Who will be the coach?

Watched a little bit of the Nutt presser on-line. Nutt will not coach the bowl game.

 

Hearing talk of Mike Price going back to Wazzu, made me wonder how many coaches have done well in a second tenure at a school. Mike Riley has done ok at Oregon State, but Walsh failed at Stanford, Robinson wasn't great at USC and Erickson's single season at Idaho wasn't a success.

 

AP story on Nutt is on the wire now. Reading between the line if Nutt wasn't pushed out, he was at least nudged by the chancellor.

 

Great line from the wire story...

Long will direct the search for Nutt's replacement.

 

Jeez, what does Southern Miss expect? One 7-5 season and they release the hounds.

This AP sentence, though completely illogical, tells the story: "Southern Miss' stretch of winning seasons is second only to Florida State (31), Michigan (23), Florida (20) and Virginia Tech (15)."

So it's, um, fifth?

And this: "Bower was 119-82-1 as the school's head coach and had been in the same job longer than all but three coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Only Penn State's Joe Paterno (42), Bobby Bowden (32) of Florida State and Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer (21) have longer tenures with their schools. His only losing seasons came in 1991 and '93."

Either there's something else going on there, or Southern Miss just made a move it is going to deeply regret.

 

I wouldn't say Walsh was a total failure at Stanford. His first season back, they won a share of the Pac-10, the Blockbuster Bowl and were 9th in the final poll.

At a place like Idaho, Erickson shouldn't be measured by one season.

 

Robinson and Walsh both were older when they went back for seconds. Erikson didn't have a big base off which to work.

 

Was Jeff Long responsible for hiring Wannstedt? If so .... duck!!!!!!!

 

Walsh was 60 when he went back. That's old?

 

'Stache Wlatstedt is a Yinzer who played at Pitt and started his coaching career there. He had some bigtime boosters in his pocket, so Long didn't chose him. He just rubberstamped the boosters' choice.

 

Actually, he's had three 7-5 seasons in the last five (courtesy of The Sun-Herald of Biloxi). USM went 9-5 last season.

1991: 4-7

1992: 7-4

1993: 3-7-1

1994: 6-5

1995: 6-5

1996: 8-3 - Conference USA champion

1997: 9-3 - Conference USA champion - defeated Pittsburgh 41-7 in Liberty Bowl

1998: 7-5 - Lost to Idaho 42-35 in Humanitarian Bowl

1999: 9-3 - Conference USA champion - defeated Colorado State 23-17 in Liberty Bowl

2000 - 8-4 - Defeated TCU 28-21 in GMAC Bowl

2001 - 6-5

2002 - 7-6 - Lost to Oklahoma State 33-23 in Houston Bowl

2003 - 9-4 - Conference USA champion - lost to Utah 17-0 in Liberty Bowl

2004 - 7-5 - defeated North Texas 31-10 in New Orleans Bowl

2005 - 7-5 - defeated Arkansas State 31-19 in New Orleans Bowl

2006 - 9-5 - C-USA East Division champion - defeated Ohio 28-7 in GMAC Bowl

2007 - 7-5 - received invitation to Papajohns.com Bowl

All-time record: 119-82-1


Back to Erickson and his one year return to Idaho: IMO, he was just pining for the next big gig. There was no way in hell that he was going to stay for a few years with the Vandals.

 

Erickson at Idaho was akin to a one-nighter with your HS girlfriend at the reunion where you don't even want to stay the night but are too drunk to drive home.

Price back at Wazzu is like Chris Ault at Nevada. They just make sense together.