Coaches on the hot seat
A few weeks ago, I blogged about coacheshotseat.com, a website that tracks the status of college football coaches. I wrote about the grades given Bob Stoops and Mike Gundy for the 2007 season; each received a C, which I thought was low. Stoops, I said, deserved a B+ for winning the Big 12, while Gundy earned at least a B- for going 4-4 in the Big 12.
Anyway, Joe Gillis contacted me. He’s the fellow who runs coacheshotseat.com, and we corresponded a little bit about coaches and newspapering, and it was good stuff. He expounded on his takes, and I thought I would share some of his thoughts with you.
On Stoops: “You, I (I run a technology company in my day job), and 7 other people from Coaches Hot Seat (Of our group of 28 people, most work in the technology business in Silicon Valley) could have coached Oklahoma to a 11-3 record in ‘07! Seriously, make that 12-2, because our ’staff’ would not have lost to an incredibly mediocre Colorado team that even Bill Callahan and Nebraska ran points up on. The problem with Stoops is that he has lost his fire, no, he still has more fire than most coaches, but it is way down from 5 years ago. You can really see his passion go down when the game doesn’t matter, like the recent Fiesta Bowl, which meant about as much to OU as the touch football game I played in on Saturday meant to me. Not much.”
On Mike Gundy: “Gundy is one of the few coaches in I-A that truly does not deserve to be a head football coach. If not for T. Boone, Gundy would probably be an offensive coordinator somewhere right now, and would be up for head coaching jobs in the next couple of years, but as you well know, if T. Boone wants it, T. Boone gets it. Just ask Mike Holder about that! If T. Boone wanted Holder and the boys to come to work with Hawaiian shirts on singing Don Ho songs, then one would think June Jones had been hired in Stillwater if you happened to wonder into the athletic offices there. As my buddies in the venture capital business say, if T. Boone invests in your company then he has you by the —–, and T. Boone has Oklahoma State by the —–, and no doubt he could get Howdy Doody hired as the head football coach there if he so wished. If Gundy doesn’t beat Texas Tech last season, then his biggest win would have been at Nebraska, and you and I could have beaten Callahan in Lincoln with the ‘07 OSU team. I do think Gundy is becoming a better coach though, because I and another guy were at that Troy game last season, and we had sideline passes and Gundy looked like he was on another planet coaching that game. I followed the OSU team towards their locker room, after they got clocked in the first half, and you would have thought OSU was winning the game, because if I had been coaching them I would have been chewing them out from one end of Troy to the other, but Gundy acted like he was at an English tea party. Of course, he showed some fire, and his ass, when he jumped all over Jenni Carlson about the Bobby Reid story. If Gundy had done anything in his life except hang around football fields, like work in the real world and serve his country in war (as several people here at Coaches Hot Seat have done on the latter), he wouldn’t have acted like a spoiled brat over the Reid story. I almost jumped through the TV screen watching that moron, thinking about all the 18 year old “kids” in Iraq that are living and dying over there, and here is Bobby Reid acting like a baby and getting away with it. One thing for sure, if you dropped Gundy in Baghdad for 30 days he might actually get a lesson in how the real world works, because there he would not have a billionaire benefactor protecting his ass at every turn.”
Well, I thought that was dang interesting. I still say he’s too harsh on both Stoops and Gundy, but it’s always revelating to get an outsider’s take. This is a guy from California who observes from afar. He doesn’t know nearly as much about our state or its football as I do, or you do, but you still can learn from someone who has a fresh perspective.
I wrote him back and he responded with even more nuggets.
“Stoops is a better coach than Brown, Pinkel, Leach, and Hawkins. He has as good or better talent, but for some reason he has been having 1 to 2 letdowns the past few years. All you have to do is watch him, and his coaches, on the sideline in a big game, and then in a lesser game. There is just huge difference in intensity. I had a sideline pass for the Oregon game two years ago, and Bob and his coaches were just going crazy, which is what coaching a game in Autzen Stadium will do to you. (My wife went to Cal, me Stanford, so I have been in Autzen a few times! Of course, that Oregon game was one of the great rip-offs in the history of sports!) Then at Lubbock against Tech this year, our Coaches Hot Seat guy that went to the game said Stoops looked bored during most of the game. I am sure his players pick up on that, and that was really evident in the Fiesta Bowl.
“Speaking of Bob Stoops being bored, for the Super Bowl we had almost the entire Coaches Hot Seat group together and we put the top 25 coaches in the game up on a board and then guessed where they would be in 10 years. In 10 years the votes came out to:
“Mike Gundy: Asst coach in the NFL;
“Todd Graham: Texas A&M head coach;
“Urban Meyer: Head coach at Notre Dame or Ohio State;
“Bob Stoops: Head coach at Florida.
“The most interesting prediction you ask? Nick Saban: unemployed!”
Like I said, Joe Gillis and coacheshotseat.com is nothing but interesting. But I need to ask Joe; if you really speculated on the top 25 coaches, were Gundy and Graham really in the top 25? That’s a pretty big compliment. Joe’s comments about Gundy didn’t seem to support that theory, but if they really think Gundy is a top-25 coach, then I can see why they hold him to such a high standard and gave him a C.
Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
The man is,’ right on’, about Gundy, of course he wil lhave a better season in ‘08. Better team, better schedule-not a better coach! I would love to hear what he has to say about Sutton–talk about bland, no fire, no coaching, no image, can’t speak, no nothing from this guy!!
