Mike MacIntyre entered the 2016 season on everybody's list of hot-seat coaches. The Buffs had won a total of TWO conference games over Mac's first three years as head coach at Colorado. My oh my, how things have changed.
Through 9 games this season, the Colorado Buffaloes are 7-2 and alone in first place in the Pac-12 South. Their FIVE conference wins so far have already doubled their total wins against Pac-12 foes since joining the conference in 2011.
And, Mac has gone from being on everybody's hot seat to one of the favorites for National Coach of the Year awards. If the Buffs win out the season and Mac takes CoY honors, he will join his father in winning such an award. George MacIntyre won several national coach of the year awards in 1982 while coaching at Vanderbilt.
Unfortunately for Mac, the coach listed as the odds-on-favorite for the coaching honors is Chris Petersen of the undefeated and #4 ranked Washington Huskies. If UW and Colorado both win their remaining regular season games, they will meet in the Pac-12 championship game. The winning coach may very well win coach of the year.
Big turnarounds for Buffs programs leading to coaching awards is not new at Colorado. Bill McCartney's 4th season saw the Buffs go from one win the prior year to seven in 1985. The original Mac won Big 8 coach of the year that season, beating out Barry Switzer of Oklahoma. What made it all the more impressive for Bill Mac is that OU won the national championship that year.
Through nine games this year, MacIntyre has earned a solid A grade. There is even speculation that Mac is now being sought after by programs in search of a head coach. Baylor has been mentioned as the leading candidate.
What will Mac do if the Buffs win out, play in the Pac-12 title game, and defeat whoever represents the North? He'll be fielding calls and offers if it happens, and he just might walk away with coach of the year awards as well.
The worst case scenario, however, is that the Buffaloes continue to struggle on offense and lose one or more of their remaining games. That would likely end the possibility of playing for the Pac-12 title, and with it would go the elusive coach of the year award. He might still be sought after by other programs, but certainly not with the same fervor that would be present if the Buffs win 10 games.
If the Buffs do win 10, Mac's grade will rise to an A+. If the Buffs fall flat in the last few games, the grade could fall all the way down to a B.
The Buffs surprised everyone around the country early in the season with their explosive offense. Now that there is film to look at the Buffs have been slowed down considerably by opposing defensive coordinators. USC, Stanford and UCLA all put shackles on the big plays the Buffs made often early in the season.
USC exploited the Buffs' seeming inability to adjust on the fly and took the victory. Stanford and UCLA also shut down the Buffs, but the games were won by Colorado due to outstanding defensive play which held the Cardinal and Bruins to a combined 15 points between them.
It's up to Mac and his offensive staff to get the Buffaloes back on track to explosiveness and playing as well as the defense. If they do, the Buffs can play against anyone in the country. Just ask Michigan. Colorado scored more points against the Wolverines in Ann Arbor than anyone the Wolverines have played.
If not, the Buffs will still have had an outstanding turnaround season. But they also will have to deal with the fact that expectations for the program have risen substantially. Fans want them challenging for championships, not being content to just get to a bowl game.
My oh my, how things have changed. Stay tuned for how it ends up.
Showing posts with label Chris Petersen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Petersen. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Monday, December 2, 2013
USC Again Shows Poor Form, Hires Sarkisian Away From Washington
You gotta hand it to those Trojans, they don't give a damn about any "gentleman's agreements" when it comes to their head football coaches. Today, USC hired Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian to be their new head coach, even though he was under contract to a fellow Pac-12 school.
It's not the first time that Southern Cal has pulled this stunt. Following the 1986 season, they reached across the desert to Tucson, Arizona and hired Larry Smith away from the Wildcats with the much deeper coffers available to USC. Arizona fans, and even those from other conference schools, were outraged. The Trojans just shrugged.
The only other case of a conference coach jumping programs in recent memory is when Bruce Snyder left Cal for Arizona State following the 1991 season. Although the Cal athletic director claimed that Snyder was lured away by bigger dollars in Tempe, Snyder vigorously denied that before his death in 2009.
