Worst move was JON. Probably worst hire in college football history
Worst coaching hire off-topic discussion
- Thread starter catcrazy
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Worst hire in college football history? Come on now. Let's look at some of the head coach hires, just in the Big Ten, in recent years. Was it worse than Tim Beckman or Lovie Smith at Illinois? Rich Rodriguez or Brady Hoke at Michigan? Darrell Hazell at Purdue? Kevin Wilson at Indiana? Bill Callahan, Mike Riley or Scott Frost at Nebraska?
C'mon Lou! Let us wallow in misery! It's fun!
I won’t say it’s the worst hire in CFB history… but hiring JON and then keeping him for 2 full seasons is probably worse than 90% of those hires.
Definitely worse than Hoke. Hoke inherited RichRod's trainwreck and won the Sugar Bowl in his first year. They're not building any statues to him in AA any time soon, but he did get to three bowl games in four years. JON took arguably the best defense in college football and turned it into a laughingstock. Hard to compare a coordinator hire to a HC hire, but one could make a strong case that it was a worse hire than any of the ones you named.
You have a point that JON might have been worse than Hoke. I can get on board with that. But there's just no way guys like Rich Rod, Beckman or Callahan were better hires than JON. JON was terrible, but if the NU offense just took care of the ball last year, they would have won a few more games. They turned it over 31 times, second-most in college football, and they scored less than 14 points per game, fourth-worst in college football. And to be clear: I'm not a JON apologist. He was a disaster and deserved the axe, regardless. But, to me, there's not a chance he's worse than those guys.
(As you point out, this whole argument is flawed because it's very difficult to compare coordinators to head coaches, who are in charge of the whole operation. JON could be the worst coordinator hire -- but I'm not going to dig into it to find out. I just don't care enough and want to move on.)
Yeah I would say he worse than any of those. How many of those took a top 5 unit and drive it too bottom 10% in just one year?
Come on, Kevin Wilson? I would take him back right quick.
Hard to even imagine a coach who destroyed more faster than JON. But maybe half of that is on our HC for refusing to see the problem after the first year.
Easily the worst hire in history was NU hiring John Pont after his teams consistently regressed at Indiana after his first year and the black players boycotted the team and accused him of being a racist.
It was definitely arguably the biggest dropoff. We went from one of the best collegiate DCs to one of the worst. And our defense dropped from Top 5 to Bottom 5, although we graduated a ton of talent after 2020.
I’m sure there have been worse though. Statistically speaking.
Also, it doesn't have to be the worst hire ever to still not be an unmitigated disaster. And JON was unquestionably a disaster.
Is this another thread morphing from a different thread on the Rock? I can’t find anything lately.
Yes, there was a lot of off-topic cleaning required that I just shunted off into their own threads, albeit somewhat disjointedly.
It's ridiculous to call it the worst coaching hire because there is plenty of competition but going from Hank to JON may be the biggest downgrade in coaching history.
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Yup - Venturi's "Showtime" Cats were certainly a great show - for the other team. And yet he "graduated" from that horrible three years at NU straight to the NFL (Colts) where he stayed for quite a while. Even had a short stint as a head coach in The League. Hard to believe after his NU days. Rebel can fill us in on Venturi's coaching acumen.
JON is the worst - and I plead guilty to recency bias.
That said, Beckman was a remarkable clown. Some bad coaches are good talkers, so it's easy to understand how they get jobs before it's apparent how bad they are.
With Beckman, it was clear from the first syllable - nearly printed on his forehead. Can't imagine how anyone thought hiring him was a good idea. He was great for NU, and I still rue the day that the Illini finally let go of him.
That said, Beckman was a remarkable clown. Some bad coaches are good talkers, so it's easy to understand how they get jobs before it's apparent how bad they are.
With Beckman, it was clear from the first syllable - nearly printed on his forehead. Can't imagine how anyone thought hiring him was a good idea. He was great for NU, and I still rue the day that the Illini finally let go of him.
Beckman improved every year over the last and he beat NU in his final season. He was fired for reasons other than results on the field.
Lovie wasn't that bad. Beckman was one for the ages, though. Chris Christie...err Brady Hoke has gone on to do pretty well at SDSU.
Lovie was horrible. He actually had a worse overall record than Beckmann, believe it or not. Lovie went 17-39 overall (.304) and 10-33 in the Big Ten (.233). He couldn’t recruit, either. He had a great run with the Bears and by all accounts is a genuinely good guy, but he was a disaster for the Illini.
