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“May you live in interesting times” - “The Mindless Menace of Violence in America” - Ginghis Khan - The BCS Boys are Mighty Quiet - NCAA Title Game Tonight - The Masters and Jack Nicklaus - Calipari’s $4 Million - Keith Jackson and Paul “Bear” BryantPosted on April 6th, 2009 by Joe
There is some disagreement on the origin of the following statement, Chinese or otherwise, but it sure rings true for this our times:
“May you live in interesting times”
Yes, these are interesting times, but even with all that is wrong and evil in the world and in our country, life for most Americans and citizens of the developed nations is better right now than anytime in the history of human life on Earth. Some of the recent violence in our country, the killing of children, the shooting of policemen and people in a retirement home, defy all understanding, but we must never underestimate the violence and mayhem that Man is capable of. The day after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968 Robert F. Kennedy spoke to Cleveland City Club and said:
“This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.” How so very true Robert Kennedy. Yes, outrageous and evil violence....
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Happy Spring To You - Benjamin Franklin and the Rising Sun - NCAA Basketball Tournament = Legitimate National Title - How to Handle the Greedy Bastards on Wall Street - The Great Kenny ChesneyPosted on March 20th, 2009 by Joe
Happy First Day of Spring to everyone….After Fall, which signals the arrival of football season, Spring is the second best season because it promises renewal and opportunity. Whoever spun up this world and Universe that we live in, we all must be thankful that we have our four seasons, because there is a certain rhythm and timing to how the seasons arrive and leave that is just right for us humans. The arrival of Spring brings forth many emotions and memories, and with all the hyperventilating and mismanagement in our nation’s Capitol these days, for many of us at Coaches Hot Seat Spring brings to mind the following story of Benjamin Franklin and the signing of our US Constitution:
“Franklin believed, as did many of the delegates, that the newly crafted Constitution designed to replace the Articles of Confederation gave the federal government too much power, and he fought hard to shape it differently. Many of the delegates relied upon Franklin’s aged wisdom and held back their own support because of his concerns. But a few months before the final passage of the document, Franklin made one of his last political contributions to the new nation and threw his full support behind its passage.
“… I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; … Thus I consent Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. … On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
Franklin himself did not deliver the speech but rather asked a colleague, James Wilson, to read it for him. His age prohibited him from standing very long. He was too feeble to even walk in and out of the hall each day. Instead he had prisoners carry him into the Great Hall and prop him up in a chair. Most of his contributions were written by him and delivered by another. But when the man who had seen the Revolution from beginning to end gave approval for the great document, it signaled a new era, and the beginning of a remarkable new nation. The Constitution was eventually adopted by the delegation, and as Franklin sat watching each member sign their name on the nation’s new Constitution, he remarked to one of his colleagues that during the debates he often noticed the painting on the back of the Convention Presidents chair, where George Washington presided. It was the painting of half a sun. Franklin told his colleague that he had wondered if the sun was rising or setting, and now he was certain it was rising.
Franklin’s last political role was as President of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. He was one of several of the Founding Fathers that fought against the practice throughout the debates believing slavery contradicted the principles of individual liberty the nation was founded upon. But it was one political battle they were unable to win. Still, Franklin never gave up and even submitted resolutions abolishing slavery to the new government in his last two years of life. He died April 17th, 1790. As Franklin left Independence Hall after signing the United States Constitution, a young citizen inquired: “What kind of government did you give us? A monarchy or a republic?” Franklin responded “A republic, if you can keep it!””
We cannot help but wonder where are the Benjamin Franklin’s of our Republic today?
Even with all the problems we are having with our economy, this time of the year is very special. The baseball teams are doing their thing at spring training, college football teams have gotten the equipment and gear out for spring practice and one of the most beautiful things in the world is appearing in our newspapers and on the Internet each day….
The Bracket for the NCAA Basketball Tournament! Man, that NCAA Tournament Bracket is a beautiful thing to behold because that bracket exemplifies everything that is right just about America. Americans settle their championships on the field of play, or on the court in the case of basketball and there is nothing like college basketball players giving it all during the regular season and during their conference tournaments to get what is without a doubt much, much more than just “March Madness.” Yes, the NCAA Basketball Tournament is a thing of beauty, of great challenge that we all get to follow with great gusto and that inevitably involves exhilarating wins and devastating losses. Yes, that is how things are settled in America…except of course for college football which is run by the biggest bunch of weasels, greedy weasels actually, that have dreamed up a system in the BCS that is a disgrace to the United States of America. OK, these Bastards on Wall Street are worse than the BCS Boys, but no by much!
What great fun it was to watch all those games yesterday between trying to get some work done and is there anything better than hearing Dick Enberg call a college basketball game as he did between VCU and UCLA? A lot of people don’t know it, but Dick Enberg was the play-by-play announcer for most of the UCLA basketball team’s NCAA titles in the 1960s and 70s during John Wooden’s great run in Westwood and Enberg is one of this country’s great treasures. Yes, it is time to crank up the televisions, get those chicken wings, fries, blue cheese dressing and someone get us a cold beer, would you please? Sit back and relax and….
HAIL, ALL HAIL to the
NCAA Basketball Tournament, for it is GREATNESS
Yes, this is going to be great fun…
Please forgive us for leaving college sports, but since a few of us have worked with these Wall Street Boys in the past, we have to get the following off our chest. If you don’t care about the Wall Street Boys destroying our economy by their actions or if you can’t stand profanity, STOP READING NOW!...
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Mountain West Conference Comes Forward with a Sensible Proposal to Reform BCS - Memo to BCS Boys: This is the BEST You Will Get OR You May Inherit the Wind - The Lonely Walk - Think Long and Hard BCS Boys - The Great Ray CharlesPosted on March 5th, 2009 by Joe
Looking over the Mountain West Conference’s BCS Reform Proposal (MWC Proposal .pdf) we cannot help but wonder if the BCS Boys should probably take a hard look at this proposal for what it is…A way for the BCS Boys to find a way out of the morass and in our mind illegality that is the BCS before the powers of the United States government (i.e which represents the American people) force a change to the BCS that would be much worse for the BCS Boys and for the precious bowl games that they have worked so hard to protect.
There are still many people within the BCS structure, conference commissioners, bowl executives, college presidents, etc., and many members of the national media that blindly support the BCS that still fail to realize that they no longer control the future of the BCS because there are very powerful forces in this country, like the vast majority of the American people, many members of the Obama administration and many members of Congress, that believe the BCS is the absolute wrong way to crown a national champion and in fact that the BCS violates several US laws. With all of these powerful forces aligned against the BCS and its inability to crown a legitimate national champion in I-A college football in a fair and just way that also does not violate US laws, the BCS Boys need to come to the realization that they can either embrace needed and necessary changes to the BCS or they can risk losing the current college football postseason structure entirely.
On top of losing the current college football postseason structure, the BCS Boys by clinging to the bogus and in our minds illegal BCS, put themselves at risk personally for their past actions that we believe includes restricting competition in I-A college football. Maybe the BCS Boys believe that it is worth........
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Tiger Woods Back on the Golf Course - Americans SHOULD Celebrate When They Do Something Good - Eliminating Celebration Penalty and Replacing it With: Unsportsmanlike Penalty - Bonnie RaittPosted on February 25th, 2009 by Joe
It is going to be great to see Tiger Woods back on the PGA Tour as he tees off today in the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Arizona. TV coverage starts today on the Golf Channel (DirecTV Channel 218) at 11:00 AM MST. When Tiger Woods left us last June he was finishing off one of the great wins in golf, or even sports history, as Woods won the 2008 US Golf Championship at Torrey Pines over Rocco Mediate in a playoff.
Tiger Woods tee-time is at 12:02 MST in his first-round match against Aussie Brendan Jones. Good Luck to the both of you.
Tiger Woods is already one of the top sportsmen in the past 50 years and from we stand only Jack Nicklaus stands between Woods and the “Greatest Golfer That Ever Lived” moniker. As everyone must know Tiger Woods is coming off of a 8-month layoff after surgery to rebuild his left knee and after watching Woods new golf swing in his practice round yesterday it looks that if Woods has re-tooled his swing to take pressure off that left leg so he can play competitive golf for a long time into the future. Woods teacher is Hank Haney and Haney is a disciple of the greatest swinger of a club in golf history, the great Ben Hogan. Now that is a sweet golf swing.
Watching Tiger Woods celebrate making the putt above to send him into a playoff against Rocco Mediate at last year’s US Open brings to mind the recent proposal by the NCAA rules committee to toughen up the penalties on celebrations. Tiger Woods, who is one of the classiest guys that has ever played sports in the United States, celebrates when he does something good or wins a golf tournament and it is outrageous that a young college football player or his team are penalized for celebrating a touchdown or for doing something else great. One of the most obscene sights in sports is game officials running at a college football player that just scored a touchdown no doubt telling him to calm down and get off the football field. The stupidity of the “excessive celebration” penalty reached its nadir last fall when an official threw a flag on Washington QB Jake Locker after he scored what the Huskies thought was going to be the tying touchdown against BYU: Can you say that was an incredibly stupid call based upon a foolish rule? If you agree with that call on Locker then you haven’t a clue to what it is like to play in a football game and actually do something in life besides push paper across your desk… Just outrageous!
Is this really the message that we want to send to our young people....
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Was anyone really surprised in the outcome at Texas Tech? Hope not! - Machiavelli and The Prince - Tour of California in Solvang - Morning in the SF Bay area hills - Bobby Darin and Kevin Spacey Beyond the SeaPosted on February 20th, 2009 by Joe
Was anyone that was really paying attention surprised at the conclusion of the Mike Leach negotiations at Texas Tech? These folks that were saying that Mike Leach was going to be fired once the Texas Tech board of regents met had a basic misunderstanding of whoe really held the power at Tech, Mike Leach that is, and who was little more than a Don Quixote type character tilting at windmills, that being one Texas Tech AD Gerald Myers. Gil Lebreton of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram pretty much summed up exactly what happened at Texas Tech in recent days and at the end of the day this was a clear victory for people in our country that recognize the importance of rewarding individuals that actually accomplish things in life, not anointing folks that like to stand over and dominate people because they have gotten away with such things in the past. Yes, yesterday was a victory for the doer, the achiever, the guy that goes out and accomplishes things and a stinging defeat for the arrogant, the buffoon, the stupid, and most of all the fool.
Looking back at this entire situation, what can one really say about the following statement that was released earlier this week by Gerald Myers once Leach decided not to sign the outrageous contract that Tech had presented to him:
“Coach Leach has declined our $12.7 million contract,” Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said in a statement. “We will enter the decision-making process and should have some announcements by next week. Our decisions will be based on the best interest of Texas Tech and all of its supporters.”
Uhhhhh Gerald… In case you don’t know it you just got your ass handed to you by Mike Leach and also in case you don’t know YOU HAVE NO POWER at Texas Tech any longer. That statement you released was outrageous about a man that is the winningest head football coach in Texas Tech history and only proves what we said yesterday…
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Stupidity + Arrogance = Texas Tech? - Bobby Knight and the Little People - Money is the issue? - Last year they wanted Leach to leave - “Something is rotten in the state of Lubbock” - Alabama and the Dixie Chicks - Tour of CaliforniaPosted on February 19th, 2009 by Joe
Several times in life one will run into stupidity tied to arrogance and that is exactly what we have in the athletic director at Texas Tech, Gerald Myers. Everyone knows the story by now that Myers (and apparently some other arrogant asses at Texas Tech) inserted at the end of contract negotiations with Mike Leach some provisions that only a fool and/or an idiot would sign.
Asinine contract provisions Texas Tech is asking for from Mike Leach: • That if he is fired, his contract is only guaranteed for 12 percent. Texas coach Mack Brown, Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops, Kansas State’s Bill Snyder and Kansas’ Mark Mangino are all guaranteed for 100 percent, while the league average is 55 percent. Leach’s current contract puts his guaranteed portion at 40 percent. • Leach’s current buyout, which is $500,000, would increase to $1.5 million (Brown, Stoops, Snyder and Mangino do not have buyouts.) • Leach would have to receive permission from Texas Tech to speak with another school or risk owing Tech $1.5 million. • All of the money from his personal speaking properties, whether he makes an appearance or authors a book on his life in Wyoming, would go to Tech. Source: ESPN.com
After Mike Leach decided not to agree to the above asinine provisions (what sane person would for any job on the planet?), Tech AD Gerald Myers issued the following statement:
“Coach Leach has declined our $12.7 million contract,” Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers said in a statement. “We will enter the decision-making process and should have some announcements by next week. Our decisions will be based on the best interest of Texas Tech and all of its supporters.”
“The best interests of Texas Tech?” What we think would be in the best interests of Texas Tech is for the Tech regents to send someone over to Gerald Myers office with lots of boxes and say to Gerald:
“Gerry, let’s get all of this stuff packed up and I want your big ego and arrogant ass of this campus by sundown. Understand? Good. These two boys from the ROTC will help you pack things up.”
What everyone needs to understand is that.....
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Lane Kiffin Moves Up in Coaches Hot Seat Rankings Twice in One Day! - Mike Leach and the Communists in West Texas: Tell them to GO TO HELL Mike!Posted on February 13th, 2009 by Joe
After reading this latest Sports Illustrated article with Lane Kiffin bragging about firing people and Tennessee reporting another rules violation by Kiffin to the NCAA, Lane Kiffin has done something that no coach in the history of Coaches Hot Seat has ever done:
Lane Kiffin has moved up twice on the Coaches Hot Seat Ranking twice in one day. With this second move, Lane Kiffin is now on the
No. 2 Hot Seat
As we said in our last blog post… Shut your mouth Lane or you going to talk yourself right out a job, maybe even before you ever coach a football game at Tennessee.
Now on to this Mike Leach debacle with Texas Tech…
Well known Communists Marx, Lenin and Stalin would be very proud of the buffoons running Texas Tech University after some of the stuff that has come out about the contract negotiations with “their” head football coach Mike Leach. Yes, Communists everywhere would be proud of these West Texas “bid-nessmen” that seem to think that a coach that has put up a record of 76-39 (.661) in 9 seasons at Texas Tech is little more than an employee that needs to heel when they say “heel.” How outrageous and we can understand why they are concerned that Mike Leach might be interested in leaving a school.....
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Coaches Hot Seat Central Re-Opened! - Crank up the TVs! - “These are the times..” - Marginal Tax Rates - President Lincoln - Poor BCS Boys.. - Final 2008/2009 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings - Otis Redding and the “Dock of the Bay"Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Joe
February 12, 2009 – Somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area near the Pacific Ocean! Open the door, turn up the lights, unload the groceries, tap the kegs, fire up the computers and open up ITunes to get some music going because Coaches Hot Seat Central is reopened for business. The ITunes is set to “Shuffle” and what do you guess was the first song that came on?
