Who We Don't Want As A Head Coach

Graddean · October 27, 2010

North Alabama is DII not IAA. It is a member of the Gulf South Conference.

NCMeanGreen · October 27, 2010

1. Bower may be a good coach, but I question if NT fans outside of this board know who he is. Not sure how excited fans would be about this hire.

2. Leach will never happen. During the podcast or press conference RV emphasized that the new coach has to be willing to get out in the community, meet fans and alums, sell tickets, kiss babies, etc. Leach doesn't strike me as that kind of guy.

3. Fran....has he been out of coaching too long? Seems like if he was really passionate about coaching he would have found a job by now. Can't make up my mind of him.

4. Has Applewhite really done that much? I may be off base but doesn't he share his duties with another coach? This seems like too much of a gamble and we have to hit on this hire.

5. I like everything about Leavitt except the situation surrounding his termination from USF....but I think he deserves a 2nd chance regardless of what happened.

6. I don't think it could hurt having a Bowden running the program. Experienced coach that we might get at a reasonable price.

I guess Leavitt and Bowden are my favorites of this list.

Know this will not gain me many popularity points, but...

I am not sure I understand all of the fascination with Major Applewhite?? Seems like just yesterday I was watching him as an ok QB for UT. Has he really been THAT amazing since to warrant his name in the ring for a HC position in Div IA,,,especially for a program looking for a candidate with actual HC experience??

Seems like we always seem to want the sensational hire. TD was the same phenomenon. Everyone seemed to be so excited about the possibility of him being a candidate. There was dancing in the streets when he got the job I tell you!!! :w00t:

Remind me again...how did all that turn out??

My point is that maybe we should focus on qualified candidates...not the sensational ones. We need someone who is qualified to be our HC...that has actual HC experience...and the experience to take a program in our situation and turn it into a winner.

Aquila_Viridis · October 27, 2010

Bower should not be hired; however the current Southern Miss coach Fedora would be a fantastic choice.

Marty · October 27, 2010

Bower should not be hired; however the current Southern Miss coach Fedora would be a fantastic choice.

Fedora is a native Texan, an Austin College 'Roo, and coached at several high schools in Texas before joining the college ranks.

eulessismore · October 27, 2010

All of the coaches on meangreenbob's list except Major Applewhite would be acceptable to me. There are a few others who I believe could do the job as well but I'm afraid there's little likelihood of getting them.

Initially, I didn't have a #1. Of the five, I have doubts that Mike Leach would be a serious candidate. I just don't think that we are high-profile enough for him. As for Bower, I'd have to be convinced that he has the fire in his belly to continue coaching. Jim Leavitt would be an excellent choice but the fact that he could be distracted by his lawsuit and the negative publicity that surrounds it gives me cause for alarm. If he could get that behind him he just might do the best job of any of the candidates. Terry Bowden has been, and is, an excellent coach. My only concern with him is that he has only coached within the state of Alabama and to my knowledge has never recruited Texas.

That gets me to my #1...Dennis Franchione. Coach Fran has produced winners everywhere that he has been. The only stop where he had an overall losing record was New Mexico (3 games under .500). When he went there the Lobos were dismal. They had three winning seasons in the last twenty). In the six seasons that he was there he had three winning seasons. He took them to a bowl for the first time in 35 years. A possible plus that I can't erase from my mind is that he might be able to lure his son, Brad, to join him as his DC. Brad has coached NJCAA Blinn College to a national championship. Another plus is that Franchione is better known in Texas (except for perhaps Leach) and has done an excellent job recruiting in this state.

A major consideration is who can best fill the new stadium. Who will draw the casual fan to the new green palace? Franchione, Leach and Bowden all have name identification around these parts. Leavitt is a Texan by birth and a Floridian by upbringing. That should eventually give him good standing in recruiting both states. Bower would have the least name identification but he may be more talented at finding raw talent because he had to at USM.

While Coach Fran is now my favorite, I'd be happy with any of the above five and if somehow Tommy Bowden decides to unretire I'd be happy with him as well. The rest are, well, who we don't want as a head coach.

