whose track record and skills suggest success in Boulder is looming.

8. Gary Pinkel, Missouri. No, Pinkel hasn't gotten over the proverbial hump in Columbia, but he has developed a consistently solid program that appears poised for a breakthrough. And that's saying something for what was one of the nation's most dysfunctional squads.

9. Guy Morriss, Baylor. A classic good ol' boy, Morriss is a perfect fit for Waco. Give him credit for embracing change to charge up the program, as the installation of a Texas Tech-style offense promises excitement and potential success. Just give Morriss time.

10. Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State. Don't look now, but this may be the fastest-rising program in the nation. Gundy gets much of the credit for continuing the fine work Les Miles started. The secret to Gundy's success has been building a good staff and recruiting.

11. Ron Prince, Kansas State. He was a surprise hire who had surprising success in his debut last season. But large staff turnover after his rookie season has caused some to raise their eyebrows. And every big win he had last year was countered with a dubious loss. At least he's following through on his vow to toughen the non-league schedule.

12. Gene Chizik, Iowa State. Yeah, the Cyclones are gambling on Chizik, but it's a gamble worth taking. He has the background and pedigree that point toward success. But building good defenses at Auburn and Texas is much easier than building a good program at Iowa State, which is one of the most difficult BCS jobs. Is Chizik equipped to work in less-than-ideal circumstances?

The Link (http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=193845)

King Crimson

4/6/2007, 08:01 PM

if the implication is Mangino built the 2000 NC O, it's wrong.

how is Prince below Hawkins?

until Bill Callahan beats a good team.....he's nowhere.

Widescreen

4/6/2007, 08:05 PM

I like how they're all considered at least pretty good. Gundy is #10 and you'd think he's got a couple of MNC's under his belt with that writeup.

Octavian

4/6/2007, 08:27 PM

yeah, it is a rosy analysis....and aside from the top 2, there's some odd choices.

Gundy is #10 and Callahan is #3 despite this year's result in Stillwater between the two.

The posters on Texags probably wouldn't rate Fran that high...and Guy Morris is actually a really good coach with a nearly impossible task.

And I'd probably put Pinkel last....Prince was able to score one of the biggest upsets of the year.

King Crimson

4/6/2007, 08:49 PM

the other funny thing, and maybe sic can correct me, but i think Guy M. had a better year before switching to the Leach style spread.

stoopified

4/6/2007, 08:58 PM

Gundy #10 :)

Collier11

4/6/2007, 08:59 PM

1.Stoops-won a title, played for 2 more in 8 years
2.Brown-Great leader, great recruiter, very good coach
3.Leach-Wins and often wins big at that sh*t hole
4.Callahan-may be a prick, but he has went from the outdated option to a increasingly effective passing attack
5. Franchione- I think the guy is a good coach, won at tcu, won at bama despite sanctions, and won at A&M. I think some people forget that when the ags were a top 15 team was when OU and texas were down
6. Hawkins-The guys record speaks for itself even if at BSU, they will be better
7. Mangino-Kansas is a good job for him, expectations not too high and he can win 7 or 8 games every once in a while
8.Gundy-sonic can coach a little
9. Prince- I think the guy will do good things at ksu
10. Morris-never proven he can win, if gillispie can win at A&M bball then why cant morris win at baylor football
11. Chizick-who knows, great D coordinator
12-Pinkel-Big tool

King Crimson

4/6/2007, 09:08 PM

the thing with Pinkel is his O makes games last forever. and since they can't run the ball or play D.....they are always open to a 4th quarter choke job.

Oregon State in the MU bowl game didn't even have to call TO's because MU stopped the clock with so many incomplete passes. and the Beavs came back and won.

OSUAggie

4/6/2007, 09:09 PM

and Guy Morris is actually a really good coach with a nearly impossible task...

I never understood why people say Guy Morriss is a good coach... WTF has he done? 24-45 in 6 career seasons at Kentucky and Baylor isn't really all that impressive to me.

1. Bob Stoops, Oklahoma. Last season was his best coaching job yet

I'll never understand this either. He won a national championship with players that, in all honesty, weren't the greatest collection of athletes in the country (and the gauntlet of games that year was ridiculous). I don't think anything will ever top what he did in 2000, no matter how many injuries or dismissals have to be endured throughout a year in his future.

bluedogok

4/6/2007, 09:35 PM

the other funny thing, and maybe sic can correct me, but i think Guy M. had a better year before switching to the Leach style spread.
Didn't Baylor lose their starting QB early last year or was that the season before?