That’s right the great Steve Perry and Journey and “Don’t Stop Believing.” (We don’t know who that bastard was that was singing for Journey in the Super Bowl pregame show but he clearly couldn’t carry a song like Steve or wear Perry’s jockstrap for that matter! Hang in their Steve and next time let us buy the drinks, OK?
Crank up the televisions and DirecTV boxes (ESPN on TV 1, Check; ESPN 2 on TV 2, Check; ESPNews on TV 3, Check; NFL Network on TV 4, Check; Outdoor Channel on TV 5, Check; Golf Channel on TV 5, Check; MLB Network on TV 6, Check; Big Ten Channel on TV 7; Check; CNBC on TV 8, Check; ESPNU on TV 9, Check; Continuous loop of great college football games on TV 10, Check!), get the takeout hot wings, pizza, and glasses out for the cold beer because Coaches Hot Seat is back in business after a month off filled with lots of hard work in our day jobs and at our companies and many travels around our great Republic. We have gotten a lot of emails here and some will clearly be happy to see Coaches Hot Seat back in business and many others will be cursing us under their breathe and even out loud at times. Unfortunately, for the BCS Boys who are the ones that do the most of the cursing at CHS, also happen to be the folks that are in the most trouble and mean “deep shit” trouble right now. More on that later, but for now we believe that all of us can agree that…..
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now....
Before we get to the Final 2008/2009 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings and to the Top 10 Coaches on those Rankings, we first must say a word or two about the BCS. With the inaction of the BCS Boys to move to a post-season system in college football that recognizes the basic fact that “All Americans are Created Equal” they have ensured that their bogus little and very petty system ...
Now let’s get to the Top 10 Coaches on the Final 2008/2009 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:
1. Mike Sherman, Texas A&M – We believed that Mike Sherman was in trouble and on the Hot Seat, but after several days spent traveling around Texas in January we now believe that Mike Sherman is coaching the 2009 season for his job. After a 4-8 record in his first year at A&M, the challenge is very clear for Sherman in ’09: A winning record and a bowl game are a must OR the Sherman era in College Station is over. With a fairly easy non-conference slate of New Mexico... |
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The “BCS Song” on SNL - Are not ALL Americans Equal? - 7 Days and Counting for BCS Boys - Put a Fork in Steve Spurrier, He’s Done! - Atlas Shrugged - Ben Stein - Why was Jagodzinski fired?Posted on January 13th, 2009 by Joe
Thanks to Adam Rose of the Los Angeles Times for posting the “BCS Song” skit that was on Saturday Night Live over the weekend. Adam is right, many of us have gravitated away from SNL in recent years because Lorne Michaels hasn’t been able to replace the talent that he has lost, but this guy doing this “BCS Song” has some talent, and he is a very wise man as well…
Speaking of the BCS, we remind the BCS Boys that the tock is clicking on them and that it is now 7 days until Barack Obama is sworn in as the Forty-Fourth President of the United States. These BCS Boys seem to be living in a fantasyland, because if they do not believe that the United States government can change the postseason in college football, especially when the federal government (i.e. the American taxpayers who are overwhelmingly in favor if a playoff) doles out BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to the institutions of higher education every year then they have no understanding of who is paying the bills. College football fans pay the bills in college football and the American taxpayers sends BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to higher education every year and that means WE ARE CALLING THE SHOTS. The BCS Boys are going to learn that fact the hard way……
Memo to the BCS Boys: For those arrogant asses calling themselves conferences commissioners let us clue you on “Washington speak” when the President of the United States says…
“At the same time, he said, “If I’m Utah, or if I’m USC or if I’m Texas, I might still have some quibbles.”
Obama said: “That’s why we need a playoff.””
Translation for the Arrogant BCS Boys: Either institute a playoff for the college football postseason or someone in the US Justice Department or a few of the US federal district attorneys are going to take a good long look at the BCS and see if it violates any US laws.
Is that simple enough?
For some reason the BCS Boys seem to think...
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Congratulations Florida Gators! - Tebow Most Outstanding Player - Meyer and Bryant - Bob Stoops and what is wrong - Joseph Campbell - The BCS and George Wallace in the Schoolhouse Door - US vs. BCS - Clock is Ticking BCS Boys - Douglas vs. Lincoln - A Simple Idea BCS Boys: “All MEN Are Created Equal”Posted on January 10th, 2009 by Joe
Before we get to the quite astonishing press conference by ACC conference commissioner and BCS Boy John Swofford earlier this week, let’s first congratulate the Florida Gators for beating the Oklahoma Sooners and winning the “BCS Championship.” It is not Florida’s fault that the BCS Boys are putting on a sham of monstrous proportions with their bogus BCS and in what proved to be a pretty boring game, the Gators beat an incredibly over-hyped Oklahoma team that revealed to the country what all of us here at Coaches Hot Seat knew before Thursday night….the Big 12 supposed strength in 2008 was a joke….
Regardless, Urban Meyer and Florida Gators are to be mightily congratulated on winning a second national title in three years. Go Gators!
Of course, all of those incredibly stupid (and very petty) 154 Heisman voters that left Tim Tebow completely off their ballots have plenty of explaining to do after Tebow led the Gators to another national title and Sam Bradford barely looked like an I-A quarterback on Thursday night. As we said before the Heisman presentation, if the top two quarterbacks on the Coaches Hot Seat flag-football team were playing in the Big 12 they would have been invited to the Heisman ceremony as well, because anyone can put up big numbers against the paper mache defenses in the Big 12. Sam Bradford barely got hit or even rushed all year in the Big 12, and when Bradford actually had to play against a real football team (Well, Texas did a nice job against Bradford and the Sooners, but they were the only one), we all saw what happened. Sam Bradford is a nice enough of a guy, but the most outstanding player in college football today? Please, that Bradford won the Heisman Trophy is one of the great travesties in the history of college football, because all of those big numbers he put up were in one simple word…..BOGUS! Tim Tebow is not only the best player in college football today he is among the Top 5 football players in the last 30 years and if we were asked to compile that Top 5 list right now it would look something like….
1. Herschel Walker 2. Bo Jackson 3. Tim Tebow 4. Ricky Williams 5. Reggie Bush
Yes, Tim Tebow was robbed of the Heisman Trophy in 2008 and the football game on Thursday night only confirmed what we already knew…and anyone with an IQ over room temperature or that has watched 1 minute of football in their lives should have known…
TIM TEBOW IS THE BEST PLAYER IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL.
Shame on those Heisman voters that left Tim Tebow off their ballots, yes shame on each and every one of you….
As for the head coach of the Florida Gators, Urban Meyer, in his last 6 seasons at Utah and Florida his record is 67-11 (.859) and in addition to the two national titles he also has the 2004 undefeated record at Utah. There is a lot that could be said about Urban Meyer and how his particular approach to coaching his football teams has generated such great success, but when you get right down to it there is not 1 or 5 things that we could list that would encapsulate what makes Urban Meyer go. Meyer is best described in the same way.....
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Our Prediction for Oklahoma - Florida - The Clock is Ticking on the BCS BoysPosted on January 8th, 2009 by Joe
The great thing about looking at so many news stories as we do here at Coaches Hot Seat everyday is that many times almost the moment that we go to write something ourselves on a football game or particular issues about college football, we read almost exactly what we would have written in a news story. It would be hard to praise too much how good the reporting is right now in the print and even electronic media on the game of college football, and amazingly this is at a time when print media is on its last legs. Yes, there was some great sports print reporting in the years before and after World War II, but the depth of reporting across the entire country today informs us on the goings on with college football programs from coast to coast and we hope other people as well through Coaches Hot Seat. That was certainly one of our goals when we created Coaches Hot Seat almost two years ago and we continue the mission of bringing the relevant news from across the country to our website users everyday.
Of course, the current state of the economy and the challenges that all of us face on a daily basis don’t leave a lot of time for writing unless it is done in the middle of the night as this post is being done right now and when the college football season is over and we move on to inaugurate a new President we will have more to say on college football and the very tough thing that are now facing our Republic. Yes, the challenges are great, but there is more opportunity now in the current state of chaos than has ever existed in our lifetimes in this country and smart entrepreneurs will find ways to both found companies and grow their current enterprises which will make them much stronger when America comes back from its current weakened condition. Lots more to be said on that subject, but lets get to the subject at hand, which is the BCS title game tonight between Florida and Oklahoma….
There is a lot that could be said about the incredible inequity and downright un-American nature of this BCS title game and the college football postseason, but we will hold that for another day, because we have never been more confident as we are now after our work on this issue in the past several weeks that once all is said and done, the BCS will go the same way as the Soviet Union…….that is DOWN THE TUBES, and it will be the American people, supported by our government that will stand up for what is right and fair, and legal for that matter, and there will not be a damn thing in the world that any of the BCS Boys, from the conference commissioners, college presidents, or bowl executives will be able to do about it… Yes, time is running short for the BCS Boys and they are about to cross a Rubicon in a little under two weeks where if they are still holding to their current positions, they might not only lose the BCS, they might lose the entire college football postseason as it is currently configured. Much more on this in the coming days, but for now we have a real football game to be played against two very good college football teams…. On to our prediction….
We here at Coaches Hot Seat only picked the score of one game in 2008, in the battle in the LA Coliseum between USC and Ohio State back in September. Our prediction for that game was:
USC 41 – Ohio State 21
Final Score: USC 35 – Ohio State 3
We were way to optimistic about Ohio State’s ability to score against the USC defense and even though the Buckeyes have improved on the offensive......
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Flashing Before Our Eyes - TCU - Boise State winner only gets a trophy - Charlie Weis gets a much needed win, McMackin now on Hot Seat? - Rich Ellerson to Army - Gus Malzahn to Auburn: This is “Auburn Football?” - Emerald Bowl - “Turner Gill Rule” - Mike Singletary: A Football Coach - Pretty Boy Romo - What went wrong Monte Kiffin? - Missing Dick SchappPosted on December 29th, 2008 by Joe
Flashing Before Our Eyes in the Last Week
In the last week of holiday parties, family events, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the opening of presents there were several things in and around the game of college football that caught our attention…
What a great college football game last Tuesday between TCU and Boise State – It is a real shame that such a good football game between TCU and Boise State was only for the Poinsettia Bowl trophy, because this is exactly the type of game that would be great in a postseason college football tournament. TCU played terrific in the second half and shut down a very potent Boise State offense and now TCU is sitting with a 11-2 record with losses only to Oklahoma and Utah in the regular season, and yet they do not have an opportunity to advance to play for a legitimate national title in college football. In the Coaches Hot Seat College Football National Championship Tournament TCU was the No. 11 seed (16-team tournament) at the conclusion of the regular season and Boise State was the No. 8 seed, and this game would have been a classic postseason upset and would have sent an underdog team in TCU forward towards a chance to win something beyond a meaningless bowl trophy…. How sad, how pitiful, how embarrassing the college football postseason is….but all of that is going to change…. Yes, that will be a great day in America….
Speaking of surprises…..
Notre Dame just crushed Hawaii on Christmas Eve – We were not surprised that Notre Dame beat Hawaii, but we were surprised by the final score, Irish 49 – Warriors 21, and this game to us actually raises more questions than it answered…
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CHS Tuesday Briefing - “Christmas Lights” over Bowl Games? - Great Football Game Tonight Between TCU vs. Boise State - Miami in the Bay for Emerald - Irish About to be Roasted at a Luau? - Skiing at Squaw ValleyPosted on December 23rd, 2008 by Joe
December 23, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Tuesday Briefing
Everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat would watch two college football teams play in the local Safeway parking lot if we had to, but some of these bowl games are tough to watch and when we find ourselves getting distracted by our wives asking…
“Let’s take the kids out to look at Christmas lights.”
….and we go, that means there are way too many bowl games. But, not all bowl games are created equal and tonight…
We have a great college football game between TCU and Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego – What Dirk Koetter, Dan Hawkins and Chris Peterson have accomplished at Boise State over the past 11 years is remarkable.....
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CHS Sunday Morning Briefing - Congratulations to Richmond Spiders - Rhoads to Iowa State? Who dreamed that one up? - JoePa in LA & Happy 82nd! - Weis really needs to beat Hawaii! - BCA lawsuit? - New Mexico St. Hiring a CoachPosted on December 21st, 2008 by Joe
December 21, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Morning Briefing
1. Congratulations to Mike London and his Richmond football team for winning a NCAA National Championship – Anyone that took the time to watch the I-AA NCAA National Championship Game on Friday night saw two very well coached football teams in Montana and Richmond with Richmond playing an almost flawless title game......
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CHS Friday Morning Briefing - Dallas Morning News columnist calling Auburn “RACISTS” - BCA Suing Somebody - NCAA I-A National Title Game - Paul Johnson Pay Raise - Dan Hawkins on the HOT SEAT - Headed to Lake Tahoe for Skiing!Posted on December 19th, 2008 by Joe
December 19, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Friday Morning Briefing
As we move towards the end of a very eventual 2008 with many of us heading into our day jobs for the final time in this year (Our conclusion on working around the Holidays: What’s the point in having people coming to work, nobody is really working anyway so we have our company parties to attend today and then it is Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and we will see you on January 5, 2009!) we cannot help but reflect back upon a dramatic year for our Republic. A new president, that is both young and seems to have a positive direction to take the country, incredible upheaval in our financial markets that have seemingly been capped by one of the great Ponzi schemes of all time....
So Jean-Jacques Taylor of the Dallas Morning News believes the folks at Auburn are “RACISTS” and that recruits should now boycott and not sign with Auburn University? – Sometimes we read things in newspapers that we disagree with, but rarely have we read something that we so completely disagree with but is also incredibly IGNORANT....
The Black Coaches Association is kicking around a possible lawsuit to force college to hire more black head coaches – When we saw...
Tonight on ESPN 2 at 8:00 PM EST Mike Long leads his Richmond football team against Bobby Hauck’s Montana team in the NCAA National Championship Game for I-AA football - Yes, a real championship game that is filled with two teams that have EARNED their way into the right to play for a title instead of the Bogus BCS which relies on coaches that have agendas.....
Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech just signed a new 7-year deal that will pay him an average of $2.45 million over that seven year period – What came immediately mind to us when we saw the $700K or so yearly raise that Paul Johnson got from his current employer is if Auburn really tried to hire Paul Johnson with a blockbuster offer that he could not have turned down....
We were glad to see that Colorado AD Mike Bohn believes that his head football coach is not on the Hot Seat, but when a head coach at any school, especially the University of Colorado is 13-24 (.351) we have a news flash for AD Mike Bohn…
Dan Hawkins is on the HOT SEAT!