I'm with you on these two, with this exception: Tommy Bowden is my favorite. However, I'm considering him a longshot at this point, since he does not seem to have been making any effort to become employed as a football coach since leaving Clemson. Of course, he left there with plenty of money, and doesn't seem to have spent much time west of the Mississippi, so I'm putting Coach Fran at the top of my list, since he has spent time in Texas and still lives here. Also, his history of turning programs around is (and I'm agreeing with others it seems different from starting from scratch) is a good attribute for us. The one thing I wonder about is his steady rise through New Mexico and TCU, followed by seeming disappointments with winning records at Alabama and Texas A&M. My theory is that the expectations game at those places can be unrealistic at times, whereas New Mexico and TCU were probably thrilled to be seeing a reasonably good chance of winning consistently. Really, even New Mexico took 10 years or so after he left to run their program back into the ground.

PlummMeanGreen · October 27, 2010

That gets me to my #1...Dennis Franchione. Coach Fran has produced winners everywhere that he has been. The only stop where he had an overall losing record was New Mexico (3 games under .500). When he went there the Lobos were dismal. They had three winning seasons in the last twenty). In the six seasons that he was there he had three winning seasons. He took them to a bowl for the first time in 35 years. A possible plus that I can't erase from my mind is that he might be able to lure his son, Brad, to join him as his DC. Brad has coached NJCAA Blinn College to a national championship. Another plus is that Franchione is better known in Texas (except for perhaps Leach) and has done an excellent job recruiting in this state.

A major consideration is who can best fill the new stadium. Who will draw the casual fan to the new green palace? Franchione, Leach and Bowden all have name identification around these parts. Leavitt is a Texan by birth and a Floridian by upbringing. That should eventually give him good standing in recruiting both states. Bower would have the least name identification but he may be more talented at finding raw talent because he had to at USM.

While Coach Fran is now my favorite, I'd be happy with any of the above five and if somehow Tommy Bowden decides to unretire I'd be happy with him as well. The rest are, well, who we don't want as a head coach.

Reading a feature on TCU in last Sunday's Fort Worth Star Telegram their Coach Patterson said after looking at their crowd versus Air Force he said "5 years ago, we were having 12,000 fans at our games." (Of course, TCU was able to count their season ticket sales which may have added 8,000 no shows to those 12,000 actual butts).

Then.........watching the replay of the TCU/Air Force game last night one announcer said, "Patterson doesn't get many 4 or 5 star recruits at all, but before they graduate from TCU they are 4 or 5 star football players."

DD in about his 3'rd year in Denton recruited about 8 or 9 Texas State Top 100 players in what many of us thought was quite outstanding and quite frankly, a pleasant surprise that it happened. (Again, most of our complaints with him did not begin until some off the field unorthodox things started happening his last 2 years which none of us would post on this forum when they were happening). Moral of This With DD: UNT has had some good recruiting in past years with many coaches just when you wondered how it could have happened with our lack of total facilities--as compared to our opponents facility spending sprees. Wonder what a proven name coach could do at UNT now?

YET.........you add a name coach like a Coach Fran (with son as Def. Coord.) and then you start recruiting against the schools in Texas our new football palace coupled with said name coach will allow us to do. First thing we start doing is out-recruiting La Tech in our own backyard. Check out how much quicker and talented they are than we are as they play even now on ESPN2; albeit, Boise is much quicker and talented than the Bulldogs :rolleyes: .

We must have a name coach known statewide for the reasons GrayEagle has listed and the rest of our fans need to remember that when we get all our ducks in a row, then the winning cycle will return to North Texas--it has before after bad times and when we thought all was lost. Gut feeling says because of our new diggs over at the Mean Green Village we will now be able to finally go up to the next level but with...........a name coach known in the Lone Star State.

GMG!