Octavian

4/6/2007, 09:43 PM

I never understood why people say Guy Morriss is a good coach... WTF has he done? 24-45 in 6 career seasons at Kentucky and Baylor isn't really all that impressive to me.

well, I'm not gonna go too far out on the limb for ole Guy, but he's coaching in one of the toughest divisions in the country at a private school.

He has to overcome a myriad of built-in disadvantages...but he's beat A&M, he's beat OSU, he's taken OU to overtime...there are others but I'm not gonna take the time to research Baylor's near-misses. Anyway, he's held his own many times against teams with much lesser talent. You could insert Pete Carroll at Waco, and he wouldn't sniff the Big XII Championship game.

Collier11

4/6/2007, 09:49 PM

You could insert Pete Carroll at Waco, and he wouldn't sniff the Big XII Championship game.

WRONG!! Sorry dude, obviously Carroll could recruit better than morris but that statement is false 100%

King Crimson

4/6/2007, 10:01 PM

Didn't Baylor lose their starting QB early last year or was that the season before?

that's true. but BU was sniffing bowl eligible the year before.....when they lost to the highly virtuous Sooners and ATM in OT.

Octavian

4/6/2007, 10:52 PM

WRONG!! Sorry dude, obviously Carroll could recruit better than morris but that statement is false 100%

So you think PC would lead Baylor to the Big XII title game? Really? How many? How often?

Sorry dude, obviously Carroll is a good recruiter when he's in sunny southern California at a program with the greatest football tradition and history west of Norman. He beats the hell out of people because he consistently brings the best talent in America into the Coliseum.

Stick him in Waco, Texas and see if he could convince the best talent in the region (much less the country) that Waco and Floyd-Casey Stadium would be the best launching pad for their future interests...moreso than Oklahoma's Memorial Stadium and Norman, DKR and Austin, or Kyle Field.

No chance. He'd be playing against programs with better talent...and he'd be an also-ran.

yermom

4/6/2007, 11:19 PM

Didn't Baylor lose their starting QB early last year or was that the season before?

Shawn Bell staying healthy probably gets them to a bowl game

they had a relatively tough OOC schedule too, if they hadn't scheduled as tough as they did they could have been 4-0 going into Big 12 play

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 01:29 AM

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 01:32 AM

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:00 AM

I never understood why people say Guy Morriss is a good coach... WTF has he done? 24-45 in 6 career seasons at Kentucky and Baylor isn't really all that impressive to me.

I'm sure it takes a lot to impress a Poke. We work hard at impressing the Ag schools.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:01 AM

the other funny thing, and maybe sic can correct me, but i think Guy M. had a better year before switching to the Leach style spread.

He technically did yes, the Leach offense would have allowed us to do better had it been implemented sooner. The problem was that by that late in the date with so little depth at the QB position it really ended up being quite disastrous.

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 02:01 AM

When he wins more than 3 conference games I'll be more impressed with him than my current state.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:03 AM

Didn't Baylor lose their starting QB early last year or was that the season before?
It was last season. We were doing pretty well...that come back from behind win against KU midway through the 4th quarter was something totally unseen at Baylor. That was a pretty good team that, unfortunately, was totally dependent upon Shawn Bell. The very moment that he was injured and carried off the field the entire team collapsed and never recovered even for a moment. It was really horrific to watch.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:04 AM

When he wins more than 3 conference games I'll be more impressed with him than my current state.
When Gundy gets a big boy haircut and loses the braces I'll be more impressed with him as a man than in his current state.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:08 AM

well, I'm not gonna go too far out on the limb for ole Guy, but he's coaching in one of the toughest divisions in the country at a private school.

He has to overcome a myriad of built-in disadvantages...but he's beat A&M, he's beat OSU, he's taken OU to overtime...there are others but I'm not gonna take the time to research Baylor's near-misses. Anyway, he's held his own many times against teams with much lesser talent. You could insert Pete Carroll at Waco, and he wouldn't sniff the Big XII Championship game.