All of us, including Mike Bohn, certainly expected Hawkins to have put a better record.....
Well, we are off to work this morning to wrap up what has been a busy week at work at our day jobs, but will be a pretty useless last day of work before we see everyone again in 2009. Of course, Coaches Hot Seat will be fully manned through the Holidays as we follow.....
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CHS Tuesday Afternoon Briefing - Why is Syracuse AD Darryl Gross Being Held to a Different Standard Than Auburn AD Jay Jacobs? Answer: THE INCREDIBLE HYPOCRISY IN THE NATIONAL MEDIAPosted on December 16th, 2008 by Joe
December 16, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Tuesday Afternoon Briefing
The incredible hypocrisy in the national media on race never surprises us, but the attack upon Auburn on the hiring of Gene Chizik is just incredibly over the top. Why is Auburn AD Jay Jacobs held to a different standard than Syracuse AD Darryl Gross? – In a world full of politically correct bullshit, the attack on Auburn for the hiring of Gene Chizik over what people are guessing was the choosing of Gene Chizik over Turner Gill is so far beyond the pale we wonder how many of national media folks can sleep at night. Last week, Syracuse University that has a BLACK ATHLETIC DIRECTOR in Darryl Gross hired Doug Marrone A WHITE GUY that had less experience THAN TURNER GILL, but there has not been a word anywhere in the national media about the Marrone hire at Syracuse.
Why is Syracuse AD Darryl Gross being held to a different standard than Auburn AD Jay Jacobs one must really wonder?
That is an easy question to answer: That Auburn University that is in the deep South would choose Gene Chizik over poor little Turner Gill FITS THE NARRATIVE that the national media loves to serve up to anyone will listen, but that Syracuse AD Darryl Gross hired a WHITE GUY in Doug Marrone, an assistant from the NFL, who seems to be much less qualified for the Syracuse job than poor little Turner Gill DOES NOT FIT THE NARRATIVE, so it is not written about by the politically correct gang that makes up the national media.
Of course, there was know one screaming from the hills when Lane Kiffin......
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Final Regular Season/Championship Week CHS Rankings - Gene Chizik Hiring - Monte Kiffin joins his Boy - Hypocrisy in the National Media - Top 10 Coaches in the Rankings - REAL GAMES THAT MEAN SOMETHING vs. MEANINGLESS EXHIBITION GAMESPosted on December 15th, 2008 by Joe
Good Monday to everyone. What a fascinating week in college football as we had two big moves in the SEC conference. Yes, two big moves as Gene Chizik was hired to be the head coach at Auburn and Monte Kiffin decided to join his boy Lane in Knoxville to coach up the Vols.
The Gene Chizik hire at Auburn is fascinating to us mainly because how far Auburn must have been down their list to end up choosing between Gene Chizik and Turner Gill. Both Chizik and Gill are very good football coaches, but they are also both unknown quantities as successful head coaches at a level like the SEC and Auburn ended up hiring a guy that they knew in Chizik over a guy they really didn’t know in Turner Gill. The question we have is what exactly is the difference between Auburn hiring Gene Chizik who had a career 5-19 record at Iowa State and Tennessee hiring Lane Kiffin who had a career 5-15 record with the Oakland Raiders? Answer: There is no difference, but at least Gene Chizik has coached in the SEC and at the school he is being hired at in Auburn, and Lane Kiffin had not spent one second in the SEC when he was introduced in Knoxville. Between the two hires of Chizik and Kiffin, Chizik is the better hire by millions of miles just from an experience in the SEC standpoint and it will be fascinating to see how the Auburn and Tennessee football programs perform over the next few years.
As for all of the national media type wringing their hands over Auburn “firing” Tommy Tuberville to hire Gene Chizik, Tommy Tuberville is sitting back in Auburn right now getting a good laugh......
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CHS Sunday Morning Briefing - Bradford Wins Heisman, but Tebow got SHAFTED - Gene Chizik to Auburn - Iowa State in Good Position - Turner Gill would be RICH at Iowa State - I-AA College Football Playing REAL PLAYOFF GAMES - Christmas Time in the CityPosted on December 14th, 2008 by Joe
December 14, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Morning Briefing
1. Congratulations to Sam Bradford for winning Heisman Trophy, but clearly Tebow got SHAFTED by some voters – Just like the recent BOGUS AND VERY TROUBLING VOTES in the Coaches’ and Harris Polls by voters that either don’t have a clue about the game of college football or are very selfish and only interested in serving their own personal interests, we here at Coaches Hot Seat have to really wonder how 154 of the Heisman voters left Tim Tebow entirely off their Heisman ballots. What? Tim Tebow is not at least one of the Top 3 players in college football? Is there actually someone so dumb, or jealous is what we are really talking about here aren’t we, that they would leave Tebow off their Heisman ballot entirely? Yes.....
2. Gene Chizik to Auburn – As we said yesterday in this blog if Auburn was down to choosing between Gene Chizik and Turner Gill then they had to be way down their list of coaches to hire to replace Tuberville. Since Chizik is from the South and has already coached in the SEC....
3. Iowa State is not in that bad of a position with a pool of very good assistant and head coaches to hire from – Something we will never get used to here at Coaches Hot Seat are media outlets and fans having a hard time with a coach moving to a another job to better his career. Almost every time a coach like Gene Chizik moves from a lower tier program (sorry Iowa State fans, ISU is a second-tier program in the world of college football) to a place like Auburn....
4. Turner Gill = Not a great fit at Auburn BUT a terrific fit at Iowa State – We were always dubious about Turner Gill to Auburn, not because Turner Gill is not a good football coach, because he is, but because a Big 12/Midwest guy for most of his career just did not fit very well in the SEC. We believe that Turner Gill is going to have a great head coaching career and that even if Auburn had offered the job to Gill...
5. While I-A college football is sitting on its hands for three and four weeks basically doing nothing, the lower divisions of college football are going about crowing a legitimate national champion with a…..PLAYOFF! – While the I-A college football season ends with a TOTAL DUD with teams told to take off three and four weeks, the lower divisions are now PLAYING OFF to crown LEGITIMATE NATIONAL CHAMPIONS and what great fun it is to watch these football games. Instead of facing 34 MEANINGLESS EXHIBITION GAMES that the postseason in I-A college football dishes out....
Like much of the country it is very cold in the San Francisco Bay area this weekend and many of us that made it back to the Bay were out yesterday cutting down Christmas trees and trying to keep our wives from spending all of our money! A winter storm means not only a chilly weekend in the Bay but more importantly LOTS OF SNOW IN THE SIERRA-NEVADA and no doubt several of us will be headed up to Lake Tahoe early this coming week to hit the slopes at Squaw Valley, Northstar-at-Tahoe, and at Heavenly Mountain. No place in the world like Lake Tahoe, Summer or Winter!
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Which coach would be better for Auburn: Gene Chizik OR Turner Gill? OR Should Auburn raises the stakes (the salary they are willing to pay) and try to make a “GREAT” hire in this spot?Posted on December 13th, 2008 by Joe
A word on Gene Chizik or Turner Gill possibly going to Auburn – With news media reports in Alabama that Gene Chizik might be on the verge of being named the next head football coach at Auburn and that Turner Gill might be the 1A or second choice, we must say that hiring either person here in this spot would not be a bad move. Would it be a “GREAT” move? NO, but it would not be a bad move. Just someone taking a look at Gene Chizik’s overall record of 5-19 at Iowa State and reeling with horror that Chizik could possibly end up at Auburn with such a record does not tell the entire story of what Chizik has accomplished with the Cyclones. Understanding that Chizik has been faced with the double-whammy....
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CHS Saturday Morning Briefing - Heisman Winner? It has to be Tebow - Wall Street Journal and the BCS/How about covering Wall Street? - Jack Welch and the Bottom 10 Percent - New CHS Rankings Out on MondayPosted on December 13th, 2008 by Joe
December 13, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Saturday Morning Briefing
1. The “Most Outstanding College Football Player in the United States?” That’s easy to answer - Who is “The Most Outstanding College Football Player in the United States” which is the criteria used to pick the winner of the Heisman Trophy? Hands down: Tim Tebow. Let’s just be honest here, the First and Second string quarterbacks on the Coaches Hot Seat flag-football team could throw for 400 yards a game in the Big 12. If an entire conference is not going to play defense....
2. The Wall Street Journal and in fact anyone on Wall Street lecturing people about “REAL” competition – What a laugh we got this morning when we turned to the Editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and read “The Blowhard Bowl” which criticizes Rep. Joe Barton of Texas for his proposal to eliminate the BCS. We can only wonder how anyone that works on or anywhere near Wall Street can lecture anyone on fraudulent activity with all of the crapola that the Greedy Bastards on Wall Street have pulled over the past 8 years. The revelation yesterday that former NASDAQ chairman Bernard Madoff....
3. Jack Welch and the firing the bottom 10 percent, EVERY YEAR – With 17 college head football coaches now either being fired or “resigning” from their jobs we are reminded of former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch’s dictum that…
“Never give anyone a raise (or stock option or bonus) without a small sheet of paper on how well they did or how they can improve,” says Welch. He admits some of his personnel ideas make people uncomfortable: in particular, his notion that 10% of employees will never succeed, and should be shown the door as expeditiously as possible. “You’ve got to believe that the team that fields the best players wins. If you tell the bottom ten where they stand, that it’s time to look for something else, that’s considered cruel management.” But, says Welch, it’s far crueler to let people hang on and then get cut later in their careers when they’re less likely to find other work. His ultimate advice to wanna-be managers: “Err on the side of the bold. … Take swings, have fun.”
With 120 teams now playing I-A college football, 17 coaching changes in 2008....
4. Final Post-Regular Season Coaches Hot Seat Rankings – The final Post-Regular Season Coaches Hot Seat Rankings are now being compiled and we will have those posted on Monday. We wanted to give everyone a chance to really think......
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CHS Midday Friday Briefing - Dan Mullen to Mississippi State AND Should Mullen Coach in Title Game - Who is Doug Marrone? - Auburn MUST Hire a Guy that will take on Nick SabanPosted on December 12th, 2008 by Joe
December 12, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Midday Friday Briefing
1. Dan Mullen to Mississippi State and on whether Mullin should coach in national title game for the Gators – Dan Mullen seems to be a good fit at Mississippi State which is always in need of someone with a positive attitude, because there may not be a tougher job in I-A football to win at on a consistent basis than the Miss. State job in Starkville. We will have more to say....
2. Doug Marrone to Syracuse? – If Doug Marrone walked up to any of us here at Coaches Hot Seat on the Streets of San Francisco (Great show starring Michael Douglas and Karl Malden by the way!)…. video of Streets of San Francisco...
3. 6 head coaching jobs now open with Auburn easily being the best job left on the board – We are going to be very interested to see Auburn hires in this spot to replace Tuberville, because there are about 10 different ways the Tigers could move with a new head coach that could feasibly work out as both a good hire and someone that would challenge Nick Saban at Alabama. We note that one of the first things mentioned by Nick Saban when he was hired at Alabama in his introductory press conference was….
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Coaching Change Analysis - Steve Sarkisian, Washington - Did Washington Really Pursue a Proven Head Coach?Posted on December 11th, 2008 by Joe
Coaching Changes Analysis – Steve Sarkisian, Washington
We here at Coaches Hot Seat are going to evaluate every coaching change this season, and in addition to our Commentary we are also going to have two ratings on the coaching changes. The first one is our Quality of the New Hire rating which is based on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being an “Unmitigated Disaster” and 10 being a “Home Run”! Our second rating is the Opposing Coaches in the school’s conference on how they feel about the new hire and the thought of coaching and recruiting against the new coach. The Opposing Coaches ratings will break down as:
Loving It! - Not good for the hiring school Doesn’t Matter - Neutral for the hiring school Damn! - Great for the hiring school
And off we go….
Washington Fired: Ty Willingham Hired: Steve Sarkisian
Commentary There is an old West Point adage:
“A calculated risk is a known risk for the sake of a real gain. A risk for the sake of a risk is a fool’s choice.”
When it comes to the hiring of Steve Sarkisian at Washington we really wonder if Sarkisian......
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Should Steve Spurrier be offered the head coaching job at Auburn? & Should Steve Spurrier accept the Auburn job if offered?Posted on December 10th, 2008 by Joe
Should Steve Spurrier be offered the head coaching job at Auburn? & Should Steve Spurrier accept the Auburn job if offered?
With Steve Spurrier’s name now showing up on the periphery of the Auburn head coaching search the questions being proposed by Coaches Hot Seat are:
From Wikipedia: Stephen Orr Spurrier
Stephen Orr Spurrier (born April 20, 1945 in Miami Beach, Florida) is a former American football player and currently the head coach of the University of South Carolina football team. He was a two-time All-American and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame as a player. He is best known for winning the Heisman Trophy in 1966, and for coaching the University of Florida football team to six SEC championships during his tenure there, which encompassed the seasons 1990–2001. He also led the Gators to one National Championship in 1996.
Should Steve Spurrier be offered the head coaching job at Auburn?....
Why should Auburn offer Steve Spurrier their head coaching job if he is willing to take the job?...
Why should Steve Spurrier accept the Auburn job if offered?...
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CHS Midday Wednesday Briefing - Bowl Gifts to College Football Players? Outrageous! - Who is Auburn’s Pat Dye in 2008? - Hiring People for Critical Positions and Florida AD Jeremy FoleyPosted on December 10th, 2008 by Joe
December 10, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Midday Wednesday Briefing
We wish someone would explain to us what gifts given to college football players at bowl games has to do with collegiate athletics – We find it hard to understand how the NCAA or college football teams and schools can justify the following few paragraphs from a story written by David Broughton in the Sports Business, “Sony’s suite is latest innovation in bowl gifts”:
“Players visiting Miami to compete in the FedEx Orange Bowl or the BCS national championship game will be given the chance to do some after-Christmas shopping courtesy of the committee that runs both of those games.
FedEx Orange Bowl officials have reserved a suite at each of the team hotels, the Westin Diplomat and Fontainebleau, and plan to stock them exclusively with Sony Electronics products. On the night that each of the teams arrives in town, the players will be invited to the suite, handed a folio that not coincidentally features their school colors and is emblazoned with the bowl logo, and given what is basically a $300 credit line. Players can check off from a list in the folio the items that they want (up to $300 in total value), and the gifts will be delivered to the addresses of their choice.
It’s all part of the continuing efforts by tech and electronics corporations to stay relevant in the eyes of the coveted, college-age demographic, said Jon Cooperstein of Davene Inc., a Memphis-based promotions company that brokered gift deals for 14 of this year’s 34 bowl games.”
What? We don’t care if there is a NCAA rule.....
