This Week's News Updates:
Just In: Vanderbilt has hired Stanford Defensive Coordinator Derek Mason as the new head coach of the Commodores. Full story here.
Congratulations to Auburn Head Coach Gus Malzhan for winning the Paul "Bear" Bryant College Coach of The Year Award. Full story here.
The University of North Carolina has suspended the research efforts of Mary Willingham, the whistle-blower who informed the media about the academic deficiencies of UNC football and basketball players between 2004 and 2012. Full story here.
Bleacher Report has an interactive map available on their website revealing where the Top 200 college football recruits of 2014 came from and the schools that they plan to attend.
Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford would like the NCAA to grant conferences more autonomy to "determine how teams qualify for their league championship games." Full story here.
Indiana University Quarterback Cameron Coffman has announced that he will transfer. Full story here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the days following Florida State's victory in the 2014 BCS National Championship game, there have been some head coaching changes at FBS-level programs. The four new coaches featured in today's post (in alphabetical order) are James Franklin at Penn State, Bobby Petrino at Louisville, Charlie Strong at Texas, and Mark Whipple at Massachusetts-Amherst.
1. James Franklin - Penn State Nittany Lions:
Penn State's decision to hire James Franklin, former head coach at Vanderbilt, could arguably be the best hire in 2014 (not counting the coaching changes that occurred last December) for the following reasons: First, he is a native-born Pennsylvanian from Philadelphia. At his introductory press conference, he was proud to call himself a "Pennsylvania boy with a Penn State heart." Judging by that statement, and others he made at his press conference, it seems like he will not be going to another program anytime soon.
Second, Franklin built a successful program at a school that often finished at or near the bottom in a highly competitive conference. In his three seasons at Vanderbilt, Franklin accumulated a 24-15 record and he was the only coach in Vanderbilt history to lead the program to three consecutive postseason bowl appearances (current HC bowl record is 2-1). Last season's Vanderbilt team also included victories over historic SEC power programs Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee (Vanderbilt also came to within ten points of defeating South Carolina).
Third, his coaching experience includes time on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. The 2013 Vanderbilt team had a defense that only allowed an average of 24.6 points per game while his offense has scored more than 30.0 points per game. Since Franklin's offensive strategy emphasizes the passing game (his QB Austyn Carta-Samuels threw for 2268 yards in 2013) I am optimistic that he will work well with current Penn State starting QB Christian Hackenburg, who threw for 2955 yards last season and accumulated 20 touchdowns. Given his success at Vanderbilt, Coach Franklin is in an excellent position to complete the work that Bill O'Brien began two years ago when he took over a program devastated by the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. The sanctions from that scandal will end in two years. It will be interesting to see where Coach Franklin has led the Nittany Lions when that time finally arrives.
2. Bobby Petrino - Louisville Cardinals
Bobby Petrino has returned to Louisville after nearly a seven-year absence. But the Louisville football program that he will lead in 2014 is a lot different than the one he coached a decade ago. Back then, the Louisville coaching position was often viewed, for lack of a better term, as "a stepping stone" on the path to coaching a more prestigious program. Indeed, the Louisville program of 2014 is a lot wealthier and in a better position to play for championships (both regional and national) once it joins the Atlantic Coast Conference in July. Even though Louisville is a much stronger (no pun intended) program than it was when Charlie Strong began his tenure there as head coach in 2009, my question here is how long Petrino will stay at this job. No one doubts that Coach Petrino has had a long, distinguished, and controversial career as a football coach. Rather, if one looks at his resume, he is someone who does not appear to stay, whether voluntary or involuntary (as with the case at Arkansas), at one place for too long. With Louisville's move to the ACC this year, maybe things will be different for both Bobby Petrino and his second term as Cardinals head coach.
Despite Petrino's shortcomings, he has had a long and distinguished career as a coach. He has been called an "offensive mastermind" because he played a role in developing what has been called the power spread, an offensive method that utilizes an NFL-style running game complemented by aggressive passing scheme. So far, at least on the college level, this offensive strategy has worked very well for Petrino. His overall college head coaching record is 83-30, with nearly half of those wins coming from his first tenure at Louisville. Petrino has had seven postseason appearances as a head coach, including berths in the 2007 Orange Bowl (Louisville) and the 2011 Sugar Bowl (Arkansas). In 2013, his first and only season as coach of the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, he led that team to an 8-4 record, a season that included wins over teams like Kentucky, Navy, and Arkansas State.
