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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Hot Coaches

The definition of a "hot" coach may be subjective, but so is the path to becoming one.
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His phone is ringing off the hook. A university president or an athletic director is calling, wondering if he's interested in making a big career move. The media is calling, asking if he's had any official contact or offers. Potential assistant coaches are calling, looking for a job.

He's the coach at the top of the "hot" list. He's the one on everybody's list and lips. He's the media magnet, the answer to somebody's prayers, the savior in waiting, the guy who can come to your school and salvage a bad situation or take a good situation and turn it into a championship. Like they say in the Billboard Music Charts, he's climbing the charts with a bullet.

He's either a head college coach who's captured the attention of the NFL, a head coach at a program where consistent success is not a given, an offensive or defensive coordinator at a successful major program. Occasionally, he's an assistant without coordinator status who just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

In 1998, he was Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops turning down an offer from Iowa, his alma mater, to become the head coach at Oklahoma. And he was Tulane head coach Tommy Bowden moving to Clemson, and Ole Miss head coach Tommy Tuberville moving to Auburn.

No two coaches were hotter than Stoops or Bowden in 1998. Their names were connected with nearly every job opening, and Bowden even found himself on the search list for two rival schools in the same state: Clemson and South Carolina. It wasn't a question of "if" or "when" with Stoops. It was simply a matter of "where."

And if these two coaches experience success in their current jobs, you can bet their prosperity will trickle down to their top assistants. Check out the sidebar accompanying this story, and you'll find that Oklahoma offensive coordinator Mike Leach, Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops and Clemson offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez are included among the coaches likely to join the hot list in the near future. And when Spike Dykes chooses to retire at Texas Tech, don't be surprised if Clemson assistant Rodney Allison is in a good position to return to his alma mater as the Red Raiders' head coach.

After all this, you must be asking yourself: what does it take to become the next hot coach? The most reliable path is to become the head coach at Wyoming.

OK, so we're being facetious, but think about the program's history: If a coach has any success at all at Wyoming, he automatically moves to the hot list. Just ask Bob Devaney, Fred Akers, Dennis Erickson, Pat Dye and Joe Tiller. They've all spent time at Wyoming before moving on to bigger and better jobs. If current Cowboys coach Dana Dimel does the same thing, he'll most likely be the next coach to hop that fast train out of Laramie.

Of course, not everybody can be the head coach at Wyoming all at once, but there are several other roads to the top of the hot list.

The most reliable way for a college coach to get his name on the hot list is to experience sudden or surprising success in his current job as a head coach. When someone takes over a moribund program and turns it into a winner, people notice - people such as university presidents, athletic directors, major boosters, fans and the media. And when those people notice, that means you've officially arrived on the hot list. That's how someone like Mack Brown goes from Tulane to North Carolina, and from North Carolina to Texas.

Similar stories are plentiful.

At the college level, John Cooper won at Tulsa, and rode that success to Arizona State before taking over at Ohio State. Current Missouri coach Larry Smith won at Tulane before Arizona came calling, and continued success led to the Southern Cal coaching job. Steve Spurrier turned Duke into a winner before he got the call from Florida. Tuberville overcame adversity and achieved surprising success at Ole Miss, and jumped at the chance to take over at Auburn. Dennis Franchione turned his success at Division II Pitt State, then at New Mexico into the head coaching job at Texas Christian. Gerry DiNardo never had a winning season at Vanderbilt, but LSU figured a 19-25 record in four years at Vandy qualified him for a bigger, better job.

For coaches with their eye on the NFL, it helps to win national championships at the college level. Jimmy Johnson won two national titles at Miami before the Dallas Cowboys came calling, Dennis Erickson also won one at Miami, and Bobby Ross won a share of the national championship at Georgia Tech before moving on to the NFL. However, winning a national title isn't a prerequisite; it certainly didn't stop Minnesota's Dennis Green, San Francisco's Steve Mariucci, Jacksonville's Tom Coughlin and San Diego's Mike Riley from becoming NFL head coaches.

But you don't have to be a head coach to earn a spot on the hot list. Sometimes it helps to be a successful assistant for a top program or professional organization.

In the college football ranks, that's how two former Florida defensive coordinators, Bobby Pruett and Bobby Stoops, ended up at Marshall and Oklahoma. That's how two of Bill McCartney's former Colorado assistants, DiNardo and Gary Barnett, ended up earning head coaching jobs at Vanderbilt and Northwestern, before moving on to LSU and Colorado.

The NFL is filled with head coaches who made their reputations as successful coordinators. During the 49ers' success in the early 1990s, offensive coordinator Mike Holgrem and defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes jumped onto the hot list and quickly became head coaches.