Who is the next Pat Dye for Auburn? – As Auburn considers its options for a new head coach it might do AU well to look into the past to find a lesson for the type of head coach that it should hire today. In 1980 the Auburn football program was spiraling down under Doug Barfield and Alabama was on top of the world under Paul “Bear” Bryant and Auburn turned to a coach that had never coached at Auburn, but a coach that had connections to the south, and had even coached at the University of Alabama for 9 years under “Bear” Bryant. In 1980 Auburn hired Pat Dye from Wyoming, who then had been a head coach for 7 years at East Carolina (6 years) and Wyoming (1 year) and had a career record of 54 – 23 (.701).
What the people doing the hiring of a new head football coach at Auburn need to realize......
....... With the idea in mind that Auburn needs to be looking to hire a football coach that reflects their institution instead of trying to hire a “home run” coach to match Alabama, if we were sitting in the AD (or the Auburn booster’s chairs) we would be looking at the following coaches that would fit pretty well at Auburn in our minds (in order to who we would talk to first):.....
A brief note on the hiring of people for critical positions – We have been very interested in recent years watching coaching searches on the I-A college level and from where we sit we believe that schools often give up on the football coach that they want to hire way to early in the hiring process. Several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have hired people for critical positions for our companies and often the person we ended up hiring TURNED US DOWN AND SAID NO 5 OR MORE TIMES BEFORE WE HIRED THEM. With colleges using these consultants to help them hire football coaches we believe that often a school gets a “NO” answer back from potential coaches and then the school move onto the next coach on their list. College ADs need to remember back to how Jeremy Foley hired Urban Meyer 4 years ago when Meyer was at Utah and it looked like Meyer was headed to Notre Dame. Notre Dame completely believed that there was no way Urban Meyer was going to turn down the Irish, but the folks at Notre Dame did not count on Florida AD Jeremy Foley showing up in Salt Lake City with a great salary offer, a plan.......
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CHS Midday Tuesday Briefing - Days off between Regular Season and BCS = Outrageous - 6-6 Coaches Crying - Auburn Casting a “Very Wide Net”Posted on December 9th, 2008 by Joe
December 9, 2009
Coaches Hot Seat Midday Tuesday Briefing
Incredibly absurd time off between regular season/championship games and Bogus BCS bowl games - Easily one of the most absurd things about the BCS besides that the monstrosity should not exists in the first place, is the amount of time in between the final regular season/conference championship games and the Bogus BCS bowl games. What other sport in the world is there where all the teams just come to a full stop after the regular season for up to a month or even more and then start back up, all just so a bunch of people that have nothing to do with the game of college football, the bowl executives, can sell hotel rooms, restaurant meals, and make a lot of money for themselves. Some of these bowl executives (Coach Gottfried at the GMAC Bowl is an example of someone that does a great job with his bowl and in the Mobile, Alabama community) do great things, but it is not the obligation or the job of college football teams to sell hotel rooms. In fact it is outrageous that our college football teams are looked at as little more than meat on a stick by these bowl executives to be stuck out for their fans to sell hotel rooms and fill up restaurants. No, selling hotel rooms has nothing to do with college football and the NCAA should be ashamed with what they have allowed to happen to this game by the college football postseason. Just outrageous….
Getting back to the subject of this post, let’s take a look at the length of time that our football teams will be taking off between their final regular season or conference championship game and their Bogus BCS Bowl Game. Yes, this time off is both ABSURD AND STUPID….
Bogus BCS Title Game
Fiesta Bowl.... Conferences and Coaches crying about not getting a bowl trip with a 6-6 team? Absolutely sickening and the epitome of the mediocrity that pervades the college football bowl system – If you really want to see what this outrageous and pitiful bowl system in college football has wrought, look no further than the Sun Belt conference where there are both conference officials and head coaches crying because their “6-6” teams did not get into postseason bowls. Why any college coach would cry about not getting into a postseason bowl, when he should be busy kicking himself in the ass for putting up a 6-6 record in the first place, just shows the complete absurdity of the college football postseason. These coaches crying..... The Auburn Coaching Search and Casting a Very Wide Net which is a Very Smart Thing - We don’t know what is going on with the Auburn coaching search except for what has been in the media, but the AU administration seems to be casting a “Very Wide Net” by interviewing lots of different people for their head coaching job and we applaud this because this is the approach that is taken by all serious businesses in this country when they are hiring someone for a critical position. There are a lot of very good reasons....
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Coaches Hot Seat 2008 Heisman Ballot - Tim Tebow in the NFL and Finding the Right NFL Team and Right “Pro” Offense for TebowPosted on December 8th, 2008 by Joe
Coaches Hot Seat Heisman Ballot – Although no one asked us below is how the Coaches Hot Seat Heisman Ballot would look if we were voting for what the Heisman Trophy folks define as “The Most Outstanding College Football Player in the United States.” We have never seen a Heisman Ballot, but we understand that people choose their Top 3 Heisman Candidates, but we here at Coaches Hot Seat have expanded that list to the Top 10 College Football Players in 2008.
One Note: For the many college football fans that have never been to the Heisman Trophy Dinner in New York if you do have some extra bucks to spend and black-tie attire in the closet we would recommend checking in at www.heisman.com and learn about how you can buy tickets to this terrific event. Talk about seeing some of the all-time greats in the history of college football, this dinner has it all, and to boot you get to spend a few days in the Great New York City. If you are a big college football fan and if you can afford it, you must attend the Heisman Dinner once in your lifetime.
With that being said let’s get to the….
2008 Coaches Hot Seat Heisman Ballot (Expanded to Top 10 Players in College Football)......
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CHS Monday Morning Briefing - “Girly-Men” LOVE THE BCS - “Real Men” LOVE A PLAYOFF - 9 I-A Head Coaching Jobs Now OpenPosted on December 8th, 2008 by Joe
December 8, 2009
Coaches Hot Seat Monday Morning Briefing
Why Oklahoma and Florida in title game instead of Texas, Texas Tech, Utah, USC, Penn State, Alabama….? – Oklahoma, Florida is an interesting football game but let’s make this very clear, these two teams are playing for the BCS Championship not a National Title. The BCS is a Fraud and it is supported and propped up by members of the media that are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the BCS Boys, and we are going to be fascinated to see the media’s reaction was they learn how badly they have been played by this travesty of a postseason system. Of course, if there is an American that can defend the BCS, where teams and our fellow US citizens are treated unequally that is an American that will defend almost anything…. All of that ass kissing throughout the year and during bowl season by the BCS Boys of the media sure goes a long way….
Here is the BCS Boys answer to a great regular season where at the end of that regular season and championship week there are…
10 TEAMS WITH 1 OR LESS LOSS
14 TEAMS WITH 2 OR LESS LOSSES
The BCS’ Bogus Answer:
Oklahoma vs. Florida
Now let’s look at an answer to the college football postseason that recognizes how we crown champions on every sport from the first time we pick up a ball through every sport in collegiate athletics, a postseason playoff tournament, except of course for the Bogus BCS in I-A college football:
Before we get to the First Round Pairings what would be the College Football National Championship Tournament, let us first take a look at the latest Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll. This CHS Power Playoff Poll is used to determine the “7 At-Large” teams to join the 9 “Conference Champions” in the 16-Team Postseason Tournament. Of course, in a real tournament there would be a committee of real men, not computers, that would pick the “At-Large” teams, seed the tournament and set up the First Round Games:
Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll December 7, 2008
1. Oklahoma* 2. Texas# 3. Florida* 4. USC* 5. Alabama# 6. Utah* 7. Penn State* 8. Boise State# 9. Texas Tech# 10. Ohio State# 11. TCU# 12. Cincinnati* 13. Virginia Tech* 14. Georgia Tech# 15. Oklahoma State 16. Oregon 17. Michigan State 18. BYU 19. Mississippi 20. Pittsburgh
*Conference Champs #At-Large Teams
Other Conference Champs C-USA/SB: E Carolina* MAC: Buffalo*
Using the above CHS Power Playoff Poll below are the First Round Pairings for the College Football National Championship Tournament. The First Round Games would be played on Saturday, December 13 at the home sites of the higher seeded team. The games would start at 12:00 PM on the East Coast and would run all day and into the night with the late games on the West Coast. The schedule for the Postseason Tournament would be:
First Round Games – Saturday, December 13, 2008 Quarterfinal Round Games – Saturday, December 20, 2008 Final Four Round Games – Saturday, December 28, 2008 National Championship Game – Saturday, January 3, 2008
This Postseason Tournament would take one week off after the Championship Week and then the games would be played over 4 consecutive weekends until the National Championship Game is played in January 3, 2008.
Let’s see, take-off a month before playing a Bogus BCS title game OR take 1 week off and have a playoff to determine a legitimate National Champion. Anyone that would choose take a month off over a playoff is very simply a MORON. No, not a MORON, but a “Girly-Man!” Forgetting all of the “Girly-Men” out there, and there are a lot of “Girly-Men” in the BCS and supporting the BCS, let’s get to the First Round Games of the Postseason Tournament.
College Football National Championship Tournament
Saturday, December 13, 2008 Round 1 Games
Oklahoma - #1 Seed Utah - #6 Seed
Kyle Whittingham and his Utah travels to Norman, Oklahoma to play the on fire Oklahoma Sooners coached by Bob Stoops.
Buffalo - #16 Seed Ohio State - #10 Seed
Turner Gill takes his Buffalo team in the heart of the Midwest to play Jim Tressel’s Ohio State Buckeyes
Florida - #3 Seed East Carolina - #15 Seed
Skip Holtz and his surging East Carolina team travels to Gainesville to take on Tim Tebow and the Gators
Texas Tech - #9 Seed Va. Tech - #13 Seed
Virginia Tech coming off another ACC title travels deep into the state of Texas to take on Mike Leach and Tech Red Raiders
Georgia Tech - #14 Seed Penn State - #7 Seed
Paul Johnson and his Yellow Jackets take their triple-option attack to State College for a great First Round matchup with Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions
Alabama - #5 Seed Boise State - #8 Seed
Chris Peterson loads up his Boise State team and takes them to Bryant-Denny Stadium for a great First Round matchup with Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide.
TCU - #11 Seed USC - #4 Seed
Gary Patterson and the TCU Horned Frogs travel to the coast to take on Pete Carroll and the mighty USC Trojans in the LA Coliseum
Cincinnati - #12 Seed Texas - #2 Seed
Brian Kelly and the Big East Champ Cincinnati Bearcats travel to Austin, Texas to play Mack Brown the Texas Longhorns
OK, let’s compare once again. The Bogus BCS gives us this ONE GAME after a great regular season…
Oklahoma vs. Florida
…and here is what a legitimate system that calls on all the RIGHT things that our Republic stands for with the primary one being that a Championship is EARNED ON THE FIELD OF PLAY…
If there is any red-blooded American that would choose the Bogus BCS title game over a legitimate postseason tournament we would love to meet that person, because that person has to be the biggest PANZI this side of Pee Wee Herman. Pee Wee Herman would just love the BCS…… Just think all of you BCS Lovers, you are in bed with Pee Wee Herman… Meanwhile in the real world with real men a legitimate College Football Postseason Tournament is going on…..
“Girly-Men” and the BCS or “Real Men” and a College Football National Championship Postseason Tournament. We all know the BCS is filled with “Girly-Men” but not the rest of America……. Guess what, President-Elect Obama is not a “Girly-Man!”
Open I-A Head Coaching Jobs as of December 8, 2008 – There are currently 9 Head Coaching Jobs open:
Syracuse New Mexico San Diego State Eastern Michigan Mississippi State Miami (OH) Bowling Green New Mexico State Auburn
Clearly, the best opening is Auburn......
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CHS Sunday Morning Briefing - Albert Camus and the Absurdity that is the BCS - Congratulations to Champions - “Silly Season” in College Football - Steve Sarkisian to Washington? Really? - Heading out into the Great American WestPosted on December 7th, 2008 by Joe
December 7, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Morning Briefing
Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 (67 years ago, God Bless all of those that died that day and fought to keep our Republic free)
Albert Camus, the French author, philosopher, and journalist who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 once observed:
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
Albert Camus is of course right that when you really think about it, this entire shooting match is absurd. Here we are, 6 BILLION PEOPLE living on a rock that looks like a blue marble from space, we are part of a solar system that includes both smaller and larger planets and that has a massive Sun that keeps us warm, but if we were just a little closer to or further away from the Sun there would be no life on Earth. Our solar system is about midway out from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy which has an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars in it that are both larger and smaller than our Sun. Our best scientists believe that at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is a super-massive black hole that is gobbling up entire solar systems and that the best estimate for the age of the Milky Way Galaxy is 13.2 BILLION YEARS OLD. Yes, that’s right 13.2 BILLION YEARS OLD. Of course, the Milky Way Galaxy......
Yes, indeed this entire shooting match is absurd, but there is another quote by Camus that we think is particularly important for the absurdity that is the BCS:
“Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.”
Stupidity indeed and stupidity in spades when it comes to this awful BCS….
We can only wonder if Camus, who died in 1960, wasn’t a man that could see into the future, because “the absurd is the essential concept and the first truth” if one could possibly hope to understand the cluster-f _ _ k that is the BCS. Watching television yesterday during a day that celebrated teams winning real championships on the field of play, we can only wonder what do all of these TV analysts tell their children and grandchildren about hard work and getting ahead in life when they defend an atrocity such as the BCS. What indeed could any parent that defends the BCS and the people behind possibly say to their children…
Yes, there was some great conference championship football played on Saturday, just like there is in college basketball every March, but there was NO NATIONAL SEMI-FINAL GAMES played in college football and the people that make such outrageous statements should be ashamed of themselves. Commentators on TV and in the media have tripped all over themselves to defend the FRAUDULENT BCS in recent days and to somehow claim that there were “BCS SEMI-FINAL GAMES” being played, defies logic since we have a lot of teams that should have had a right to be in such “SEMI-FINAL GAMES” if indeed they were actually being played. Shame on these people.....
Let’s just look at what the landscape of college football looks like after the conclusion of the regular season and the conference championship games have been played:
We congratulate all the teams that won conference championships – There really is nothing like watching a game where....
The beginning of the “Silly Season” and way too many MEANINGLESS EXHBITION GAMES – What is really outrageous about the college football postseason, besides the “series” of MEANINGLESS EXHIBITION GAMES that are played in the VERY BOGUS BCS, is all of the.....
Steve Sarkisian to Washington? – Much like Lane Kiffin, we here at Coaches Hot Seat like Sarkisian personally, but is Washington really going to hire Steve Sarkisian in this spot.....
With the end of the college football season and championship week several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat are headed out into the Great American West, into the mountains and meadows, on the rivers and lakes and damn anywhere else we can find a way to get away from the tedium of the city....
