Posts from the Ncaa Fb Coaching Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

I've made no secret of the fact that we, the collective SEC FanHouse blogger contingent I admire Vanderbilt. Despite being a small, privately-funded university with a heavy emphasis on academics, they field a football team which plays in the ultra-competitive Southeastern Conference. Vandy might not win a lot of games, but they're competitive against some of the nation's best teams in more than their fair share.

Frankly, they've got no business even making a game of it most of the time. Vanderbilt gets the leftover scraps when it comes to D-IA talent. Yet they routinely take powerhouse schools like Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee to the wire, and beyond.

Bobby Johnson is a superb coach who gets little recognition for his accomplishments. As much as I admire and respect this coach, I have to wonder if he'll ever get his team to a bowl game.

In 2005, the 'Dores had Jay Cutler, a first round NFL draft pick and consensus All-SEC quarterback. The Commodores came maddeningly close to postseason viability, but fell short -- losing, unbelievably, to Middle Tennessee just one month prior to taking the Gators to overtime in the Swamp.

In 2006, Chris Nickson showed a lot of promise, leading Vanderbilt to a "nominal" 4-win season which included an upset of No. 16 Georgia.

Remember last season when Georgia was ranked fourth, above 2-loss LSU, but were then jumped by the Tigers after LSU beat Tennessee in the SEC Championship game?

That win propelled the Tigers to their second national championship of the 2-aughts, and they became the first team with more than one loss to win a BCS title. At the time, Mark Richt was a ball of title-campaignin' energy, telling each and every reporter he could drag into earshot that Georgia deserved a bid because of their BCS ranking.

As an SEC fan, I always felt Richt's argument was facetious at best. Georgia ended the year playing their best football in recent memory, but to take a 2-loss team who hadn't even won their division over the SEC champion (with one additional win on their record) was never going to fly.

I'm not a huge fan of the BCS, but they got it right last year.

South Carolina head coach Spurrier launched a pay-for-subscription website last year, but it didn't go far. The website, which charged $99.95 per year, featured 'inside information' directly from the OBC himself but slipped under the waves when site operator Champion Technologies went out of business in February.

Undeterred, the OBC is going to try again. This time the price will be more accommodating to the average fan -- $49.95 per year or $4.95 per month -- and will feature more inside looks at Gamecock football.

The site will feature a staple of last year's site: the 'Ask HBC' section, where fans type their questions and get them answered by Spurrier. The video playbook also returns as Spurrier and his assistants break down key plays from the most-recent game to give fans an inside look.

Hey, that's really cool. Watching the master himself break down football plays? I'd be all over that. And...

Planned features include having Spurrier miked up while playing a round of golf plus construction updates on the expansion of the team's training room at Williams-Brice Stadium. Scott said a member of the training staff will talk about what the improvements will mean for USC's athletes.

Golf's great. So are construction updates... but shouldn't that stuff run on Lincoln Financial? Anyway, check it out for yourself at SpurrierHBC.com. And tell 'em FanHouse sent you.

Being a neuron inside Charlie Weis' cranium has to be good for a wild ride. After a 3-9 season (and let's be honest here, Weis was lucky to get to three) Weis is irrationally exuberant about 2009. He's "privately" expecting a 9 to 12 victory season for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

This isn't exactly rock solid stuff. Detroit Free Press picked up the story from Blue and Gold Illustrated, an Irish beat site. But it's still entertaining.

"From what I'm hearing around the way, Weis is privately projecting anywhere from nine to 12 victories this year. And yes, a 12-1 mark would equal the biggest turnaround (+8.5 games by Hawaii from 1998-99) in major college football history. But given the schedule, it's not unrealistic.

"The only regular-season game in which Notre Dame figures to be a serious underdog is the finale at USC, so Weis could conceivably have an 11-0 team heading out there if everything comes together. At that point, anything's possible. (Kevin Garnett even said so.)"

9 wins would be astounding. 12 would be fall-off-the-couch, spaz-out, never-happen-in-a-million-years amazing. Still, though, doesn't this kinda sorta fit with Weis' M.O.? He took a potshot at Michigan in April, and said recently that he could get "hoodlums and thugs and win tomorrow, but I won't do it that way." And don't forget Weis' "schematic advantage" that he brings to every Irish game! Ubersized dreams of grandeur for '08? Why not?

Surprise! Fresh off the hot seat, Phil Fulmer joins the Big Boy SEC Coaches Club thanks to a one million dollar raise. Fulmer's new contract is worth an average of nearly 3 million dollars per year through 2014 thanks to yearly -- and automatic -- $150k bumps. Fulmer will also get a chance to win additional bonuses for winning an SEC championship ($350,000) or a national title ($850,000). Fulmer's new salary puts him in league with contemporaries such as Les Miles, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban, all of whom own one national title in the aughts of the new millenium.

What other conference rewards one of its middling coaches with a million dollar pay raise?

Oh, sure... stop squawking. I know: Fulmer won his division in 2007, and he managed to get the Vols to the double-digit win category (10, to be precise) to boot. He has a national title on his resume. And he has a great overall record: as a head coach he's won 147 games, losing only 45. And he's a sterling 87-27 in the hypercompetitive SEC.