Snyder had taken a very down Cal program and turned it into a 10 win team for the first time since Pappy Waldorf's 1949 Cal team. Snyder said that he had a handshake agreement with Cal AD Dave Maggard for a new contract, but that Maggard left Cal for a job with Miami before the contract was signed. The interim AD, Bob Bockrath, refused to honor the deal and Snyder felt he was honor-bound to leave Cal.
Rick Neuheisel left Colorado for Washington following the 1998 season, but Colorado was then in the Big 12 conference and NOT a fellow conference member.
Twice in 27 years, the USC Trojans have gone trolling for head coaches within their own conference. They know that it cannot happen to them because no one else in the Pac-12 pays nearly as much as USC. They also know that they do not even have to disclose how much they pay their head coaches, or AD's, since they are a private school with no state requirement to share that information.
Of course, critics of the program also point out that USC also has a history of their boosters paying at least some of their players very well also. That being the case, hiring coaches away from fellow conference members is hardly their biggest sin. Let's just not have to listen to them bitch and moan about how few players they have under scholarship, which was due entirely to the penalties handed down to them for cheating in the first place.
Update:
Any moral high ground held by Washington after Sarkisian was hired away was lost after UW reportedly offered to double the pay of UCLA coach Jim Mora to come to Washington. Mora turned them down, but did use the offer to sweeten his contract with the Bruins.
Fortunately for Washington, they were able to do what many other schools had tried and failed -- they convinced Chris Petersen to leave Boise State. Petersen has the highest winning percentage in the FBS with a 92-12 record over eight seasons with the Broncos.
Washington and Petersen hope the moves works better than it did for former Boise State coaches Dan Hawkins and Dirk Koetter. Both had great success at Boise State, but found the winning much harder to do in the big boy conferences the Pac-10 and the Big 12. Koetter could not turn things around at Arizona State and Hawkins pretty much destroyed the program at Colorado.
It's not the first time that Southern Cal has pulled this stunt. Following the 1986 season, they reached across the desert to Tucson, Arizona and hired Larry Smith away from the Wildcats with the much deeper coffers available to USC. Arizona fans, and even those from other conference schools, were outraged. The Trojans just shrugged.
The only other case of a conference coach jumping programs in recent memory is when Bruce Snyder left Cal for Arizona State following the 1991 season. Although the Cal athletic director claimed that Snyder was lured away by bigger dollars in Tempe, Snyder vigorously denied that before his death in 2009.
Snyder had taken a very down Cal program and turned it into a 10 win team for the first time since Pappy Waldorf's 1949 Cal team. Snyder said that he had a handshake agreement with Cal AD Dave Maggard for a new contract, but that Maggard left Cal for a job with Miami before the contract was signed. The interim AD, Bob Bockrath, refused to honor the deal and Snyder felt he was honor-bound to leave Cal.
Rick Neuheisel left Colorado for Washington following the 1998 season, but Colorado was then in the Big 12 conference and NOT a fellow conference member.
Twice in 27 years, the USC Trojans have gone trolling for head coaches within their own conference. They know that it cannot happen to them because no one else in the Pac-12 pays nearly as much as USC. They also know that they do not even have to disclose how much they pay their head coaches, or AD's, since they are a private school with no state requirement to share that information.
Of course, critics of the program also point out that USC also has a history of their boosters paying at least some of their players very well also. That being the case, hiring coaches away from fellow conference members is hardly their biggest sin. Let's just not have to listen to them bitch and moan about how few players they have under scholarship, which was due entirely to the penalties handed down to them for cheating in the first place.
Update:
Any moral high ground held by Washington after Sarkisian was hired away was lost after UW reportedly offered to double the pay of UCLA coach Jim Mora to come to Washington. Mora turned them down, but did use the offer to sweeten his contract with the Bruins.
Fortunately for Washington, they were able to do what many other schools had tried and failed -- they convinced Chris Petersen to leave Boise State. Petersen has the highest winning percentage in the FBS with a 92-12 record over eight seasons with the Broncos.
Washington and Petersen hope the moves works better than it did for former Boise State coaches Dan Hawkins and Dirk Koetter. Both had great success at Boise State, but found the winning much harder to do in the big boy conferences the Pac-10 and the Big 12. Koetter could not turn things around at Arizona State and Hawkins pretty much destroyed the program at Colorado.
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