To that point, the grand music of John Denver is flowing through Coaches Hot Seat this morning….. Enjoy…..
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The 12 Coaches (in order) that would be on our list to replace Tuberville if we were the AD at AuburnPosted on December 6th, 2008 by Joe
There has already been a lot written about the “resignation” of Tommy Tuberville at Auburn and all kinds of wild rumors about what candidates might be on Auburn’s list, but we hope the folks at Auburn realize just how important this head coaching hire is to the long-term future of the Auburn football program. Nick Saban has not only completely turned the tables on Auburn in only 22 months, he has also changed the entire landscape of the SEC, and at 57 years of age one would have to think that Saban will be causing havoc in the SEC for another 8 years or so, at least. With that in mind Auburn must make a “significant” hire in this spot to replace Tuberville and they must hire a coach that can go toe-to-toe with Nick Saban in everything from recruiting to game day coaching. There are not many people around that will be able to match-up with Saban and an Alabama football program that is clicking on all cylinders, but if Auburn hired a coach that could split the next 8 games with Alabama and also had a good shot of winning 2 to 3 SEC titles over those same 8 years, then Auburn would have made a great hire.
Therefore, putting aside what is being written in the Alabama media on what candidates Auburn might or might not be pursuing, below are The 12 Coaches that we would be going after, in order, if we were sitting in the ADs chair at Auburn: (The coaches are ranked in order from the first we would try to hire, the second, and so on…)
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CHS GameDay Briefing - Congratulations to Turner Gill - Mike Leach off Auburn’s list because he is Mormon? - Championship Saturday: Real Football not the bogus BCS - Paul “Bear” BryantPosted on December 6th, 2008 by Joe
December 6, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat GameDay Briefing
1. Congratulations to Turner Gill and his Buffalo team for winning the MAC Conference Title – Turner Gill’s remarkable turnaround at Buffalo continued last night with an upset win over a bumbling Ball State team and we are awed by what Gill has done at Buffalo which really has been nothing short of remarkable. The question for Turner Gill now has to be.....
2. Why is Mike Leach suddenly off Auburn’s coaching search list when he seemed to be on the list only a day ago? Could it be that he is Mormon? – One of the most interesting developments in the Auburn coaching search is why there were numerous reports out of Alabama on Wednesday and Thursday that Mike Leach was on Auburn’s list, but suddenly something like this can appear in the Mobile Press-Register this morning:
“Texas Tech coach Mike Leach approached Auburn during the day Friday, but found no interest, according to people familiar with the situation. The Dallas Morning News reported Friday night that Texas Tech offered Leach a new five-year, $12.1 million contract.”
OK, so two days ago Leach was at or near the top of Auburn’s list, but now he “found no interest.” Hmmmmmm….. We wonder why that is….
3. Championship Weekend – Unlike many people on TV that talk incessantly about the BCS, we believe the most important thing happening on this weekend of football is real championships being decide on the field of play. Instead of the outrageous subjectivity and computers of the BCS, today we get to witness real games for real championships and for that we are thankful. Oh, we are so thankful for that!
Let’s have a great Saturday of Championship Football!
When we here at Coaches Hot Seat think of Winning Football and Championships one former head football coach comes immediately to mind:
Paul “Bear” Bryant (YouTube.com video)
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Coaching Changes Analysis - Dabo Swinney, Clemson - Churchill, Sayings of Great Men & The Common PeoplePosted on December 5th, 2008 by Joe
Coaching Changes Analysis – Dabo Swinney, Clemson
We here at Coaches Hot Seat are going to evaluate every coaching change this season, and in addition to our Commentary we are also going to have two ratings on the coaching changes. The first one is our Quality of the New Hire rating which is based on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being an “Unmitigated Disaster” and 10 being a “Home Run”! Our second rating is the Opposing Coaches in the school’s conference on how they feel about the new hire and the thought of coaching and recruiting against the new coach. The Opposing Coaches ratings will break down as:
Loving It! - Not good for the hiring school Doesn’t Matter - Neutral for the hiring school Damn! - Great for the hiring school
And off we go….
Clemson Fired: Tommy Bowden Hired: Dabo Swinney
Commentary As one of America’s greatest thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Dabo Swinney understands Mr. Emerson in spades and that is why he is the head football coach at Clemson University today. Things were very dark indeed when Dabo Swinney took over the Clemson football team at the midway point of the ’08 season and Clemson AD Terry Don Phillips (and Tommy Bowden as well with a recommendation we understand) saw rightly that what most was needed for the Clemson football players was confidence and someone that could get them to believe in themselves. The man that was rightly identified to do that at a very critical point in the history of Clemson University football was Dabo Swinney, and at that very critical moment the Tiger football program could have very easily fallen apart with the firing of Tommy Bowden. Dabo Swinney was hired.....
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CHS Thursday Morning Briefing - Tuberville “departure” from Auburn - Nick Saban living in a fantasyland - Notre Dame football R.I.P. - George Lucas before he was wealthy…Posted on December 4th, 2008 by Joe
December 4, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Thursday Morning Briefing
1. Tommy Tuberville and his parting of the ways with Auburn University – In the end yesterday Tommy Tuberville only had one option left open to him and that was to ask Auburn to bring this “evaluation” period to a swift end so he could get out on the recruiting trail and start working on finding a new offensive coordinator OR Auburn could go ahead and get to work in finding a new head football coach. After three days of “review” Tuberville was put into a position where he was not going to be able to hire a top-notch coordinator, because no coordinator worth his salt is going to take a job where the entire coaching staff could get fired in a year. Ty Willingham had a dreadful time finding a defensive coordinator last offseason, because all of the defensive coordinators he really wanted to hire had no interest in moving their family to Seattle when they knew it might just be a one-off. That is what this really came down to yesterday, that Auburn was doing so much damage to the prospects for the 2009 Auburn football team, that Tuberville had no choice but to call the Auburn administration on their “evaluation” and from where we sit, what looked like stall tactics by Auburn. Maybe Auburn was out hunting for a new football coach during this time, maybe not. It seems to us they could have found a new head football coach before this week to take over for Tuberville if that was the direction they were planning on moving in. Who knows reall what was going down on the Plains… What we do know is that Tuberville asked for a resolution to the mess and he got one….
Maybe Auburn was right to do a thorough “evaluation” of Tuberville on his and his staff’s performance over the past year, but to make the “evaluation” so public only weakened their head football coach to such a point, that they fatally wounded Tuberville’s chances going forward and we believed that when the Sun came up on Wednesday morning that it was either cut bait or fish time for both sides and that something had to be resolved yesterday one way or the other. At least they accomplished that…..
2. Nick Saban going off on administrators for firing football coaches – Those of us that work for a living, as opposed to people that are lucky enough to be coaching football for a living (which we don’t consider working because we would do it for subsistence wages) need to come out of their self-imposed shells from time-to-time to see what is going on in the real world. Nick Saban going off on administrators for firing head coaches because they expected more from those coaches has got to be the most hypocritical statement made in recent times in college football. Saban said in response to all of these coaches getting fired:
“There eventfully gets to be an expectation that no one is ever satisfied,” Saban said.
Uhhhhh, Nick your entire coaching career is built around not EVER BEING SATISFIED and in fact our entire country is built upon the work of men and women that are not satisfied with mediocrity and working below the level where they and their bosses believe they have the ability to work at. Phil Fulmer, Sly Croom, and Tommy Tuberville all performed in a subpar way in 2008 and they got fired for their subpar performance. WE HAVE A NEWS FLASH FOR ALL HEAD FOOTBALL COACHES: Out here in the real world we have to PERFORM EVERY SECOND, EVERY MINUTE, AND EVERY DAY to keep our jobs or we will find ourselves out on the street as well!
It seems that Nick Saban is always concerned about EXPECTATIONS and how they can get to high. How about this Nick, in the real world the EXPECTATIONS are to either perform by getting the sale, designing the software, completing the project in successful, cost efficient, and profitable ways or guess what….
WE ARE OUT OF A JOB AND OUR ASSES ARE ON THE STREET!
It seems that Nick Saban is always concerned about EXPECTATIONS....
3. Charlie Weis and the END of Notre Dame football – December 3, 2008 will be notable day in the history of college football, because that day will be remembered as the day that the “music died” in South Bend. What else can one make out of Notre Dame bringing back a coach that has done one of the worst coaching jobs in recent college football history and when they do that Notre Dame also makes it very clear that they now have an institutional policy of treating “white” head football coaches one way, and the black football coach they recently employed another way. Let’s just make this very clear. Notre Dame in our opinion is now in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at worse and is nothing more than the average executives in corporate American that discriminates in their hiring practices at best, and for Notre Dame to have put themselves in such a position is beyond the pale. Yes, not only is Notre Dame football dead with the retaining of Charlie Weis, Notre Dame as an institution that stands for anything that is moral or right is DEAD as well.
R.I.P. Notre Dame Football – 1887 to December 3, 2008....
Finally, one of the greatest things about living in the San Francisco Bay area is the sheer amount of brainpower and talent that is everywhere you look. Some of that brainpower ends up doing incredible things with their lives and not that long ago we saw one of our favorite San Francisco people just walking towards of down the sidewalk, the Great George Lucas.
One of the great spots in San Francisco is the Presidio of San Francisco which is a former US Army base that has now been turned over to a trust to be managed by local San Francisco people in the Bay area and on the Presidio George Lucas recently renovated some old Army buildings and built some new buildings to house his Lucas Arts division. Several of head over to the Presidio......
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Tommy Tuberville Fired at Auburn - Top Candidates to Replace TubervillePosted on December 3rd, 2008 by Joe
The surprising news out of Auburn is that Tommy Tuberville is done on The Plains. Wow! We are surprised and not surprised at the same time and now Auburn must replace a man that has won a lot of football games at Auburn and find a coach that is not afraid to take on Nick Saban and the juggernaut Saban is building in Tuscaloosa. Also, don’t forget how tough the SEC is and will be for the next dozen years…. Yes, this is a good job, but this is a very tough job….
Who are the leading candidates to replace Tuberville at Auburn?..... |
CHS Thursday Morning Briefing - Tuberville and his “Dance” with Auburn - Charlie Weis coming back? That makes sense! NOT! - BCS Boys in DEEP Trouble - The Eagles!Posted on December 3rd, 2008 by Joe
December 3, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Wednesday Morning Briefing
1. Tommy Tuberville played Auburn very well after last season and now Tubbs is getting a taste of his own medicine – After Tommy Tuberville ran the streak over Alabama to six games last fall Tommy was a very hard man to find as Auburn waited for Tubbs to finish his duck hunting trip and to find out if one of the other programs out there (Texas A&M and Arkansas) would be willing to pay Tuberville’s big buyout to get him as their head coach. That little dance last year went on for about a week, with Tommy having great fun sticking it to some of the folks at Auburn (in some people’s minds rightly after the way Tuberville was treated a few years back by some people behind the scenes at AU) and now we are about to enter Day 4 of the folks in power at Auburn making sure that Tuberville knows that he works for Auburn not the other way around!
Will Tuberville be back for 2009? A better question is.....
2. Charlie Weis back for a Fifth Year? IF that is true, at least Notre Dame is consistent. It consistently treats white head football coaches one way and a recent black football coach at Notre Dame another way. Bravo to Notre Dame for being CONSISTENT! - There are several reports out of South Bend and Chicago this morning that have said that Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick has informed Charlie Weis that he will return for another year with the Irish. We are guessing that AD Swarbrick has come to the realization that the earth continues to turn and the Sun comes up and sets everyday, whether Notre Dame is winning football games or not. Swarbrick’s very IGNORANT statement after what was nothing less than a debacle by Notre Dame in the Coliseum last Saturday night against USC, that he and Weis would meet “a week from Monday for an already scheduled meeting to review the season” just shows the complete misunderstanding that Swarbrick has about the way the world works in the twenty-first century. Uhhhhh, Jack, when the Notre Dame football team gets its ass handed to it on national television, and in what were here at Coaches Hot Seat believe to be the worst coached football team in Division I-A in Notre Dame, the AD at Notre Dame cannot the world that it will be over a week until the issue is resolved on whether Charlie Weis will back for 2009. Let’s just make this clear, the Notre Dame football team that we saw in person at the LA Coliseum last Saturday night, was the worst coached team we have seen in years in I-A football. Particularly bad for Charlie Weis, the Irish offense that played against USC WAS THE WORST OFFENSE WE HAVE SEEN in I-A football since we first turned on the TV set and start attending college football games in the mid-1970s! Yes, it was that bad! On top of the Irish looking like the worst coached team in college football, the Notre Dame sideline during the USC game was like a train wreck combined with a tornado. In other words, TOTAL CHAOS!
Yes, Notre Dame looks to us to be one of the worst coached teams in college football in years and let’s just take a quick look at what Notre Dame accomplished or rather didn’t accomplish in 2008....
3. Bud Kennedy in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram this morning on Obama, Biden and how they completely understand the BCS – Bud Kennedy in the Star-Telegram has a brilliant column out this morning pointing out on how that both President-Elect Obama and Vice-President Biden have expressed concerns about the BCS and in fact then Senator Biden said in 2003 when he has the BCS Boys in front of his Judiciary Committee:
“Back in 2003, when college presidents were dragged before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden said the Bowl Championship Series looks “rigged.”
He even called the BCS “un-American.””
Bud Kennedy goes on in his column….
After President-Elect Obama’s Inauguration, the Coaches Hot Seat Boys will be headed down to the great state of Florida for some R&R, hitting the beat, and some golf, but we will also being catching a concert, or maybe two concerts of the GREAT BAND, THE EAGLES, who will be cranking their Hell Freezes Over tour back up in January! As everyone knows, The Eagles are THE Great California Rock ‘n Roll band and to that point here is some music from The Eagles. Enjoy!...
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Coaching Changes Analysis - Lane Kiffin, Tennessee - Being TherePosted on December 2nd, 2008 by Joe
Coaching Changes Analysis – Lane Kiffin, Tennessee
We here at Coaches Hot Seat are going to evaluate every coaching change this season, and in addition to our Commentary we are also going to have two ratings on the coaching changes. The first one is our Quality of the New Hire rating which is based on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being an “Unmitigated Disaster” and 10 being a “Home Run”! Our second rating is the Opposing Coaches in the school’s conference on how they feel about the new hire and the thought of coaching and recruiting against the new coach. The Opposing Coaches ratings will break down as:
Loving It! - Not good for the hiring school Doesn’t Matter - Neutral for the hiring school Damn! - Great for the hiring school
And off we go….