Edited October 27, 2010 by PlummMeanGreen

Mean Green 93-98 · October 27, 2010

1) June Jones, because of his Hawaii position, recruited nationally. He's done the same since coming to SMU. If Jeff Bower had a history of bringing in people from all over the country, awesome. But we are not a nationally recognized football school, and he is not a name that rings in the ears of 17-18 year old kids (all of whom were still in 6th or 7th grade the last time he finished a season with fewer than 5 losses). He is not going to be the North Texas version of June Jones. He doesn't have the national connections, he doesn't have the name recognition that Jones did (because of his BCS appearance and his tenure as an NFL coach), and he won't be able to recruit anywhere near what Jones has done.

2) If we're hoping for new assistants to get Bower back on his 90's track... Why don't we get a guy (like Leavitt or Fran) who can do it himself, and get those super assistants to support THEM?

3) Not true. You get a lot of .500 or worse records. Like 2007 and 2002, for example.

4) From an article I linked to earlier:

5) The reason he was in Hattiesburg so long was that, according to a lot of the articles written in the wake of his firing, nobody else tried to hire him away after the turn of the millennium. If we're counting on him doing BETTER once we take him OUT of the situation where he was a former player, former assistant, and a local hero... I don't think we're making a very smart bet. He couldn't cut it there anymore. Take away the unique advantages he had there, and he's going to do better? When he's spent the past 3 years fishing and living the retired life? Everyone has an opinion, but I don't agree with the opinion that he'd get better here.

6) This is a guy who, with the exception of one year (2003), didn't get out of C-USA play with less than 3 or 4 losses in this decade. After the 90's ended, he was mediocre in his own league. Do that in the Sun Belt (if he even could... Again, I have serious doubts about his effectiveness away from USM because of the roots he had there) and you'll never break .500.

There are already two post-millennial Boweresque performers in the Sun Belt: Steve Roberts and Rickey Bustle. They'll both probably get fired after this season ends.

You can call it a wash. I'll consider it proof that during the 2000s, the guy coached teams that were mediocre at their conference level, then limped to 7 win records by scoring annual wins against 1-AAs and Sun Belt schools. If he's coaching AT a Sun Belt school and he loses 3 conference games per year... Where are the games going to come from to even get us to 7 wins? You can't play more than one 1-AA team per year and count it towards eligibility.

7) Franchione has won at 8 different spots, 6 in his first year and 2 in his second. Bower spent the 2000s in a downward suck spiral and his own alma mater fired him despite his deceptively adequate record. Franchione spent much of his career working in Texas and the west, and his name and track record in building TCU and coaching at A&M gave him the recruiting connections we would need to get the ship righted. Bower hasn't coached in Texas in 25 years, hasn't coached west of the Mississippi River in 20. The only time he coached and recruited in the state of Texas was a brief period that ended in 1986, and back then he had the assistance of SMU booster payoffs helping to lure in players. Franchione has spent the past 3 years pursuing other head coaching opportunities. Bower has spent the past 3 years pursuing fish.

Anything anyone can say in support of Bower is something that Southern Mississippi knew of and heard about from everyone who supported him. And, even though he was an alum and a local hero, they fired him anyway.

Maybe we know better than the people who educated him and then employed him for 24 years. Maybe, somehow, they got it wrong.

But I don't think they did.

1) June Jones never recruited top Texas talent at Hawaii. If you want to talk about his incredible recruiting ties he already had, why did he pretty much only get 2-star recruits at Hawaii? He did remarkably well at identifying and developing talent, but his recruiting ties were not that impressive. I imagine Bower will be able to keep some of his previous recruiting connections, and he will probably be able to figure out how to get recruits in Texas.

2) That really wasn't my point. My point was that I really don't see losing his previous assistants as a major source of concern.

3) As my geometry teacher used to tell me, show me your work. I didn't know that Southern Miss regularly played 13 games or more in a regular season.

4) Again, Mean Green fans would love to see those kinds of wins. Minimize them all you want, but we haven't had a win like that in a decade.

5) Who's counting on him to get better? I acknowledged it as a possibility. I'd be reasonably happy if he could be as good here as he was at Southern Miss. I don't see that he had tremendously "unique advantages" because he coached at his alma mater. If it's such an advantage, let's hire Erric Pegram and be done with it.