I'm not sold that GuyMo is going to be some great savior of Baylor football that will bring consistent bowl trips, but I do believe he's reinstalling the fundamentals of football to a Baylor team that for way the hell too long didn't know them. I think if he can get to the point that Baylor can at least play proper football and every other year or so get to a bowl game then most at Baylor will be satisfied and it might lead to better coaching opportunities in the future.

The guy has has VERY little to work with. It's almost akin to SMU coming back from the death penalty. The teams we were fielding didn't even seem to understand the basic fundamentals of how to play football as if they'd had a lobotomy as soon as the met Coach Carrot for the first time. He took that and had a 5 win season with 2 overtimes away from a 7-4 records. He lost all the players that accomplished those things, so now he's trying to rebuild from the very little he had to begin with.

1stTimeCaller

4/7/2007, 02:10 AM

how did OSU have a rebuilding year? Were you talking about 1946 or what?

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:11 AM

Shawn Bell staying healthy probably gets them to a bowl game

they had a relatively tough OOC schedule too, if they hadn't scheduled as tough as they did they could have been 4-0 going into Big 12 play

This, I believe, is true. I think that even with the change of offense if Bell had stayed healthy then we'd have had a 5-6 win season. We came awfully close to beating Washington State in Washington the same weekend you got hosed playing the ducks which by the way we also got hosed on a very questionable play that may have changed the outcome of the game.

The Army game is the big problem. There's no reason in hell we should have lost that game, and I chalk it up to the change in offense but that's the way football goes and it's easy to imagine what could have been and never really know.

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 02:13 AM

how did OSU have a rebuilding year? Were you talking about 1946 or what?

Come on...

OSU had been to 3 straight bowls, then Les left. Gundy kicked off several players and installed a new offensive and defensive system. That's a rebuilding year (substantiated by a bowl victory last season).

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:15 AM

And for all the people claiming that he was almost there in '05, one should examine '05 before stating that as an accomplishment.

The only teams that weren't way below where they typically are in the Big XII South were Texas and Texas Tech. OU, OSU and aTm were in rebuilding years, and Baylor moved up 1 spot in the standings when Morriss had been building that program a bit and entering his 4th season.... He had a chance to leapfrog a couple of people for a season and didn't get it done.

How often has OSU moved its way up the Big XII ladder and played for a CFG on "down years" within the conference?

A lot of Baylor fans are even sick of him, and that's a sign (to me, at least) that you're just not very good.

This is almost laughable in the degree of ignorance you show concerning Baylor fans. Baylor fans fight and argue over every damned thing you could ever imagine. If you ask two Baylor fans which direction the sun sets then you'd get an argument. There are people who refused to renew their season tickets because Morriss changed the color of the helmets from gold to green. I'm not making that up.

Baylor has got to be one of the most splintered fan bases of any school I've ever seen in my life.

1stTimeCaller

4/7/2007, 02:16 AM

OK, fair enough. Did you guys beat anyone with a winning record last year?

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 02:18 AM

How often has OSU moved its way up the Big XII ladder and played for a CFG on "down years" within the conference?

What's a CFG?

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 02:20 AM

What's a CFG?
I honestly have no clue. I have now shamed myself in this argument having obviously had too many Zimas tonight.

CCG.

Maybe I was thinking, "conference football game?" Hell if I know.

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 02:21 AM

OK, fair enough. Did you guys beat anyone with a winning record last year?

Nebbish.

OSUAggie

4/7/2007, 02:22 AM

I honestly have no clue. I have now shamed myself in this argument having obviously had too many Zimas tonight.

CCG.

Maybe I was thinking, "conference football game?" Hell if I know.

heh

I wasn't talking about Baylor needing to win a conference championship game.... I think going to a bowl would be a solid step in 5 years, especially at a school that was actually winning in the SWC before the expansion of the Big 8.

Collier11

4/7/2007, 10:58 AM

I honestly have no clue. I have now shamed myself by drinking Zimas.

FIXED!!

Collier11

4/7/2007, 11:00 AM

So you think PC would lead Baylor to the Big XII title game? Really? How many? How often?