Tennessee Fired: Phil Fulmer Hired: Lane Kiffin
Commentary In 1962 then Edward Kennedy ran in a Senate race in Massachusetts to fill the seat vacated by his brother when John F. Kennedy was elected to the Presidency. In this race Ted Kennedy was barely old enough, 30 years of age, to hold a Senate seat and up until Kennedy ran for this seat he did very little in his life that would qualify him to serve in the United States Senate. In the campaign debates against the Republican, George Cabot Lodge, Mr. Lodge pointed out that if Ted Kennedy’s last name was Smith, it would be laughable that anyone would vote for him to become a US Senator. Mr. Lodge’s pleas fell on deaf ears though and Ted Kennedy won on the slogan “I can do more for Massachusetts.” Ted Kennedy’s election to the US Senate in 1962and other similar circumstances have come to mind in recent days as Lane Kiffin’s name floated to top of Tennessee’s head coaching list and when he was named the head football coach at UT yesterday. Let’s just be very honest here…..If Lane Kiffin’s last name was Smith, there is not a chance in Hades that he is the head football coach at the University of Tennessee today.....
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CHS Post Week 14 Rankings - BCS “Every game in the regular season counts!” Really? - Lane Kiffin and his Daddy & Phil Fulmer laughing hysterically!Posted on December 1st, 2008 by Joe
On an incredibly beautiful Sunday afternoon in the SF Bay area many Coaches Hot Seat members gathered at Coaches Hot Seat Central to toss the football around, eat some very good pizza, watch some NFL football, and to watch the Bogus BCS Rankings come in…. Watching these Bogus BCS Rankings is becoming rather entertaining, because what could be better than seeing how the Bogus BCS computers are ranking these teams and when the final Bogus BCS crapola was finally spit out…..Woe and Behold! All these incredibly misguided folks that prop up the BCS (you folks in the media propping up the BCS are going to be quite stunned next year when you found out just how much you have been played, like a .04 cent fiddle…) always scream that “every game counts” and that the “regular season is a playoff” and that is why we really don’t need a postseason playoff tournament. Hmmmmmmm, let’s see how the Bogus BCS Rankings ranked two teams THAT DID PLAY EACH OTHER IN REGULAR SEASON….Hmmmmmmm, didn’t Texas beat Oklahoma in the regular season, thus ensuring the “the regular season is playoff folks so every game counts” that Texas WOULD BE RANKED AHEAD OF Oklahoma. NOT! Can you say the “regular season is a playoff” argument IS NOW DEAD AND BURIED FOREVER!
What a laugh these Bogus BCS Rankings are and what an incredibly cruel joke the BCS is ON THE GAME OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Why is it on every level of football, Pee Wee, Junior High, High School, and the lower divisions of college football, that there is a postseason championship tournament that involves teams playing up to 16 games in the season for the final two teams, EXCEPT IN I-A FOOTBALL? Why is that? Why is it that an AMERICAN system where a championship is WON ON THE FIELD OF PLAY using a postseason playoff tournament is used, but not in I-A football. Can you say that I-A football is run by SOME OF THE MOST GREEDY AND POWER HUNGRY BASTARDS ON THE PLANET EARTH. Why, yes we can, and that is the reason I-A football has the Bogus BCS! Because of the, see above, Boys… They, the BCS Boys, believe they are above the game of college football and they DO NOT GIVE A....
Oklahoma over Texas in the BCS Rankings? – We thought that the regular season “was the playoff?” Guess not, as Texas BEAT Oklahoma in the Bogus BCS “the regular season is the playoff” scenario, which if it was true, Texas would be ranked higher than Oklahoma in the Bogus BCS Rankings…. NOT! Just imagine that if the Big 12 and the SEC did not have conference championship games and the Bogus BCS Rankings that came out yesterday were the final rankings….. Alabama would play Oklahoma in the title game....
Lane Kiffin to Tennessee – A big topic of discussion at Coaches Hot Seat Central on Sunday, besides the Bogus BCS, was Lane Kiffin getting hired to be THE HEAD FOOTBALL COACH at the University of Tennessee. In the press release announcing the hiring of Lane Kiffin, Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton said:
“Over the past few weeks, we have been on the road meeting with prospective coaches and talking to some of football’s most influential and knowledgeable players and coaches about the future of the Tennessee football program,” UT Athletic Director Mike Hamilton said in a statement. “We have had unbelievable interest from great coaches. When it was all said and done, we felt like Lane Kiffin was a perfect fit for Tennessee. He’s energetic, charismatic, consumed with recruiting and has had a lifelong love affair with football.”
OK… So Lane Kiffin’s main attributes for the Tennessee head coaching job are: He’s energetic, charismatic, consumed with recruiting and has had a lifelong love affair with football.”
What? Hell that describes about 1 million college football fans across America and EVERYONE here at Coaches Hot Seat....
OK, enough with the Bogus BCS “every game counts in the regular season” and the Lane Kiffin “You have got to be F _ _ _ ING kidding me” out of the way, and let’s get to the Top 10 Coaches on the Post Week 14 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:
The most surprising thing about the Post Week 14 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings? No change in the Top 8 Spots!
1. Charlie Weis, Notre Dame – In his FORTY-NINTH game at the University of Notre Dame Charlie Weis’ Irish football team looked almost like they had never been coached. Several Coaches Hot Seat members were in the LA Coliseum Saturday night and we shared a field pass and all of us got a good look at the Notre Dame sideline and here is what we think of the Notre Dame coaches and the Notre Dame sideline during the USC game and our opinion is of the ND sideline…
THE DUMB LEADING THE CONFUSED AND EVERYONE ELSE DOESN’T SEEM TO KNOW THEY ARE INOLVED IN A FOOTBALL GAME…
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CHS Sunday Briefing: Churchill - National Semi-Final? “NOT SO FAST! - Charlie, Charlie (Weis) - Sly Croom - MAC Openings - Tuberville - FulmerPosted on November 30th, 2008 by Joe
February 30, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Briefing
First, we would be remiss if we did not recognize that today is the birthday of one of the great leaders of the past century, Winston Churchill. One can only wonder what our world would look like today if not for the leadership of Churchill during the darkest days of when Germany had established dominance across the continent of Europe and were attacking Great Britain from the air. Winston Churchill had such an incredible life and had so many personal and professional ups and downs that we can all learn much from what was one of the great leaders in the history of Western civilization. One of our favorite quotes from Sir Winston Leonard Churchill is….
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill, born November 30, 1874 – died January 24, 1965.
One wonders how all of the players on all these college football teams played so hard in the past week when many of them have no chance to be a part of the BCS, because it seems that every IGNORNANT person on the North American continent gives credit to the BCS for everything from exciting college football games to the stock market going up last week. Earth to IGNORNANT FOLKS out here, long before Roy Kramer dreamed up way for the BCS Boys to keep the postseason money away from the NCAA, college football players played hard and they played hard this week, BCS or no BCS. Being able to hold that idea in your head, that the BCS is nothing more than a way for the BCS Boys to keep the postseason money away from the NCAA and also a system set-up for a bunch of commentators to talk, is the minimum requirement for being a US citizen! Test in a week on the above….
1. The SEC Championship Game is a National Semi-Final Game? NOT SO FAST MY FRIENDS! - Oh, the media and the BCS Boys try so hard to prop up the Bogus BCS, and they go to such great lengths to try and justify what is nothing less than the greatest fraud this side of Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone’s Vault adventure, but as we here at Coaches Hot Seat take a look at the last week’s Bogus BCS Rankings we see….
1. Alabama 2. Texas 3. Oklahoma 4. Florida
OK, let’s assume that the mysterious buffoons in the Harris Poll, many who didn’t get to see more than 1 game this weekend and then the Coaches Poll, and those damn computers (Computers are used to help decide a national championship in football? Only a MORON OF A HIGH ORDER could defend that, and all of these ex-football players working as commentators should be ashamed for defending such a stupid idea…) will probably come out with the following Bogus BCS Rankings later today…
1. Alabama 2. Oklahoma 3. Texas 4. Florida
OK, so Alabama will be an underdog to Florida (Bama will be about an 8 point underdog to the Gators we are guessing) in the SEC Championship Game and what if Florida beats Alabama by a field goal in the fourth quarter. Then, what if Oklahoma beats Missouri by a touchdown......
2. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie that was just damn pitiful against the Trojans – As Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts ma’am.” The problem for Charlie Weis is that the FACTS tell a very damning story…
Charlie Weis (2005 – 2008) 28 – 21 (.571)
OK, the overall record at Notre Dame makes Charlie worthy of firing by itself, but let’s go to the boxscore from Saturday night’s game against USC. Remember this was GAME 49 for Charlie Weis at Notre Dame. GAME # 49!
Notre Dame stats vs. USC
First Downs 4 Total Yards 91 Passing Yards 41 Rushing Yards 50
Score: USC – 38 Notre Dame – 3
Remember USC was GAME NUMBER 49...
3. Sly Croom Resignation – We can certainly say that we did not see Sly Croom resigning from Mississippi State yesterday. Yes, Sly was on the Hot Seat and he certainly was going to be under pressure entering the ’09 season, but we really did not expect for Mississippi State to move to fire Croom. Certainly, there cannot be anyone that thinks that a guy that played for Paul “Bear’ Bryant is the type of person that is going to “quit” at anything....
4. MAC conference job openings – With the firings of Montgomery at Miami (OH) and Brandon at Bowling Green the MAC conference now has 4 jobs openings counting Toledo and Eastern Michigan. We believe that these job openings just point to how the top teams....
5. Tommy Tuberville living in a New World (Nick Saban’s World) – In 2007 Tuberville and the Auburn Tigers handled Alabama pretty easily in the Iron Bowl winning 17-10, but only a year later Tommy’s football team got blasted by the Tide 36-0 and never has there been a quicker and larger turning of the tables in an in-state rivalry in the history of college football than Saban’s flipping....
6. Phil Fulmer coaching career at Tennessee – We certainly wish Phil Fulmer Good Luck as he moves into his post-UT life and we note that as Fulmer departs the head coaching job with the Vols that he is still ranked No. 10 in the Winningest Active Coaches Rankings with an overall record at Tennessee of 152 – 52 (.745). With 2 SEC titles in 17 years at Tennessee, the biggest problem for Fulmer was that his last SEC title was 10 years ago in 1998......
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CHS Saturday GameDay Briefing - 3 Teams 12-0 but not in Secret Club - Ignornant People - Les Miles - Bo Pelini - Dan Hawkins - Lane Kiffin?Posted on November 29th, 2008 by Joe
November 29, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Saturday GameDay Briefing
We have 3 undefeated teams that are not in the secret BCS club, Utah, Boise State, and Ball State and guess what the people that are really behind the bowls are interested in? – Here we sit almost at the end of the regular season and there are now 3 different teams that have undefeated regular seasons up on the board not in the BCS’s precious little club, Utah 12-0, Boise State 12-0, Ball State 12-0, and what are the folks down in Miami that are thinking about the Orange Bowl and the Bogus national title game worried about? Here is a quote from a story in the Miami Herald by Douglas Hanks:
“A slumping tourism market will likely win the Seminoles some new fans among South Florida’s hotels Saturday afternoon.
Should the University of Florida team be upset by Florida State, it could cost the Gators a slot in the BCS national championship game being held in Dolphin Stadium on Jan. 8.
That would probably be good news for South Florida hotels, given the large number of local Gator fans who could retire to their own beds should their team play in the BCS bowl.
”Personally, I’d like to see Texas or Texas Tech,” said John Webb, senior vice president for sales at the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau. “If Alabama won and played either Texas or Texas Tech — or Oklahoma — that would be a tourism dream.”
The intricacies of the college football pecking order have combined with a gloomy tourism outlook to make this weekend of big games particularly important for local hotels.
Victories by teams with passionate and faraway fan bases could mean a bookings windfall in January.”
Hotel room and tourism! That is what the BCS is about, not about crowning a legitimate national champion in college football, but about hotel rooms and filling restaurant tables. How pitiful. Those of us that are either not ignorant or are not feeding at the trough of the BCS have understood this essential truth for years, mainly because we have attended many of these bogus bowl games which are little more than meaningless exhibition games, except for the fraudulent title game, which is, A FRAUDULENT TITLE GAME.
If you really want to understand the ignorance of the people behind the BCS that care more about filling up hotel rooms than the players, the coaches, the schools, and the fans, if these morons at these bowl sites could see past next Tuesday they would understand that a postseason tournament in college football would hold games at these very same stadiums and would actually stage games that meant something because all of the teams in the tournament would be playing for a national title.
In a 16-team postseason college football tournament the First Round games would be played at the home field of the higher seeded team and then the final 8 teams/4 games would be played at a regional site and then the Final Four/2 games would be played at one city/site and then the National Title Game would be played at one site much like a BCS bowl game is now. Fans of the teams in the tournament would travel in droves to these games, because these games would actually MEAN SOMETHING, instead of all of these very silly and very stupid bowl games that do nothing more than fill TV time for ESPN in the deadest part of the year’s sports schedule. NEVER FORGET:
The BCS is not about determining a national champion….
THE BCS IS ABOUT SELLING HOTEL ROOMS!
Lane Kiffin hired at Tennessee – We will have a lot more to say about Lane Kiffin when he is officially hired at Tennessee on Monday, but just the idea of Tennessee reaching so far down the coaching ranks to hire a guy that would probably not be on Utah State, San Diego State, New Mexico, Wyoming, Toledo, Eastern Michigan, and Syracuse’s list of legitimate candidates for a new head coach should tell you all that you need to know about Lane Kiffin getting hired at Tennessee. A few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat know a few Oakland Raiders’ players and we are thinking about telling a few stories about Kiffin’s tenure at Oakland, but doing so may make Tennessee’s new hire look so dumb that they might change their mind, so we are still considering those stories. Of course, the Raiders is a dysfunctional organization and Lane walked into a disaster in Oakland, but with his Dad being in the League so long we have to believe that Kiffin knew exactly what he was getting into and everyone tells us that it went south with Davis and the Raiders organization pretty quickly. Lane Kiffin has a very unique personality and although we have never had a problem with Kiffin, he strikes us as someone that as Barry Switzer says…
“Is born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
By any measure Lane Kiffin is not qualified to be the head football coach at the University of Tennessee, and by any measure he is only marginally qualified to be the head football coach at San Diego State. That should tell everyone, including everyone at Tennessee a lot…
Since we do trade in the firing and hiring of college football coaches here at Coaches Hot Seat, we do think about coaches that would have the ability to move up in the coaching profession from their current head and assistant coaches’ positions and to that point we have a large board up on the wall here at Coaches Hot Seat Central where we list the head and assistant coaches that we believe are most ready and qualified to move up to “Major” and “Minor” head coaching jobs and we rank those coaches from 1 on down until we get to the last coach we believe is ready for the “Major” and “Minor” coaching jobs. We consider Tennessee a “Major” head coaching job, as is Clemson, Syracuse and Washington in our minds, and we believe there are approximately 40 to 45 “Major” head coaching jobs in I-A football today . To that point there is a large board on the wall here that has as its title…
Head and Assistant Coaches Ready to Move Up to “Major” Head Coaching Jobs
…and here are those coaches starting from the No. 1 spot in order from 1 to 100 that we believe are ready to move to “Major” Head Coaching Jobs
1. Chris Peterson, Boise State 2. Mike Leach, Texas Tech 3. Gary Patterson, TCU 4. Bronco Mendenhall, BYU 5. Kyle Whittingham, Utah 6. Norm Chow, UCLA OC 7. Troy Calhoun, Air Force 8. Greg Schiano, Rutgers 9. Pat Hill, Fresno State 10. Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern 11. Todd Graham, Tulsa 12. Dave Christensen, Missouri OC 13. Will Muschamp, Texas, DC 14. Bud Foster, Virginia Tech, DC 15. Brent Venables, Oklahoma DC 16. Skip Holtz, East Carolina 16. Brady Hoke, Ball State 17. Butch Jones, Central Michigan 18. Turner Gill, Buffalo 19. Mike Locksley, Illinois OC 20. David Bailiff, Rice
21 – 74. Other Head and Assistant Coaches
75. Mike Bobo, Georgia OC 76. Tyrone Nix, Ole Miss DC 77. Doc Holliday, West Virginia asst. 78. Brock Spack, Purdue OC.....