6) Mediocre in his own league? Maybe he wasn't absolutely dominant, but he was named coach of the decade. He had a winning in conference record every year he was in C-USA. Two conference championships, 7 bowl appearances, and 4 bowl wins in the 8 years he coached in the 2000's.

There are already two post-millennial Boweresque performers in the Sun Belt: Steve Roberts and Rickey Bustle.

Now you're smoking something. Seriously, compare what I just said above about Bower to what Roberts and Bustle have done in the inferior Sun Belt.

7) If we find ourselves in the midst of a "downward suck spiral" like this--I'm not going to complain too much.

I really don't have the time or the inclination to get into an extended back-and-forth on this. I just felt I had to say something when you are suggesting you are going to abandon North Texas football if Bower is hired, and you are influencing others to say the same, whether you are doing so intentionally or not.

Is Bower a "boring" hire? Maybe. He is a defensive-minded coach who performs solidly year in, year out.

The reason Southern Miss fired him is that they were tired of "solid" years, they wanted to move up to the next level. That is certainly understandable. Even if Dickey had kept winning Sun Belt titles, we would have eventually wanted to get something more. But has Southern Miss moved to the next level with Fedora? His first two years, he finished 3rd in C-USA East, and in his 3rd year he is again sitting at 3rd. In Bower's last 5 years, he finished 1st, 3rd, 3rd, 1st, and 4th. Those first two were before C-USA split into two divisions. It doesn't seem like they have done any better with their new hire. Some of the Southern Miss fans who post over here were not happy about Bower's firing, and thought Southern Miss would come to regret it.

Bower is a well-known and highly-respected coach in C-USA, which would not hurt the chances of the team that hires him getting into C-USA. His players were successful in the classroom. Again, he may be a "boring" hire. But last time, we went for high-risk/high-reward, and I don't think we can afford to do that this time. We need a coach that is highly likely to produce a winning Sun Belt team. While there are other coaches who fit the bill, Bower does too.

Mean Green 93-98 · October 27, 2010

Bower should not be hired; however the current Southern Miss coach Fedora would be a fantastic choice.

Explain.

SilverEagle · October 28, 2010

I would favor Franchione only if he has the same fire as he did when he arrived at TCU to turn things around. My question for him would be "do you remember how that felt, and can you do it again?". My fear is that he's gotten too used to having unlimited resources handed to him (Alabama and A$M), and he's forgotten how to roll up his sleeves and do some blue collar-type hard work again.

If not Franchione then I favor Leavitt because he built USF from the ground up, and he was the DC at Kansas State when Bill Snyder rebuilt the Kansas program.

A major name will not, in and of itself, change things at North Texas. Isn't that the lesson we just learned with the Todd Dodge hire? Isn't Dodge's name and fame the main reason he was hired?

We need someone with a lot of fire who is willing to do the hard blue collar work to get this program going again.

AND, FWIW I don't think we need a consultant to help us find a coach. We are not like other schools, so a generic consultant won't have a clue as to the kind of coach that we need.

If we are going to need a consultant, then get Jordan Case involved. He knows the culture at North Texas, he played under Hayden Fry, and he built his own very successful career from the ground level.

Edited October 28, 2010 by SilverEagle

Aquila_Viridis · October 28, 2010

Explain.

Even though you didn't make a polite request, I feel passionate enough about this topic to respond anyway, in the middle of the night. First, if you want to make a statement, hire someone else's coach away. Second, Marty already hit on some of the local points I had in mind. (Marty is very diligent and knowledgeable.) Finally, he (Fedora, not Marty) is having success at the level at which we would like to succeed. (Marty is probably successful in his own right.) And post-finally (you didn't even KNOW there was such a thing!), cool name.

LongJim · October 28, 2010

I don't get the Bower hate either, based on what he did at USM. I agree that he's not a real splashy hire, but he's a good coach, and I believe his football approach is sound, and a good one. I was impressed with how his USM teams played while he was there. IMO, he would not be the worst thing that ever happened to UNT football.