Jenni “DESERVED” that for writing something “NEGATIVE” about a college athlete and columnist(if you can call Jenni that) should never, ever write anything “NEGATIVE” about high school and college athletes and Jenni “CROSSED THE LINE” by doing that. What an “IDIOT” she is.
Hmmm. Joe Gillis has an interesting perspecitve. Gundy may have been made head Cowboy a little early but I think he is making a lot of progress at OSU. If I remember correctly he dismissed several players the first year for various reasons, but mostly it seemed as he was cleaning up after Miles. I think Gundy will be ok and they will get back to 8-4 most seasons.
On Stoops it’s hard to knock a guy that has been so successful. To say that “you or I” could have coached OU to a win is pretty bold. I do agree that OU hasn’t been the same since Mike Stoops left but bottom line is: Mike Stoops is gone, at least for now, and OU is still pretty good. I don’t know why OU has let downs like at Colorado, Texas Tech and West Virginia but we they aren’t the only school that had that happen last year and it will happen again. Sometimes in sports you just can’t get a team up for whatever reason. Sometimes the guys are just not ready to play. Stoops is stumped on this too. If you remember his comments after the Fiesta bowl, he said something like, “well evidently we are not doing something right “. I know that is not exactly what he said but it implied he wasn’t doing the right thing preparing the team. So I don’t want to “sell the farm” on Stoops. He is a great coach and we should be thankful we have him. Just think, we could have someone like John Blake. I do wish OU would recruit a few more Oklahoma boys. I think that is a missing element in the “fire”. A boy that has grown up in Oklahoma has an attitude about playing for his state/school that you really can’t develop in a kid from outside the state. I understand OU recruits nationally and needs to but a few more Wes Welker type kids are out there that will go to Tulsa etc but would go to OU if they had a chance.
You have to wonder why Jim B. (the positive guy who wrote a reply) even follows the Cowboys. He states he agrees with what Joe Gillis says about Gundy, going as far as to say Gillis was “right on.” And he isn’t much of a (Sean) Sutton believer either, saying “…no fire, no coaching…”
If he follows the Cowboys because he is a fan then I ask him what coaches OSU could attract that he thinks could do a better job? As for both sports, the possibilites for better coaches are there, but at what price? Both Gundy and Sutton are running clean programs and gettting very decent recruits to a school that is difficult to recruit to. If he feels they can’t coach then I wonder if he is watching the same games as the rest of us? Sure, they have both made wrong calls at the wrong times – what coach doesn’t?
If he isn’t a Cowboy fan then the jealousy is obvious.
I’m thinking he just has issues. He is far from being ‘right on’ about Sutton. Sutton basically took over for his father years before Eddie stepped down. Sean did almost all the game plans, with exception to Texas Tech which was Coach Dickey’s baby. Sean also began running practices and doing a good deal of floor coaching during the games. He also has been responsible for the majority of recruiting for the Cowboys for the past few years.
I’m going to guess this Jim B. guy is failing to look at what Gundy and Sutton have been up against. Gundy dismissed a lot of Miles’ star recruits because they violated team rules or were bad for the team. He has held his own the past two years by not having a losing season (which is a huge step for the storied past of Oklahoma State football)! Be realistic, the Big XII South is very competitive and Gundy is making strides to put OSU in place to compete for the South title. As for Sutton, I’d like to see Jim B. or Coach K loose 40% of his starters and not take a huge hit. I think Sean has done a good job this season, despite not having an image or being able to speak. He obviously has an image with high profile recruits because he “speaks” on their level enough to get them to play at a school that lost it’s tradition for a few decades.
By the way, are there any Oklahoma State fans or fans from other school without National Championship tradition that expect their first-time head football or basketball coach to be perfect in the first two or three years? Get over it Jim B. or pick another school to become such an expert on!
The guy may be interesting to you Berry and I can see that. He has some decent points. It’s really sad when the media from outside of Oklahoma see something in Stoops that, up until the Fiesta Bowl, really was not mentioned that much. Stoops did look a little bored on the sidelines at Tech but he was hot at his players when they played poorly. He showed fire but the fire that he had when his brother Mike was there is not the same as it is now. I really think that Bob and Mike fed off of each other. Bob really does not need his brother for that but you can tell a difference in intensity when the games are not that big. Colorado and Tech last year were big games. Unfortunately that was not relayed to the players. The regular season games are bigger than the NFL’s b/c if you lose one game it can cost you a chance at a national championship. That should be relayed to the players. If Stoops really wants to play for championships he needs to start at the beginning with the regular and build on that all the way to the big game. It’s unfortunate that the players mindset is where it is but Stoops is the main source of that poor mindset. Championships are what should be played for but it is an entire season that determines championships not just one game. Stoops should read what was said by Joe and it might fuel a little fire.
On Gundy, I think that he was right on about him. He was acting a little childish but I still think that Gundy has a great coaching mind. He will win more games in ‘08 than he did in ‘07 and keep his job for another year.
I think that his prediction of Stoops going to Florida is a bunch of B.S. To me that would be a step down from where he is or at best a lateral move. Why would someone do that? There is not another job in the country that would be a step up from OU. The NFL would be it but I really don’t think that Stoops is interested in that. He saw what Spurrier had to go through and I feel that thinks that the NFL is not a spectrum he wants to work in. The pressure is so much more and the expectations are almost outrageous. At OU the expectations are what Stoops set himself, Championships.
The other predictions seem a little more likely but I wouldn’t bank on any of them.