The Three Most Overated Coaches in College Football
This time of year you see a lot of coaching rankings and let’s be honest, most of them are crap. The person who put the list together appears to have an agenda or gives a coach too much credit for one or two years of success. I decided to buck the trend of picking the best coaches and instead focus on the the most over rated coaches in college football. After doing hours of exhaustive research, while drinking large quantities of Pabst Blue Ribbon, I came to the realization that there are three seriously over rated coaches.
#3 Kirk Ferentz: This guy gets mentioned routinely as a top 10 coach year after year despite his record. He has managed to average a whopping seven wins per year in his ten years strolling the sidelines in Iowa. He has three ten wins seasons at Iowa, but the last one was five years ago. I know it’s Iowa and that nobody wants to play there, but Charlie Weis has averaged more wins per year at Notre Dame without showing the slightest clue about how to coach. What do you have to do to get fired from a Midwest school?
#2 Nick Saban: Whoa there! Hear me out before you chuck a brick through my window Bama fans. You think Little Nicky is a top five coach? Hardly. I hear you saying “he’s Nick mfin’ Saban you dumb Georgia cracker!” Sure, he is Nick Saban. The Nick Saban who leaves after a lucky season or two. The Nick Saban who lost to University of Louisiana-Monroe. The Nick Saban who has averaged eight and a half wins per year while at MSU, LSU, and Bama, and the same Nick Saban who has managed to have three ten win seasons during those twelve years and win 40% of his bowl games. Wow. You take away the BCS championship he won at LSU and this guy is just slightly better than Mike Shula.
#1 Rich Rodriguez: Rich is fortunate to finally be number one at something after an average coaching career. Rich has managed to win an amazing 7.88 wins per year while facing the awesome competition in the Big East and Big Ten. Well then again maybe the Big Ten competition was too fierce for Rich. Rich has also managed to coach his teams up for the big bowl games and win less than half of them. I can see plenty of our UofM fans are taking off their UAW caps and scratching their bald heads. How did Michigan end up with this over hyped coach? Easy. Rich was coming off three straight ten win seasons and amazing the pundits with his innovative offense. Sadly, it wasn’t Rich’s offensive genius, but rather Pat White. Rich wasn’t able to change his brilliant offense to suit the players at Michigan. Instead he did what had worked at WVU with Pat White. He would call the play and Pat White would make it work, but at Michigan he has no Pat White.
So, who is a good coach? Guys like Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer who have averaged 11 wins per year. Coaches like Mack Brown, Mark Richt, Bob Stoops, and Jim Tressel who have ten win seasons 75% of the time. These guys just keep winning games.
Wouldn’t you think that Coach Carroll could be overrated as well then? Not saying that he ain’t but for all the Top recruiting class and they have how many NC? Charlie Weiss (same scenario) and they going to weaken their schedule each year and where are they are now?
Underrated coach:
1) Mack Brown
2) Turner Gill (call me bias but he did turn around 1-2 win/season football program and in a couple of year.. We are the MAC champions)
3) Bo Pelini (Nebraska has tradition but rare talent base like Urban, Mack, and Mark and still he turned the program around)
4) Bob Stoops could be toss-up but I consider how the program has gone to be amusing.. Now, he needs to win the BCS bowl games..
Thanks for comment. I agree with your list of underrated coaches except for Pelini. He might end up a great coach, but he hasn’t been there long enough to accurately judge him.
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