Essentially, Bobby Petrino has demonstrated that he can build winning programs. Unfortunately, his transgressions at Arkansas nearly ruined his career. If he can avoid repeating any of his past mistakes, Petrino should have little trouble maintaining Louisville's newly acquired status as a premier football program.
3. Charlie Strong - Texas Longhorns
As many college football fans know, Charlie Strong was not Texas's first choice in its search for a new head coach. Since the start of the 2013 season there had been a lot of speculation surrounding Texas's pursuit of Alabama head coach Nick Saban as Mack Brown's replacement. Indeed, one can argue that Texas's decision to hire Charlie Strong ultimately came after Saban signed a contract extension with the Crimson Tide at the end of the season. In this blogger's opinion, Texas should not have wasted their time trying to pursue Nick Saban for the following reason: Saban is sixty-two years old. At that age, many people are starting to think about retirement rather than their next career move. Saban even said in an interview earlier in the season that he was "just too damn old to start all over someplace else." As a result, when Texas hired Strong (who is in his early fifties), I thought of an old Rolling Stones song that included the following phrase: "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll find, you get what you need."
Like Saban, Charlie Strong was a long-time defensive assistant/coordinator before he was offered his first head coaching job. Last season, Strong's defensive squad at Louisville was second in the country in terms of points allowed per game (12.2). Unlike Saban, however, Strong has some coaching experience on the offensive side of the ball. According to his Wikipedia article, Strong served as a wide receivers coach at Southern Illinois (1986-1987) and at Ole Miss in 1990. One can argue that this experience has helped shape his offensive strategy, which relies on an aggressive passing scheme (the 2013 Louisville team was 16th overall in passing, averaging 314.0 yards per game), that has had considerable success. In fact, Louisville finished 2013 ranked 26th overall in scoring, averaging 35.2 points per game. After serving as Louisville head coach for four seasons, Charlie Strong arrives at Texas with a 37-15 overall record, a 3-1 bowl record, and a postseason BCS bowl win over Florida in the 2013 Sugar Bowl.
The former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, Tony Dungy, once mentioned about Strong that "when they see what he can do, you're probably going to have a lot of people disappointed they didn't hire him sooner." Charlie Strong had to wait until he was forty-nine years old before he got offered his first head coaching job. Less than five years later, he is now head coach of the University of Texas, the most valuable college football franchise in the country. While his record on the field speaks for itself, one has to wonder how Strong's coaching philosophy will fit with the high academic standards of Texas? According to a recent article from SB Nation, Strong has given his players a list of expectations that emphasizes, among other things, class attendance, treating people with respect, living and working as a team, meeting high academic standards, doing things as opposed to just talking about them, and meeting "the expectation that Texas wins now." It seems to me that Charlie Strong is someone who will do everything he can to make sure his players meet the academic and athletic expectations of the University of Texas. I am anxious to see how the 2014 season shapes up for the Longhorns.
4. Mark Whipple - University of Massachusetts-Amherst
I am afraid that this analysis of Mark Whipple will have to be fairly brief since I have not followed the UMass Minutemen football program. Like Bobby Petrino's return to Louisville, Mark Whipple returns to Amherst lead a program that has undergone significant changes since he left for the NFL in 2003. The most important of which are the program's move from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision and UMass's subsequent decision to join the Mid-American Conference back in 2012. But since the Minutemen began playing at the FBS-level, their record has been 2-22.
But back when Mark Whipple led the UMass program between 1998 and 2003, it was a different situation. In his six seasons as head coach of the Minutemen, Whipple accumulated a 49-26 record that included three FCS playoff appearances and one NCAA FCS National Championship in 1998. He had two seasons with 10 wins or more (1998 - 12 wins, 2003 - 10 wins) and Wikipedia mentions that Whipple's teams set more than forty team records. The 1998 team posted records in total yards (7,074), passing yards (4,050), completions (306), and first downs (354). Rehiring Coach Whipple definitely seems like a step in the right direction for a program whose fortunes cannot get any lower.
No comments:
Post a Comment