If only for having to hear about it for half the Citrus Bowl, Bryan Harsin at Auburn.
Beckmann is worse than Lovie, no question. Record and sideline/podium antics aside, his tenure ended with a player abuse scandal.
A bit of context for Lovie, he took over a program that had endured a mass exodus and a dead recruiting class following the player abuse scandal and a one-season interim coach. He started from a horrible place, and didn’t even have the benefit of the portal and transfer movement to rebuild his roster. He was a horrible coach and a total disaster, and I’m uncomfortable with how close I am to defending him. But I do think some context is important. (My favorite Lovie stats: in his last year he managed to sign ZERO players from Illinois. He fired his DC and took over as DC, and used the open assistant spot to hire his entirely unqualified son. He moved back to his home in Florida during the pandemic and let his staff run summer workouts. What an asshole.)
Without HOFer Mike Hankwitz, Fitz is 14-34 overall (.292) and 7-27 in the Big Ten (.209). Somehow below both Beckmann and Lovie.
You can say that’s cherry picking, and to an extent you’d be correct. But in Trump voice, “People are saying….”
I don't think you can use a conditional exception that lasted for 13 of his 17 years.
And in any case Fitz should get the credit for his good hires if he gets the blame for his bad hires.
I think the worst transition in NU coaching was Alex Agase to John Pont. I was at NU from 1971-75 and Alex was hc my first 2 years. Our inept admin at the time let Alex flee to Purdue and brought in Pont who was a disaster. Pont’s tenure was the Dawn of NU’s Dark era. Alex really predates GB as giving NU fans renewed hope in our college football program. Here is his bio. He was a war hero as well. A great figure in NU sports history.
d33j9og3btpwwc.cloudfront.net
Alex Agase, American football player • Biography & Facts
Alexander Arrasi Agase (March 27, 1922 – May 3, 2007) was an American football player and coach
d33j9og3btpwwc.cloudfront.net
One day I was playing handball at the "athletic complex" adjacent to Dyche Stadium. Alex Agase was up in the balcony that overlooked the handball courts. Someone asked him if he was interested in the sport. He replied, "not bloody enough". He was a cool guy and Semper Fi to him.
Not even close to the worst coaching hire, but our friends in South Bend have had a couple of klunkers. Joe Kuharich and Jerry Faust come to mind, and maybe George O"leary.
Notre Dame has definitely had more than its share of terrible hires. Faust came right before Holtz. Then, look at the clown show after Holtz: Davie, O’Leary, Willingham, Weis. Yikes.
Gerry Faust was an interesting case. At the time, one could understand the appeal. Faust was a legendary coach at what was, at the time, the premiere high school football program in the nation. It was also a Catholic high school, so Faust fit in at Notre Dame culturally. Clearly, it failed, which goes to show a) how different the college game is from high school and b) recruiting nationally is very different from recruiting locally (and it is likely Moeller HS recruited locally in those days).
If you are going to mention coaches who never coached like O'Leary (I didn't think those were eligible) I guess you have to mention Mike Price at Alabama.
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Mike Price's Strip Club Adventure Changed Alabama For The Better
Sex scandals are not limited to the Kardashians. A quick search through sports history books will show you the Minnesota Vikings love boat scandal in 2005 or the Louisville basketball team's escort sex scandal in the 2010s. You could also just ask Tiger Woods or Robert Kraft. Videos by FanBuzz...
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If you are going to mention coaches who never coached like O'Leary (I didn't think those were eligible) I guess you have to mention Mike Price at Alabama.
Mike Price's Strip Club Adventure Changed Alabama For The Better
Sex scandals are not limited to the Kardashians. A quick search through sports history books will show you the Minnesota Vikings love boat scandal in 2005 or the Louisville basketball team's escort sex scandal in the 2010s. You could also just ask Tiger Woods or Robert Kraft. Videos by FanBuzz...
He coached, just not at Notre Dame. The topic didn't specify whether the candidate coached or not, just was he a terrible hire, and I definitely think O'Leary qualifies by the very reason that he wasn't allowed to coach a single game. If you have to lie your way into a job, you're probably the worst candidate, at least for that job.
On the other hand, he did a very good job at UCF - basically built the program from nothing.
He made sure we went into the dark ages and stayed there for a long long time. Of course, IMO, he was hired to do just that as that was Strotz's goal
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