The legendary coach is an endangered species. Think about it for a second.
Who’s waiting in the wings when Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno relinquish their posts? I think this hit me on I-95 at about 3 a.m. last week.
Originally, I thought this would be a piece about the best job in college football, but when I sat down next to Bowden yesterday, it turned into something more because I realized how much the sport is evolving.
Here’s the case study:
In just his second year, Urban Meyer’s body of work at the University of Florida is quite impressive. He’s 21-4 with an SEC Championship and an upcoming trip to the national title game against Ohio State in just three weeks.
Meyer, 42, is clearly no joke on the sidelines. He played at the University of Cincinnati, served as a grad assistant at Ohio State and worked as an assistant for 13 years (five at Notre Dame). He then took the helm at Bowling Green and moved on to coach Utah to the Fiesta Bowl where his team crushed Pittsburgh.
Florida has Meyer locked in for five more years after this season (and we can assume he’ll sign extensions). Therefore, the Gators have a proven winner who now has more resources than he’s ever had before.
He’s tearing it up in recruiting. His 2006 class was beyond loaded; I think at least 12 of the guys he recruited went into the season with a legitimate chance to get on the field this year. Of his 26 new guys, six were five-star guys, 12 four-stars, seven were three-stars and a two-star (I wouldn’t exactly say RB Brandon James was a slouch in high school, touting offers from Iowa, Louisville, Penn State, South Carolina and others).
The 2007 class is ridiculous as well. The point I’m making is that the future is beyond bright, it’s blinding. Freshmen like Tim Tebow, Percy Harvin, Jarred Fayson, Riley Cooper and Brandon Spikes proved it this year.
If you have ever played any of the NCAA games on PlayStation or Xbox, you know what it’s like to build a dynasty. One of my roommates in college built Tulane into a 50-year powerhouse with a stretch where he went like 557-5. Who’s to say Urban can’t do this (well, he’d be 90ish after 50 years at UF). But, my point is, it’s very possible. It’s extremely possible that Meyer keeps winning because he’s a great coach and keeps bringing in superior talent because he’s a great recruiter.
Now, here’s the question: What else is there?
Leaving the NFL out of this discussion, is there a rung higher on the coaching ladder?
Notre Dame? Turned them down.
Texas, Oklahoma, Southern California, Penn State, Miami? What’s so different about them than Florida?
What if Meyer wins five of the next 10 national championships at Florida? Is he going to get bored? Is the challenge to build a different program? Can you leave Florida behind after accomplishing such a feat?
But it’s more than that. We’re looking for the next generation of Bobby Bowdens and Joe Paternos and this time it won’t be so easy. The pressure to win is bigger than ever (See: Larry Coker).
Because you could easily sub out the word Meyer and the names of the recruits, I think the other top candidates to become legendary coaches are: Jim Tressel, Mack Brown, Bob Stoops and Pete Carroll (maybe Lloyd Carr).
Coaches like Frank Beamer, Charlie Weis, Mark Richt, Steve Spurrier, Jeff Tedford, Phillip Fulmer, Rich Rodriguez and Tommy Tuberville are also potential candidates but are not on the inside track to such status.
What do you think? Is Urban Meyer the next Bobby Bowden? Will Ohio State erect a Jim Tressel statue outside of the Horseshoe?
Agree with me. Make fun of me. Discuss.
Tomorrow night is the College Football Awards Show. Coach Rob and I will be watching and I'll be doing a running entry. Log on and watch the show with us.
For the rest of the day I’ll be working on my bowl preview and Heisman stuff (finalists announced today).
Bowl preview format will be as follows
Date
Bowl name
Team (record) vs. Team (record)
Me making fun of the bowl name and hopefully providing some insight.
The line:
The pick:
Like the format? Hate it? Missing something? Let me know.
Also, my buddy Rob gave me a good idea for covering the Heisman ceremony. I’ll post something about it tomorrow/Friday. Stay tuned.
Comments (4)
There will never be another Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden.
Why?
Fans (read: boosters) are too fair-weathered.
No coach in any league can be successful every year, and fans can't stand even one year of mediocrity.
Remember three years ago when everyone at Penn State thought Joe should go? Do you think he'd still be there if he had been a new coach?
Remember this year when everyone is crying about the crisis at FSU? Do you think Bobby would still be there if fans didn't get his son as a sacrificial lamb?
Urban Meyer could probably even go 11-1 the next three seasons, but if those three losses are to Florida State, I still think Gator fans will be asking for his resignation.
I also think that the allure of coaching in the NFL, or at another school, will still have a lot of draw. Can you be a legendary coach when you go the Steve Spurrier route? I tend to think no.
If you’re leaving the NFL out of the question in this topic, the answer is that Meyer has nowhere else to go. Period. Why? Because of the parity (or lack thereof) in NCAA Division I-A football. Keep signing the contracts and extensions, keep making the money and be grateful for what you have and don't think for one minute that success in college translates into success in the NFL. Learn from others' mistakes and turn the program you're in into an annual force to be reckoned with.