Where is Lane Kiffin?
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CHS Friday Morning Briefing - Running up the score - What if we had 16-team Playoff? - Mike Sherman on the HOT SEAT - Huey Lewis and The NewsPosted on November 28th, 2008 by Joe
February 28, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Friday Morning Briefing
1. Mack Brown and Texas running up the score on A&M because the BCS MAKES THEM DO IT – Yes, this is a wonderful system in the BCS where you have a good man like Mack Brown that is forced to leave his Longhorn starters late into the game against A&M so that plenty of “style points” can be garnered for the voters. Yes, that makes a lot of sense, encouraging unsportsmanlike actions by head football coaches, while the NCAA is running commercials about how student-athletes and fans should act both during games and off the field as well. Has there ever been so much hypocrisy in any sport in the history of our country than the bizarre negatives machinations that BCS causes on a yearly basis? No, and these BCS Boys, and Myles Brand for that matter because he has not had the guts to stand up and really call out the conference commissioners, bowl executives, and college presidents on the BCS, must really be squirming in their chairs as they sit a home and watch Texas running up the score to earn “style points”…….. Oh, that’s right the BCS Boys care about NOTHING, BUT
$ $ $ COUNTING MONEY AND HOLDING POWER! $ $ $
In the end, it will be the BCS Boys that will be squirming though, because they will go under oath on their actions in the past 15 or so to restrict competition in the United States of America and the BCS Boys should not think that “everyone” that has worked within the BCS structure is willing to carry water for their fraudulent system. Far from it, and the BCS Boys should be very, and we mean, very concerned about conversations they have had amongst themselves to restrict competition in the United States, and we are including college presidents as one’s that should be damn worried about their past comments and actions on what we believe to be an illegal cartel in the BCS that was explicitly set-up to restrict competition under what the BCS Boys label and call “BCS” and “non-BCS.” Those are THEIR labels, and those labels will be their undoing. It is not legal to restrict competition in the United States and it is going to be great fun to get these BCS Boys under oath from our side, and to hopefully see the BCS Boys testifying before federal grand juries as well on the fraudulent system.....
2. What if we had a 16-team postseason tournament to determine a legitimate national champion in football – Yes, what if, because the current system is an embarrassment to the game of college football and to our country, but what if indeed?
Coaches Hot Seat has been running a simulation this season of what a College Football National Championship Tournament would look like, which you can find a link to here:
College Football National Championship Tournament
To set up the First Round games in this tournament we utilize the Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll which helps us to determine which 7 “At-Large” teams will join the 9 conference champions in the postseason tournament.
Here is the Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll as of November 23, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll November 23, 2008
1. Alabama* 2. Texas* 3. Florida# 4. Oklahoma# 5. USC# 6. Utah* 7. Penn State* 8. Boise State# 9. Texas Tech# 10. Oklahoma State# 11. Missouri# 12. Ohio State 13. Georgia 14. Ball State* 15. TCU 16. Cincinnati* 17. BYU 18. Boston College* 19. Oregon State* 20. Virginia Tech
*Projected Conf. Champs #At-Large Teams
Other Conference Champs C-USA/SB: Houston*
As one can see from the Coaches Hot Seat Power Playoff Poll we give automatic berths into the tournament for the 9 conference champions (we combine a couple of the conferences or have them play each other in a championship game) and then the next 7 teams in the poll fill out the 16-team field with “At-Large” berths. Notice from the above poll that not only would the Big Ten Champion Penn State have an automatic seed into the tournament and a chance to play for the national title, but also Ohio State is on the verge of being an “At-Large” team as well with a couple of the teams above them more than likely losing games later this season. Yes, that’s right if a 16-team tournament was in place this season, the Big Ten would have two teams in that tournament with an opportunity to play for and win a national title. What a difference a 16-team postseason tournament is to the Bogus BCS which is little more than a series of MEANINGLESS EXHIBITON GAMES followed by a BOGUS BCS TITLE GAME......
3. Texas A&M’s Mike Sherman is now on the clock – After getting blasted by the Texas Longhorns, a team that Texas A&M had beaten the last two years, Mike Sherman is about to come face-to-face with the fact that he is now coaching for his job in the next year. Yes, 365 days, or however many days it is until the Texas – Texas A&M game in College Station in 2009, that is the window that Mike Sherman has to work in to remain employed as the head coach of the Aggies. Mike Sherman took over a Texas A&M football program that under Dennis Franchione had gone 9-4 and 7-5 in ’06 and ’07 and promptly turned them in a 4-8 team in ’08. That makes no sense, and there is no excuse for anyone, including any random person selected off any street in America, to lose 8 games as the head coach at Texas A&M, especially when that head coach is being paid $1.8 million dollars a year to coach this Aggie football team. Yes, that is right, any random person selected off any street in America could have led the Aggies to 4 wins in 2008, and that raises the question….
Just what in the hell has Mike Sherman been doing in the last year?
A better question is…..
What the hell was Texas A&M AD thinking in hiring Mike Sherman in the first place?
Bill Byrne with his hiring of Mike Sherman has moved the Texas A&M football program from average to a little above average status in the Big 12, to a “total disaster” and that Sherman was only able to win 4 games.....
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CHS Thanksgiving Briefing - The Desolate Wilderness - Lane Kiffin to Tennessee? Has to be a Joke! - What was Muschamp thinking? - Charlie Weis Buyout - Getting out There…Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Joe
November 27, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Thanksgiving Day Briefing
1. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorials on Thanksgiving and our Country - For those of us that have worked in the world of business for most of our lives the daily reading of the Wall Street Journal, for decades with the actual paper but online in recent years, is as constant to us as the Sun coming up every morning. No, it is not possible to “love” an inanimate object such as a newspaper, but for those of that value the information and depth of business intelligence that the Wall Street Journal provides, the WSJ is something we would rather not live without. We have all exchanged stories about the different and remote places where we have come across the Wall Street Journal, because the newspaper truly does reach into every corner of the globe. Now with the Wall Street Journal completely online at WSJ.com the paper is never further away than our laptop and an Internet connection, but it was interesting back in the day to turn a corner in a small town in Europe or Asia and find the Wall Street Journal on a newspaper rack. Yes, commerce and business goes on everywhere.
Perhaps the wildest story about “finding” a Wall Street Journal was when one of was in the US Navy on an USS ship way out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the way to the Mediterranean/Middle East for deployment when the ship rendezvoused with an oil tanker to take on fuel. Anyone that has not seen or experienced a US naval ship pulling alongside a refueling tanker in the middle of an ocean, throwing the lines over, hauling over the fuel and supply lines, and then both ships sailing parallel for an hour or so to onload the fuel and supplies if necessary, has missed quite an experience. On a beautiful night in the very dark Atlantic, where everything is so dark and the stars look like you could reach out and touch them, as we were standing out on the bridge wing monitoring the refueling and resupply operation a light message came over that the captain of the refueling supply tanker wondered if the captain of our ship wanted the newspapers that they had picked up recently in Spain and had already read. The message went back to send the newspapers over and then on the supply line between the two ships came a satchel full of newspapers. The bag was hauled down off the line and opened, and inside were the last two weeks worth of the Wall Street Journal. That got a good laugh and as always the WSJ was an entertaining read between bridge and CIC watches, which held several of us over until the ship stopped just outside the Suez Canal for a few hours to onload an engine part when another couple of days of WSJ were procured from a local newsstand, and on we went….
In recent years Rupert Murdoch has begun to put his unique stamp on the Wall Street Journal and although WSJ is not what it once was, it is still one hell of a newspaper and an invaluable resource to those of that go to battle in the world of commerce and business each day. One of the greatest things about the Wall Street Journal is its editorial page where the large and important arguments and issues of the day in business, politics, and sometimes life are debated amongst the people that give a damn enough to lay their opinion and view on the line for everyone else to see. Since 1961 the Wall Street Journal editorial page has printed a couple of editorials that address the importance of Thanksgiving and the challenges that faced the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony and the eternal optimism out in the land that is within our heart and soul and really is America and the thing that makes our Republic get up and go…
The first Wall Street Journal Editorial is…
“Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:
So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.
When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love…”
Read the rest of The Desolate Wilderness….
The second Wall Street Journal Editorial is below and this perhaps is our favorite editorial each year because it sums up the magnificence of our country….
“But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere — in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.
We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.
And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.”
Read the rest of And the Fair Land…
Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for keeping us informed and often entertained going on four decades now. http://www.wsj.com/
2. Lane Kiffin to Tennessee? – Several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat reacted with astonishment when stories started breaking out of Knoxville on Tuesday and Wednesday that Tennessee had hired Lane Kiffin to replace Phil Fulmer as the head coach of the Vols. We were astonished by these stories on Kiffin to Tennessee, because we just could not believe that the folks making the hiring and firing decisions in Knoxville could possibly be so foolish to put a man in head coaching job at Tennessee that has done nothing in his coaching career to deserve such a job. We agree completely with the sentiments of Ron Higgins on Lane Kiffin, a columnist for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, in a column he wrote for today’s paper…
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CHS Pre-Thanksgiving Briefing - Ball State, MAC Champion and the Bogus BCS - Charlie Weis MUST BE Fired, Candidates for Notre Dame JobPosted on November 26th, 2008 by Joe
November 26, 2008
Coaches Hot Seat Pre-Thanksgiving Briefing
Western Michigan and Ball State Game and the MAC Champion – Anyone that took the time last night to watch a very entertaining game between MAC teams Western Michigan and Ball State found two very well coached teams that are playing football at a very high level. What were MAC teams vs. the Big Ten this year? 4-0. Yet, it is the Big Ten champion that gets the automatic bid into the Rose Bowl, which is nothing more than a meaningless exhibition game that includes a parade and queen. What does a parade and a queen have to do with the game of college football? Nothing, and that is why the Rose Bowl is nothing more than a way to fill TV time for two teams to play in a meaningless exhibition game AFTER they have had a 30+ day layoff from their last game. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. It makes sense if a group of buffoons are making the decisions that is….
That was a great MAC game last night and it sets up what should be a terrific MAC Championship Game between undefeated Ball State coached by Brady Hoke and a very good Buffalo football team coached by Turner Gill. That the MAC conference teams and champion are treated like “second-class” citizens by being classified as “non-BCS” by the BCS Buffoons points to the absolute absurdity and what will be in the end a system that breaks US laws (in our opinion by) illegally restricting competition in the United States. We didn’t catch the name of the color analyst on last night game W. Michigan – Ball State game, but he must have been raised by socialists or communists because he kept saying that the MAC champion, and Utah, Boise State, and any other “non-BCS” team that was mentioned by the play-by-play commentator that they did not “deserve” to play for the national title. One must really wonder why that color analyst buffoon or the BCS Buffoons have a right to say who does and who does not have a right to play for a national title, when all of these team play in the same Division I-A. In the end, once we get these BCS Boys under oath and they have to answer very specific questions about what they were discussing on specific days, with specific people and how those conversations involved denying some I-A teams the right to be a member of their little secret society called the BCS, the BCS Boys will in our opinion be put in an impossible situation relative to the laws on competition in our country. We also remind the BCS Boys that not only in our opinion have they set up an illegal system with the BCS that violates laws pertaining to competition in the United States, but that there are also a lot of minorities playing on current “non-BCS” teams and that have played on “non-BCS” teams in the past and we certainly hope the BCS Boys have not also violated anyone’s civil rights in this country. If it does get to that, that the BCS Boys have set-up bogus system that violates US laws pertaining to competition (Sherman Antitrust Act another U.S. laws) AND they also have violated Civil Rights laws in the United States, then they will have opened themselves and the BCS schools they represent to massive amounts of liability. Yes, BCS Boys, all of these public statements you have made in the past 10 years bragging about restricting competition in the U.S. and how “non-BCS” teams have “their place” in college football, might just really come back to bite the BCS Boys in the ass. Keep laughing, BCS Boys, but the last thing you want is the Civil Rights division of the U.S. Justice Department on your ass, but it may just come down to that…. A lot more to come on this subject…
Charlie Weis in deep trouble at Notre Dame and the buyout is not as big as expected – With a report by Teddy Greenstein in the today’s Chicago Tribune that Charlie Weis’ buyout is much lower than many of us believed (many thought that Weis’ buyout was between $15 and $12 million, but now it seems it is only in the $4.5 million area) this new revelation really puts Weis in peril of losing his job. Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times also makes some great points about Charlie Weis and in story today when he quotes the Notre Dame senior class president as saying:
“When he came here our freshman year, with all of our blissful Notre Dame pride, we loved Charlie Weis,” said Joey Brown, Notre Dame senior class president. “But now I’d say he’s lost us.”
“It’s really hard for a Notre Dame student to ever say anything negative about the football team, it’s such a beloved part of our school,” Brown said. “But many of us agree, Charlie is just not the guy.”
Ouch! Now, there is a student Notre Dame can be proud of because he speaks truth to power and that truth is going to end Charlie Weis’ run in South Bend.
