Best and Worst Coaches in CFB

[lynchmob42]

By SI.com's Stewart Mandel
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20130708/best-worst-college-football-coaches/

1. Nick Saban, Alabama
2. Urban Meyer, Ohio State
3. Chris Petersen, Boise State
4. Gary Patterson, TCU
5. Bill Snyder, KSU
6. Les Miles, LSU
7. Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M
8. Bob Stoops, OU
9. Bobby Petrino, Western Kentucky
10. Art Briles, Baylor

Worst 5 (in alphabetical order)
Tim Beckman, Illinois
Ron English, Eastern Michigan
Kirk Ferentz, Iowa
Lane Kiffin, USC
Charlie Weiss, KU

[lynchmob42]

I will take acception to Patterson over Snyder. I can't think of one metric that would place Patterson higher.

Kirk Ferentz is more of an over-paid entry than just being the worst.

[archie]

I agree that Snyder is better than Patterson, but I won't split hairs over one spot in the rankings.

I do have a few issues with it though. Les Miles is not a top ten coach. Is there anything particularly innovative about his offensive or defensive schemes? LSU actually plays pretty bland, vanilla football. He just so happens to recruit at an outrageous level and out-athletes 90% of the teams on their schedule. Also, his decision making making skills are notoriously, hilariously terrible.

I don't really think you can put him higher because there are more accomplished coaches ahead of him, but Art Briles is turning a doormat of a program into a feared team to play. He has limited talent, so he stockpiles it at the skill positions like WR and RB, but can you imagine what he could do with Texas' talent level? When Mack Brown inevitably gets fired, we better hope they don't back the Brinks truck up to Briles' doorstep to lure him to UT!

Lastly, I don't think Charlie Weis is that bad of a coach. He has an incredibly difficult job at Kansas in a stacked conference, there are just no easy wins for him. Notre Dame is a difficult job for many reasons. I don't think he's top ten at all, nowhere near it, but calling him one of the five worst is unfair too.

I can throw a few more deserving names in there for worst coach...
Randy Edsal - Maryland
Tom OBrien - NC State
Jimbo Fisher - Florida State
Mack Brown

The last two are always top 10 in talent, but always disappoint.

[lynchmob42]

I think if you read the story, it's hard to argue against Charlie Weis
.
"Weis' past five seasons as a college coach consisted of 3-9, 7-6 and 6-6 records at Notre Dame, one 7-6 campaign as Florida's offensive coordinator and a 1-11 debut at Kansas."

[archie]

Now I have the same criticism of Weis that most others do. He's better suited for the pros where he gets to focus solely on X and O's while a GM builds the roster and a marketing staff handles the publicity and ticket sales. College coaches have to wear all three of those hats at once, and the very best in the business are top notch at all three while Weis is only good at one. I think there are plenty of coaches who are sub par in all three of those categories. So even though Weis' results haven't been there the last few season, he's far from the worst IMO.

[Mohawk]

I think it's unfair to judge Weis on his first year results at Kansas. He inherited a mess and dismissed 26 players from the program. It's also unfair to include his record at Florida where he was an OC under a rookie head coach while the article is about evaluating head coaches.

Having said that Weis needs to start winning to avoid lists like this.

[lynchmob42]

I also think it's unfair to say that just because he was 1-11 last year, he's at the bottom. However, there are games they shoudl have won last year, especially Rice, where coaching can be blamed regardless of lack of talent.

And there's no excuse for losing records at ND. As fun as that is for the rest of the college football world to watch.

[tetonhawk]

ND was left with a terrible talent pool and it took awhile to turnaround recruiting. He left them a very good pipeline.
Only time will tell at KU like Snyder at KSU. If he can turn KU around there may be a Charlie Field.

[lynchmob42]

You can't just take Kivisto's name off the field. I mean, it doesn't matter that mislead investors, or anything.

Give Charlie time, every coach deserves 3-4 years.