The schools you named where he could possibly go from here (Notre Dame, Texas, Oklahoma, Southern Cal, Penn State, Miami) are all marquee schools, Rod. (“Help me help you!”) And you left out Ohio State, Nebraska, Michigan, LSU, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas A&M. Every college or university listed is not simply a college or university that fields a football team — they’re brand names. Package deals. All-inclusive.
Those names are all top-tier schools with top-tier coaches. All those coaches you named (Tressel, Brown, Stoops, Carroll, Carr, Spurrier, Fulmer(?)) will be legendary at their schools if they stay on their current, successful paths. Even with a championship, I’m not prepared to put Brown on a pedestal yet, and Weis still has to prove he can win without being shown the door a la Ty Willingham (a man I will fervently defend for my entire life because of the short end of the stick he got from ND). Let’s not forget that much of Weis’s success is coming from Willingham’s recruits and talent, and the Little Tuna needs to be given a chance to show what he can do with his own recruits, a chance Willingham was never given.
I say those all top-tier schools because now we’re getting to the second-tier schools. Virginia Tech, South Carolina, Louisville, Wisconsin, Arkansas, West Virginia, California, UCLA, Boston College, Oregon State, Georgia Tech, Maryland are all second-tier. They’re all good, sometimes really good, but they don’t immediately come to mind when you think “college football.” They warm up for a few seasons, but nothing is sustained year-over-year to the extent of an OSU, USC or Oklahoma. Yes, even VT falls into this category, as much as it pains me to say it. It’s not that ’99 was a flash in the pan, because Beamer has built the program into a yearly winner with a guaranteed bowl trip, but Tech is not so distantly removed from the ’92 season when Beamer went 2-8-1 and was on the cutting block (I know because I was there). Because of perennially weak out-of-conference scheduling and stupid losses, VT will always be so close to the top-tier, yet so far away. The pressure is greater on VT now because of the first Vick and that ’99 season. Tech isn’t marquee because it doesn’t have as rich a history as Notre Dame or Ohio State or Southern Cal. Tech’s existence has to be justified to the media and critics every year, lest they find one reason to bump VT from the Top 25 and say, “Well, we knew it. They had a shelf-life of 10 years and it’s all used up.” My fear is that Tech is like the pretty girl at the party who’s got a VD — everything looks great until she gets found out later, never to be invited back. Until Tech (and those other programs listed) gains the sustainability of the top-tier schools, they’ll never move up. And because there are already so many top-tier schools there, who knows if there’s even room.
Back to the question at hand: the only way for Meyer to improve upon his current situation is to move to the NFL. (And he shouldn't. Never. Ever.) No doubt about it. But, if he did, what if he suffered the same fate as his predecessor, The Ol’ Ball Coach? (Yes, I left out Ron Zook, but let’s face it: Zook’s name will fall through the cracks if you ask someone to name the good football coaches in Florida’s history. Zook is like the girl you date after breaking up with your girlfriend — she’s not the one you’ll end up with, but she’ll do for now.) And we wouldn’t be having this conversation if Spurrier would’ve kept his head out of the clouds and realized just how good he had it in Gainesville. You don’t think Stevie would like to hop into Doc Brown’s time machine and ride that DeLorean back to January 4, 2002? "I simply believe that 12 years as head coach at a major university in the SEC is long enough." Yeah, I’m sure he’d be singing that same tune knowing what he knows now. That was a dynasty, and then it just got nasty. Word is, though, that part of the reason he went to South Carolina and not back to Florida is because he got a membership at Augusta National. (I Google Earthed it: 90 minutes to Augusta from Columbia; 7½ hours from Gainesville.)
The point is, kids, be happy with what you have. Woody Hayes never left for the big time. Bo Schembechler never did. John Wooden didn’t go anywhere, and he won 7 in a row and 10 altogether (basketball, but still). I would love to be able to talk to my kids about the Tressel/Stoops/Carroll/Meyer/Weis/Beamer/Fulmer/Carr eras like my dad talks to me about Ara Parseghian and Woody and Bo and JoePa. Only over time can these coaches build dynasties that will earn them the right to be inducted into halls of fame and have statues outside of stadiums.
Furnk...you make great points. It's a shame that patience isn't exercised anymore...this extends far beyond college football. Baseball and basketball coaches are given the kibosh way too soon every season. I think the underlying problem you point out is a sleeping giant to be honest...
JTF,
I like your insight and I agree Urban should never turn pro.
I was talking to Erik Boland in the office yesterday about the allure of coaching in the NFL though. You can't blame these guys for wanting to succeed on the ultimate level. I mean...the chance to be a Don Shula, Tom Landry, Hank Stram, Bill Parcells, etc. is very tempting.
There’s no way Spurrier should have turned pro. But, it’s like the Mets-Barry Zito thing at the trade deadline…hindsight is always 20-20.
And the point you bring up about Virginia Tech I agree with as well. The schools that come to mind when you think college football have a tradition that is so rich, VT won’t know it for 50 years…and it’d take a few MNCs.