In fact, 16 current NFL coaches were coordinators immediately before taking over their present positions, including four that were hired last year: Baltimore's Brian Billick, Chicago's Dick Jauron, Cleveland's Chris Palmer and Kansas City's Gunther Cunningham. Another rookie head coach, Philadelphia's Andy Reid, wasn't even a coordinator with the Packers when the Eagles hired him this year. But it certainly helped that Reid was a long-time offensive assistant under Holgrem, who led the Packers to two Super Bowls before leaving to become the head coach and executive vice president of the Seattle Seahawks.

Then again, you can always combine a little of everything on your resume on your way up the ladder. Riley experienced success at several levels - as a CFL head coach, a World League head coach, a Southern Cal defensive coordinator and Oregon State's head coach - before the San Diego Chargers hired him to be their new head coach this year. Riley finally joined the hot list when he experienced sudden and surprising success at traditional dud Oregon State, where even marginal success was enough to get Riley noticed.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to have the media on your side. Tuberville handled the media effectively as an assistant at Miami, and continued to do so even as a Texas A&M defensive coordinator before he became the head coach at Ole Miss. He enjoyed a positive media reputation throughout the Southeastern Conference, and the media responded with glowing reports of Tuberville's surprising success in rebuilding the Rebels from rubble of NCAA sanctions and probation. That immediately made Tuberille a rumored candidate for just about every job that came open over a two-year period. That, in turn, helped grease his path to the Auburn head coaching job.

It also helps to have an advocate or an agent representing your best interests. At least one college head coach who has moved up the ladder in the last two years had an agent making calls to get his name involved in every opening, even if he wasn't a legitimate candidate. Others have loyal assistants make the same calls and plant the same suggestions. Sometimes they call the media, and sometimes they simply call other assistants to feed a gossip grapevine that spreads quickly throughout most of the coaching business.

Still, not every coach who gets hired made his way to the hot list. Sometimes it's just a matter of being a popular choice at your alma mater, such as Alabama's Mike DuBose or Duke's Carl Franks. Sometimes it helps to be a former assistant with experience in the program, such as USC's Paul Hackett, Northwestern's Randy Walker or Colorado's Barnett. None of those coaches were mentioned as hot coaches when they got their current jobs.

The same can be said of the some of the nation's most successful coaches. Tennessee's Phillip Fulmer, Texas A&M's R.C. Slocum, Michigan's Lloyd Carr, UCLA's Bob Toledo, Syracuse's Paul Pasqualoni and Nebraska's Frank Solich were assistants at their current schools before they were elevated to head coach, but none of them spent much time - if any - on the hot list.

Those coaches are all proof that being on the hot list doesn't guarantee success. You don't have to look very hard to find a few coaches who have gone from the hot list to the hot seat faster than you can say "contract buyout." Here are just a few recent examples from the college ranks:

• In five years, Brad Scott went from the hot list as Florida State's offensive coordinator, to the head coaching job at South Carolina, onto the hot seat and then out the door when he was fired after the 1998 season.

• Terry Bowden went 11-0 in his debut season at Auburn, and six years later he resigned in mid-season after coming up on the wrong end of an internal power struggle with the university's most powerful booster.

• Pat Sullivan went to TCU in 1992, took the Horned Frogs to a bowl game and appeared to have the program pointed in the right direction when he became the leading candidate for the LSU job in 1994. An expensive buyout clause ruined the deal, and Sullivan stayed at TCU until he was fired following the 1997 season.

• Bob Stull was a hot name on several search lists in 1989 after doing what most critics insisted was impossible: turning a perennial loser into a winner at UTEP. But he couldn't repeat the same magic at Missouri, and now he's out of coaching.

It happens in pro football, too, and you don't have to look very far to find a few coaches who found the distance between the hot list and the hot seat is shorter than Mike Ditka's temper.

Remember David Shula? He was the next big thing as a hot, young offensive coordinator, but his fire faded when he lost the Cincinnati Bengals head coaching job during the 1996 season. He now runs his father's steakhouse chain.

Dave Wannstedt and Norv Turner served as the defensive and offensive coordinators, respectively, under Jimmy Johnson when the Dallas Cowboys rose to Super Bowl prominence in the 1990s. The Chicago Bears quickly hired the red-hot Wannstedt in 1993 and the Washington Redskins jumped on Turner's bandwagon in 1994. These days, Wannstedt is a Dolphins assistant under Johnson, and Turner is facing intense heat after going 6-10 in 1998.

What's truly amazing about the current status of Wannstedt and Turner is that most everybody in the coaching profession would tell you these men are excellent coaches. Give them the Broncos or Vikings roster and organizational support, and maybe we're including them in a discussion of the NFL's best coaches. The same could be said for several fired or embattled coaches at the pro or college level.

Most of the coaches who found their names on the hot list reached that point because they were good coaches in the right place at the right time. And that, more than any other factor, is the key to finding your own name on the hot list.






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