Big 12 Coaching Ranks Never Stronger
3 comments so far
July 8, 2009 by
Getting wins in the Big 12 has seldom seemed tougher. OU and Texas recruit as well as any teams in the country. And then teams like Texas A&M, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Colorado, Missouri, and Texas Tech that creep into the top 25 of recruiting rankings. Then you’ve got a team like Kansas that overachieves relative to the talent they recruit and Kansas State which can play spoiler to teams even as talented as Texas.
Whether or not you couple recruiting with coaching it’s clear that it’s not just talent that makes the conference so tough. Look at the resumes of the coaches at each school and you’ll find a number of guys that are very accomplished. In fact, it’s hard to remember a time when the coaching ranks of the Big 12 were stronger.
You can start at the top with OU’s Bob Stoops and UT’s Mack Brown. Each has a national championship and seems to win 10-11 games a year. The coaches at Kansas State, Kansas, and Missouri all inherited ailing programs and all took their teams to new heights. Texas Tech’s Mike Leach has become nationally renowned for building a program with a high-powered offense that’s a consistent winner. Bo Pelini arrived with a national championship pedigree and delivered a New Year’s Day bowl victory in his rookie season as a coach. Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy has his teamed ranked in the preseason Top Ten of a number of publications. And while Art Briles, Dan Hawkins and Mike Sherman have struggled in the conference, all of them arrived with impressive head coaching resumes outside the conference. Paul Rhoads might sit alone as the least accomplished or impressive coach in the Big 12, but he actually seems like a good hire given the school’s challenges and that he was part of one of the more successful staffs at Iowa State in the late 1990’s.
Compare it to other power conferences like the SEC that has three coaches with losing career records (including former Iowa State head coach Gene Chizik) and another in Lane Kiffin that looks like a disaster before he’s even coached a game and the Big 12 stacks up pretty well.
But it doesn’t matter how good the coaches are – somebody’s got to lose. Which is why things like talent, the home field environment (and fans who travel) become differentiators. Thankfully, Nebraska is in the best position of any Big 12 North team when it comes to these things. But the coaching had better be top notch, because there won’t be many poorly coached teams on the schedule.
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caveman99 Jul 08 09
I think it will be very telling about this coaching staff when NU goes on the road this year. Most of the year I was impressed with the way the team seemed poised and handled tough situations, coaching plays a big part in that. At times though it looked like the team was out of their element, MU and OU. Maybe the Coaches got too smart for their own good. Bo and Co seemed to show a great ability to learn and adapt quickly last year. Hopefully that pays off this year and I think it will show up on the road at Blacksburg and Columbia. Even a road trip to Waco, TX will show me how good this staff is.
Bill in Iowa Jul 08 09
I wouldn't trade Bo for any coach in the conference. Besides his confident and motivational attitude, what I really like about him is his coaching philosophy. He coaches to his players strengths, he is a disciplinarian but also knows how to have fun, he teaches technique and aggressiveness. He expects his players to make continual improvement. He loves speed and takeaways. He makes good half time adjustments, which I think are a mark of a really good coach. Last year his defense over achieved learning a new system and playing without much LB depth. This year they will easily be a top 20 defense and possibly even crack the top 10 (although that might be hard to do in today's Big 12).
ponderos Jul 19 09
Here's our take on Pelini.
Really like that guy. The fact he's from the Stoops family certainly doesn't hurt.
http://www.windmilltilting.com/ponderos/scouting-nebraska-bo-pelini