With Rich Rodriguez taking over the Michigan football program from Lloyd Carr there are going to be plenty of changes made in Ann Arbor. Obviously, the biggest change the team and Rich will have to make is implement ing an entire new offensive system with a bunch of players who weren't recruited for it. That's not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do, but luckily the Wolverines early season schedule consists of cupcakes like Utah, Miami (OH), and Notre Dame. There isn't an Appalachian State in the bunch, so the Wolverines will have some time to adjust.

Another big change will come on Sunday mornings, as Rodriguez has no plans to appear on "Michigan Replay", a popular postgame show that's been running for 33 years.

The Michigan football coach's show, which reviewed the previous game and looked ahead, will no longer be on the air Sunday mornings.

Rodriguez has said he's not interested in hanging around after games to tape a show because he would rather use the time visiting with recruits and spending time with his family.

Not to fear, Michigan fans, just because "Michigan Replay" is going the way of the single wing formation doesn't mean there won't be a new show. Instead of having a weekly show taped after each game to review it and look forward to next week's game, the school is going to produce a weekly preview show.

What it's going to be called, or when and where it will be aired have not been announced yet.

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in the history of Big Ten football.

Of all the ephemera associated with college football, probably the worst is that dreadful institution, the coach's TV show. While I can hardly claim to have seen them all, the ones I have seen have been (a) pretty much all the same, and (b) terrible. The production values are just a notch above something you'd see on the public access channel. The game film is nothing but the highlights your local news showed the night of the game. The commentary from the coach is usually empty of any non-obvious content. And you just know they only pick the fat, juicy hanging curveballs for the "Ask the Coach" segment. The shows are just a way to generate some additional income for the coach, because as we all know, college football coaches at the Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision level don't get paid very well.

So today we turn our attention to what might be the only interesting moment in the entire history of these wretched programs. It involves a coach who ... well, he made a rather curious decision about how to remind people that the season wasn't over yet.

Every program has some turnover when there is a coaching change. There are players dissatisfied with the new system, personalities clash, promises made by the old regime are no longer valid, academics can always be an issue.

That's fine, but turning over a quarter of the roster in a little more than 12 months is ridiculous. Especially when a team goes from 12-1 and winning the Orange Bowl to 6-6 and home for the holidays. That appears to be what has happened at Louisville in the year after Bobby Petrino left and Steve Kragthorpe took control.

The Cardinals' beat writer from the Louisville Courier-Journal listed 21 underclassmen who have left the football team from the spring of 2007 to June 2008. While his list included a couple of players who left early for the NFL, it is still a crazy number.

• 4 players had to quit due to medical conditions.
• 6 were simply dismissed from the team.
• 8 transferred, left the program or quit the team.
• 1 was an academic casualty.

Add in the 17 seniors who graduated and that comes to 38 players out of the Louisville program in Kragthorpe's first year. There's winnowing out players not on-board with a new system, and then there's clearcutting.

Louisville brought in a 22-man recruiting class. That leaves 16 open scholarships coming into this season. They have roughly 20 scholarship seniors on the 2008 roster. The NCAA limits the number of scholarships to be given to a recruiting class in a given year to 25. It's going to be a while before Louisville gets close to its limits.

At least the walk-ons should get rewarded this season.

Ridiculous. I realize Vandy is a private school and they provide a valuable service to the SEC in helping with the conference graduations rates. Still, if they aren't going to actually pay their football coach over $1 million dollars, there's a problem. Sylvester Croom just got his pay pushed into the seven figure zone. Now Bobby Johnson is the only SEC coach still earning a paltry 6 figure salary. Keep up.

Les Miles, LSU, $3,750,000
Nick Saban, Alabama, $3,750,000
Urban Meyer, Florida, $3,250,000
Bobby Petrino, Arkansas, $2,850,000
Mark Richt, Georgia, $2,800,000
Tommy Tuberville, Auburn, $2,800,000
Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee, $2,050,000
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina, $1,750,000
Sylvester Croom, Mississippi State, $1,700,000
Houston Nutt, Ole Miss, $1,700,000
Rich Brooks, Kentucky, $1,600,000
Bobby Johnson, Vanderbilt, $950,000

Then again, Johnson is the only SEC coach not to be automatically placed on a hot seat after a losing season.

After seeing mixed success as a head coach for Georgia Tech, Alabama, and Kentucky, Bill Curry found a home at ESPN. The former NFL offensive lineman and longtime coach spent ten years with the Worldwide Leader, serving primarily as a college football game and studio analyst.

The itch to coach, however, has returned for the 65-year-old Curry, and he's going back. Curry will be named the first head football coach in Georgia State history Thursday. The Atlanta-based school is starting up a football program in 2010. They'll compete in Division I-AA (er, FCS) and play home games at the Georgia Dome. Similar to the Atlanta Falcons, GSU will probably fail to sell the place out most weekends.

Curry has a familiar face helping him start the program. Dan Reeves, the former NFL player and head coach, has helped raise over $1 million for the startup program. He has given his endorsement to the reported hire.

Reeves said he was not part of the selection process but said "I can tell you this, I think that is a heck of a choice, a great deal for Georgia State, if that is the case.

"I think Bill will do a super job. He's got a great reputation. You couldn't ask for anyone better to start Georgia State's program. He's got college experience, he has recruited and he lieves in Atlanta. I think that's fantastic."