Who are the worst college football hires of the last 30 years?

Blake was in no way, shape or form a good hire at the time. The guy had never been a coordinator up to that point and the only reason Switzer recommended him to OU was to get him off his staff in Dallas without having to fire him.

 

Is that the same John Blake who in 2007 told Ndamukong Suh he had reached his peak as a defensive lineman? I can't remember if that was Blake or Callahan.

 

I remember listening to Tirico on the radio a couple years back and he called John Blake "the best assistant coach in the country" and all but cried racism when he said it was such a travesty that he never got a second shot at being a head coach.

I remember meeting a coach who was an assistant under Stoops at OU and he just went off on all the stuff Blake did and how he tried to sabotage the program after he got canned. It was amazing stuff.

 

How about one of the most recent ones. Tim Brewster. Tight ends coach for the Broncos, to Big Ten coach, despite the fact he hadn't even been a coordinator before. Yes, it's the Gophers, but still, it is a Big Ten job.

As for Blake, if anyone's read Skip Bayless's book Hell-Bent, Blake's departure from the Cowboys before the end of the 1995 season is all but credited with being the spark that brought them to the Super Bowl. Blake told Bayless that he heard Aikman call Kevin Williams the n-word. Aikman obviously did not take kindly to the accusation.

 

Mark Duffner at Maryland.

Bill Lewis at Georgia Tech.

Eventually, we will be able to list Lane Kiffin for Tennessee and USC.

 

Blake was also accused of spreading the Aikman is gay rumor.

 

This should be called the "Don Morton" award. Terrible hire. One note, McClain died of a heart attack on a treadmill. I was a Sr at Madison and I remember that day very well.

 

How about Paul Hackett at USC. The Trojans actually had his tenure at Pitt to look back on and still hired him. IIRC, at least when Pitt tabbed him he was still considered to have some potential, to the point where I remember reading an SI writer saying a couple years earlier when he was a 49ers assistant that he was a good bet to be a successful head coach.

Mackovic (at Arizona more than Texas) is a prime example for this thread. I didn't know what they were thinking in Tucson when I heard about that hire.

 

George O'Leary at Notre Dame

 

Glen Mason at Georgia.

 

Hey, same number of wins as losses.

 

Todd Berry at Army.

Had a pretty good record at I-AA, but decided to take an option team that generally would win 4-6 games and make them into a passing team, in spite of all the recruiting obstacles that the service academies have.

Two one-win years, wrapped around a 3-8 record, and a mid-season firing after beginning the year 0-7 did the trick.