If you put Carroll at Baylor tommorrow I think he could compete for a big 12 title within 3 years. I dont know how many he could win, but I think he is too good of a coach to atleast not compete for conf titles

royalfan5

4/7/2007, 11:08 AM

I'm sure it takes a lot to impress a Poke. We work hard at impressing the Ag schools.
You're just upset because Baylor is Aggy's aggy.

stoops the eternal pimp

4/7/2007, 11:09 AM

When he wins more than 3 conference games I'll be more impressed with him than my current state.

Are you referring to Gundy?

yermom

4/7/2007, 11:28 AM

Are you referring to Gundy?

:D

bluedogok

4/7/2007, 11:46 AM

heh

I wasn't talking about Baylor needing to win a conference championship game.... I think going to a bowl would be a solid step in 5 years, especially at a school that was actually winning in the SWC before the expansion of the Big 8.Winning in the SWC is a completely different thing than competing in the Big 12. The SWC had devolved into a minor conference after Arkansas left and the majority of the SWC were all in the NCAA doghouse. If the Big 12 hadn't of happened I think the SWC would have been in the same group with the WAC, MWC and C-USA or even a step below them. Baylor and Houston were winning n the conference with more regularity than the Whorns were. Just like when aTm, K-State and Colorado were strong when OU and UT were down.

LittleWingSooner

4/7/2007, 11:51 AM

I'm sorry but saying last year was Bob's best job is just idiotic. 2000 will always be the best season Stoops has had till he wins another one.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 12:20 PM

Pete Carroll would not suddenly win at Baylor if you parachuted him into The Case and told him to had at it.

It'd take him several years to even be competitive.

Rogue

4/7/2007, 12:24 PM

Pete would convince 'em to relax their recruiting standards and to look the other way when boosters want to buy talent. So he'd get talent in Baylor.

SicEmBaylor

4/7/2007, 12:28 PM

Pete would convince 'em to relax their recruiting standards and to look the other way when boosters want to buy talent. So he'd get talent in Baylor.
I'm not sure he'd be able to convince the Administration to do anything to be honest. There's a very strong element within Baylor itself that wants to fire Morriss and replace him because he's not known as a strong and devout enough Christian that worships in the way that they like.

A major part of our problems over the years has to do with not just coaching (although God knows that's part of it) but with the way our administration has tried to run the football program and athletics in general. They are, quite frankly, not just inept but at times actively working against the best interests of the school as far as athletics are concerned.

Rogue

4/7/2007, 12:33 PM

True. The priests at ND at least know how to maximize revenue for their little old private christian school. Awww shucks.

Seamus

4/7/2007, 12:46 PM

So you think PC would lead Baylor to the Big XII title game? Really? How many? How often?

Sorry dude, obviously Carroll is a good recruiter when he's in sunny southern California at a program with the greatest football tradition and history west of Norman. He beats the hell out of people because he consistently brings the best talent in America into the Coliseum.

Stick him in Waco, Texas and see if he could convince the best talent in the region (much less the country) that Waco and Floyd-Casey Stadium would be the best launching pad for their future interests...moreso than Oklahoma's Memorial Stadium and Norman, DKR and Austin, or Kyle Field.

No chance. He'd be playing against programs with better talent...and he'd be an also-ran.

Thanks for that. Encapsulated my thoughts perfectly.

Seamus

4/7/2007, 12:57 PM

I'm sorry but saying last year was Bob's best job is just idiotic. 2000 will always be the best season Stoops has had till he wins another one.

There's a difference between "best season" and "best coaching job." Of course, 2000 is the best season because of the championship.

But the argument that Stoops did a better coaching job -- with less talent in key positions, overcoming some serious early season adversity, and keeping the team from falling apart -- is a valid one.

It's not idiotic to say it was his best coaching job. It's true.

insuranceman_22

4/8/2007, 12:31 AM

Shouldn't this aggie lite and cub stuff be somewhere else? Just kidding, it was a good read!

I agreed with Seamus above! 2000 was the best season! We came out of nowhere and ran the table & won the whole thing. That's magical! Last year very well may have Stoops & Co. best coaching job. Sure they lost a few on the way, but to overcome that much adversity and still win the Big 12 & play in a BCS games was truly one-helluva-job!

goingoneight

4/8/2007, 12:47 AM

He technically did yes, the Leach offense would have allowed us to do better had it been implemented sooner. The problem was that we're Baylor.

:D just-a-kidding with the boys who took us into 2OT in Nompton, Sic. :D