In our minds, there is probably nothing short of the Irish beating the USC Trojans in the Coliseum that could save Weis’ job, and we fully expect USC to be as motivated or more motivated in this game than they were against Ohio State earlier this year. Yes, USC will beat Notre Dame and we expect the people in power at Notre Dame to end the disaster that has been the Weis’ regime in South Bend and that brings up that question of who will be the next head football coach at Notre Dame. The next head coach of the Irish cannot be another mistake and they are going to need to hire a proven winner from the college game and from where we sit the following 6 coaches should be at the head of the line (alphabetical by last name).....
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If you want to get really pissed off.. - The 1958 Buffalo football team, the Tangerine Bowl, and the racists in OrlandoPosted on November 25th, 2008 by Joe
Watching this great MAC football game tonight between Western Michigan and Ball State we got to see this great piece that ESPN’s Outside the Lines did on the 1958 University of Buffalo football team and how they were told that the two black football players on their team would not be allowed to play in the ’58 Tangerine Bowl because the Orlando High School Association that had the lease to the stadium and had a policy that:
“….prohibited blacks and whites from playing together.”
What the Hell? If this story does not piss you off then you have never played a team sport and you are certainly not an American, because it is OUTRAGEOUS, even 50 years ago, for Americans to discriminate against someone else because of the color of the skin. ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS…. And, boy we would have loved to have been given 5 minutes with the folks that wrote and enforced this illegal discriminatory policy. These racists needed the “ultimate can of whup ass opened up on them…”
We applaud the 1958 Buffalo football team for standing up to these racists in Orlando by voting unanimously to not go to the Tangerine Bowl. Yes, those were/are real Americans on that Buffalo football team and we thank ESPN’s Outside the Lines for doing this story and bringing it to the attention of the public that would otherwise not have known about these evil racists that treated one group of humans one way and another group of humans as “second-class” citizens. Yes, this kind of racism is pure evil and anyone in America that would dare say that there are “second-class” citizens of any kind in our Republic, are evil. Evil must be defeated wherever it is found…and there are still some institutions in this country that treat some Americans and some college football teams and schools as “second-class” citizens… These folks that are practicing discrimination today are not better than the racists of 50 years ago….and they will be rooted out and exposed for what they really are….
Read this great story and see an accompanying video at the below link:
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Chris Ault calling out mediocrity of bowls - Absurdity of Penn State’s long lay off and the BCSPosted on November 25th, 2008 by Joe
We have always respected Nevada head coach Chris Ault for what he has accomplished at a very difficult place to build a winning football program, and Ault in his three different stints as head coach at Nevada has already put together a College Hall of Fame career and he continues to field very competitive football teams each year. Our respect for Coach Ault really went up a lot more in recent days as he has said the following about 6-6 teams playing in bowl games…. (Reno Gazette-Journal)
Coach Chris Ault said Monday that he has never been a fan of 6-6 teams going to bowl games and added he would likely recommend to athletic director Cary Groth that the team decline any bowl invitation if it is 6-6.
“I’ve said that since they started this (format in 2006),” said Ault, whose team was 6-6 last season and then played in the New Mexico Bowl, losing 23-0 to New Mexico. “I said the same thing last year. It rewards mediocrity.”
Beginning in 2006, when the FBS expanded to a 12-game schedule, the minimum requirement for bowl eligibility was a six-win season, seven for the few teams that play a 13-game schedule.
“What Coach (Ault) thinks makes a difference,” Groth said. “I happen to agree — I think there are too many bowl games. At the same time, we owe it to the institution to wait and see. If and when the opportunity comes, then we’ll make that decision.”
At least one Wolf Pack player said it’s hard to argue with Ault.
“Coach said he doesn’t think a team that is 6-6 deserves to go to a bowl, and I agree with him,” senior defensive tackle Mundrae Clifton said. “I would love to go to a bowl, but I understand where he’s coming from.”
Yes, that is a football coach that has his priorities in order, because the BCS Boys and the NCAA have built a postseason system that is not about rewarding high achievement, but rather celebrates mediocrity. How pitiful the college football postseason really is with coaches and players running around yelling “bowl eligible, bowl eligible” when all they have done is win 6 football games. How outrageous that college football has come to the point that mediocrity and doing nothing more than being average is rewarded with a postseason trip, but then again college football has one of the most evil and unfair systems in sports today in place with the fraudulent BCS.
Thank You, Coach Ault for standing up for what is supposed to be right about college football and for one of the reasons that our Republic was created in the first place. No, America is not supposed to be about mediocrity, and the BCS, the NCAA, and these bowls should be ashamed of themselves.
Penn State’s long layoff until the Rose Bowl
To really understand the absolute absurdity of the BCS, look no further |
No Voting! No Computers! No Panzis! No BCS! - An American Way to Win a National Title - Steve Perry and the great music of JourneyPosted on November 25th, 2008 by Joe
One doesn’t have to look around much to understand what an unbelievably un-American “thing” the BCS is, because there are commentators everywhere making outrageous comments about “style points” or “how the people vote in a poll” or “what the computers say” when talking about the monstrosity that is the BCS, but to really understand what an evil and incredibly unfair system the BCS is, just take a look at the title of the following story in today’s USA Today:
Texas may need style points in addition to win over Texas A&M, Kelly Whiteside, USA Today
Kelly Whiteside starts her story by writing, “Style points matter in college football this time of year…”
What? “Style points?” Is this really going on in American that we have a system in college football that is little more than a contest dreamed up by a bunch of Panzi’s that is nothing more than a beauty pageant? Is this actually happening that the game of football is governed by a bunch of Panzi’s that are afraid of real competition and a championship that is earned on the field of play? No, that is not America, but the nightmare and the evil that is the BCS does exist. Is the national championship in college football really going to be decided by “style points?” For the “PC” folks reading this, “style points” means running up the score in a very unsportsmanlike manner, but necessary manner with the way this very evil BCS system is set-up. Yes, this BCS system requires teams to run up the score on their opponents so they can pick up outrageous “style points” and all decent Americans (real Americans that is) know running up the score has no place in the great game of college football. But, the head coaches have no choice but to run up the score, because that is the Panzi system dreamed up by these greedy bastards, otherwise known as the BCS Boys. Do the BCS Boys care about this, that teams are forced to run up the score on their opponents in order to influence poll voters? Hell no, the BCS Boys care about only one thing…
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Bill Snyder Rehire at KSU = WORST decision in the history of college football - Another “white” coach at ND treated differently than WillinghamPosted on November 24th, 2008 by Joe
Sometimes things happen in life that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. The rehiring today of Bill Snyder at Kansas State is one of those things that doesn’t make any sense and in fact flies in face of the reality of the world that Kansas State football must live in today in the Big 12 conference.
Bill Snyder had a very nice head coaching career at Kansas State in his 17 years in Manhattan, winning one conference title and more than 10 games in 7 of those 17 seasons. What no one seems to realize at Kansas State today, including Bill Snyder, is that winning football games in the old Big 8, or even the old Big 12 is a much different animal than what Snyder will face when he puts a football team on the field next year. Now Bill Snyder and his Kansas State football team will have to stare down:
1. Bob Stoops and the Oklahoma Sooners at the top of their game
2. Mack Brown and his Texas Longhorns at the top of their game
3. Gary Pinkel and the Missouri Tigers at the top of their game
4. Mike Leach and Texas Tech at the top of their game
5. Bo Pelini about to put Nebraska football back on the map
6. Mike Gundy building a strong football program at Oklahoma State
7. Mark Mangino now with an established solid football program at Kansas
8. Art Briles poised to make Baylor a real player in the Big 12
9. Dan Hawkins working like crazy to build Colorado
10. Gene Chizik working overtime to build Iowa State
11. Mike Sherman doing who knows what at Texas A&M
Yes, that is what Bill Snyder is now facing as he again takes over the Kansas State football program and in our opinion the hiring of Bill Snyder will go down as one of the stupidest decisions in the history of college football, not just in the hiring of head football coaches, but in the entire history of college football.
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On another subject, on the developing Charlie Weis debacle at Notre Dame one of our Notre Dame graduate friends reminded us that Weis is not the only “white” head coach at Notre Dame that is being treated much differently than how the Irish treated Ty Willingham. Before Willingham, Bob Davie was the head coach at Notre Dame and at the end of Davie’s third year (He coached five years at Notre Dame) his record was…
Bob Davie at Notre Dame, 1997 – 1999
21 – 16 (.568)
Ty Willingham at Notre Dame, 2002 – 2004
21 – 15 (.583)
OK, so Bob Davie with a WORSE record than Ty Willingham after three years is given two more years at Notre Dame, but Willingham is shown the door. We are starting to see a trend developing here…..
So if Charlie Weis and his Irish lose to USC on Saturday, Weis’ record after four years at Notre Dame will be….
Charlie Weis at Notre Dame, 2005 – 2008
28 – 21 (.571)
….and if Weis is not fired after the USC game then we will have not one
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Post Week 13 CHS Rankings - Notre Dame has 1 policy for “white” coaches and 1 policy for “black” coaches? We shall see….Posted on November 24th, 2008 by Joe
Before we get the Post Week 13 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings we must first congratulate FSU football player Myron Rolle for being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship which would be an incredible achievement for a student studying 24 hours a day and focusing full-time on their studies, but for an active football player to win a Rhodes is truly an amazing achievement. No surprise here, but there are no Rhodes Scholars at Coaches Hot Seat, because we were way too busy hanging out at the beach, playing golf and snow skiing, attending keg parties and chasing women to have ever even put in an application for a Rhodes Scholarship, forget about winning one. No, there are no Rhodes scholars here, but we have run across and known a number of Rhodes scholars over the years and they all are very impressive human beings. Congratulations Myron Rolle and best of luck as you move towards this new and exciting part of your life. One recommendation from Coaches Hot Seat: If during your Rhodes scholarship studies you end up traveling through Europe we would encourage you to stay away from Monte Carlo and the French Riviera! There are way too many distractions in that part of the world for someone doing any kind of serious academic scholarship work (If you do mistakenly end up in Monte Carlo, have way too much to drink, make an ass of yourself at the blackjack tables at a Monte Carlo casino and get hauled away to the local pokey, just drop us an email from your Blackberry and we will get you in touch with a very good bail bondsman that has lots of friends on the local police force! Better yet, just stay away from Monte Carlo and the French Riviera!).....
1. Charlie Weis, Notre Dame – Can you say one of the worst losses in the history of Notre Dame football? Yes, that is what the Syracuse loss this past Saturday was, and a coach in Charlie Weis that is in his fourth season in South Bend has no business losing to such a woeful football team and that is why Weis is on the Hottest of the Hottest Seats as Week 14 dawns. What really interests us here at Coaches Hot Seat is that when we look at the win/loss numbers of Ty Willingham and Charlie Weis at Notre Dame it almost seems that the ND administration have one policy for “black” coaches and another policy for “white” coaches. Let’s go to the numbers:
Ty Willingham at Notre Dame, 2002 – 2004
21 – 15 (.583)
Charlie Weis at Notre Dame, 2005 – 2008
28 – 20 (.583)
OK, we wish someone would please explain the difference in the above numbers and why that Charlie Weis is not coaching the last game of the ’08 regular season against USC for his job! If Weis and the Irish do lose to USC that would put Weis’ record at…
28 – 21 (.571)
…and that is a WORSE record than what Ty Willingham put up at Notre Dame. What gives here, do the folks at Notre Dame hold black coaches to a higher standard than white coaches, because we certainly don’t remember Willingham’s last Notre Dame team in 2004 both playing such a very weak schedule and playing so poorly against very bad football teams like Syracuse.
Yes, the question that must be answered by the folks that make the hiring and firing decisions at Notre Dame is:
Do you have one hiring and firing policy for black coaches and another for white coaches? If you do not, then…
IF CHARLIE WEIS LOSES TO USC, HE MUST BE FIRED.
If Weis and the Irish do lose to the Trojans and Weis is retained then all bets are off for Notre Dame because it will have then set a very clear standard that it treats coaches of different races, DIFFERENTLY…
Yes, we will be watching the developments at Notre Dame very closely….
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Chuck Long Fired - What San Diego State should be looking for in a new HCPosted on November 23rd, 2008 by Joe
With word that Chuck Long at San Diego State and Joe Glenn at Wyoming had been let go this Sunday afternoon the coaching whirlybird is really flying now. By almost any measure that a prudent athletic director could possible use, Long and Glenn were not meeting the expectations of their respective schools and it its our opinion that both men had ample opportunity to prove that they could either move their football programs forward or not. Winning is not always paramount in the first couple of years after a new head coach is hired, but the entire football program must generally be moving forward all the time, because even if it standing still then it is getting passed. With Long and Glenn, they quickly found themselves coaching in a conference in the MWC that is now stacked with three teams at the top, Utah, BYU, and TCU that can play with anyone in the country, and if all the teams in the MWC do not accordingly raise their games they will really fall behind. San Diego State and Wyoming made the move to find new head coaches because their two football programs are not only not keeping up with the “Joneses” in the MWC, they were falling further behind every year.
With that being said, we do believe that both the San Diego State and the Wyoming football programs have the capability with the right head coach to be competitive every year in their conference, but that San Diego State does have some advantage over Wyoming due to its location and great year-round weather. We do believe that Wyoming is a very unique job that will require a very unique coach......
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Post Week 13 Winningest Active Coaches Ranking - Lot of these coaches will be around awhilePosted on November 23rd, 2008 by Joe
The Post Week 13 Winningest Active Coaches I-A Ranking has now been updated on the Coaches Hot Seat website and this has to be our favorite way to look at and judge coaches because it is flat-out no BS. The coach either won the game or lost the game and there is just no getting around that fact and it is very interesting to see that some of these coaches just have a knack of winning football games. If we could figure out what is inside those winning coaches and bottle it we could make a fortune, because never has the ability to lead a group of men and win games and titles been more rewarded in the history of man. OK, maybe the leaders of conquering Roman armies made more coin, but it couldn’t be much more because these head football coaches are making some serious money these days!
Post Week 13 Top 25 Winningest Active Coaches:
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“Coach in Waiting” Records So Far - 15 Coaches Facing MUST WIN Games in Week 13
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Joe
The conversation about the move by Texas to make Will Muschamp the “Coach in Waiting” behind Mack Brown at Texas is still garnering a lot of attention and conversation at Coaches Hot Seat and one of the dozens of points being made against the “Coach in Waiting” idea is the current record of schools since they moved to such a “Coach in Waiting Situation.” Let’s go to the record books:
Florida State – Bobby Bowden & Jimbo Fisher “Coach in Waiting”
2007 – 08 – 14-9 (.609)
Kentucky – Rich Brooks & Joker Phillips “Coach in Waiting”
2008 – 6-5 (.545)
Purdue – Joe Tiller & Danny Hope “Coach in Waiting”
2008 – 3-8 (.273)
Man! That is not good…. Now with Will Muschamp......