College Football Coaches Less Popular Than Their School's Basketball Coach
Every college athletic program strives to have across-the-board success, with the ultimate goal to be the most accomplished in the big-time sports of football and men's basketball. Being among the best in both of those sports not only provides large amounts of publicity—it also helps greatly with the bottom line.
It's becoming more and more prevalent to see schools that previously were known as only basketball schools or football schools to be doing well in both sports. For instance, of the 16 schools that are still alive in the NCAA tournament, nine of the 14 that have FBS programs played in bowl games, including two of the New Year's Six games.
In most cases, the football program (and its coach) remain the most popular ones on campus. Having it the other way remains the exception, and a notable one at that, but there are a number of schools where the basketball coach has much greater popularity, and by comparison, the football coach toils in relative anonymity.
First-Year Coaches
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A whopping 26 FBS schools changed coaches since the end of last season, and that's not including ones who promoted interim coaches tabbed during the 2015 campaign to remain on in a permanent basis. In these cases, the new hires come in with an instant boost of notoriety, brought on by a combination of what they've done in previous jobs and what they're hoping to accomplish in their new gig.
After a year or so, we'll see just how popular they end up being at their school and whether they can remain at the top of the popularity food chain. It won't be so easy for these guys, all of whom are taking over football programs at schools where the basketball team is currently two wins away from a Final Four:
Dino Babers, Syracuse
Bronco Mendenhall, Virginia
Matt Campbell, Iowa State
D.J. Durkin, Maryland
David Beaty, Kansas
2 of 10
Year at school: 2nd
Record: 0-12
David Beaty has more-pressing goals than trying to become as popular as Kansas basketball coach Bill Self. Winning an actual game is at the top of that list.
The Jayhawks haven't won since November 2014, before Beaty came on board to take over the worst power-conference program in the FBS. Their best chance to win was in Beaty's debut, against FCS South Dakota State, but that resulted in a 41-38 loss to extend what is now a 15-game skid.
No matter what Beaty is able to accomplish, though, trying to get on Self's level just isn't realistic. Kansas has won 12 consecutive Big 12 regular-season titles, and in his 13 seasons he's made two Final Fours and won a national title. The Jayhawks are the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament and considered the favorite to win it all in April.
Kansas has no expectation of getting football to be as popular as basketball; it just wants to be competitive on the gridiron. That's where Beaty's focus is, not on trying to compete for attention.
David Cutcliffe, Duke
3 of 10
Year at school: 9th
Record: 92-82
David Cutcliffe is two months removed from leading Duke to its first bowl win since 1961. Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is less than a year removed from his fifth national title and has the Blue Devils in the Sweet 16 for the 23rd time.
It's very much an apples-and-oranges thing in Durham, North Carolina, where Cutcliffe has done wonders to prop up a long-downtrodden football program, but he'll never be able to match Krzyzewski's success. Nor should he be asked to, since he's already done so much.
Fox Sports' Bruce Feldman called Cutcliffe's success with Duke "one of football's best coaching jobs in the past 25 years," having won eight or more games the last three seasons compared to the 13 wins the Blue Devils had in the nine years prior to his arrival in 2008.
But Duke is one of the cornerstones of college basketball, and thus the only way the football program will come close is if it's a a perennial national title contender. It would be like asking new Alabama basketball coach Avery Johnson to go toe to toe with Nick Saban for popularity and notoriety.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Bob Diaco, Connecticut
4 of 10
Year at school: 3rd
Record: 8-17
Connecticut saw major improvement on the football field from its first season under Bob Diaco and the second, getting into a bowl game for the first time since 2011. That's also a significant year in the Huskies' basketball lore, since it was the last one in which Hall of Fame basketball coach Jim Calhoun won a national title.
His successor, Kevin Ollie, has already achieved the same feat, winning the 2014 championship in his second year on the job. It kind of makes what Diaco did in Year 2 seem pretty minuscule, doesn't it?
Basketball is king at UConn, and not just on the men's side. The Huskies' women's team is trying to win its fourth consecutive national title and is riding a 71-game win streak, having previously won 90 in a row.
Football has only been at the FBS level at the school since 2000, and in that time the basketball teams have combined to win 12 national titles.
Larry Fedora, North Carolina
5 of 10
Year at school: 5th
Record: 32-20
Larry Fedora led North Carolina to its first ACC title game appearance in program history this past season, nearly knocking off national finalist Clemson in the process. The 11 wins the Tar Heels had in 2015 tie for the most in school history.
But, like most years in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, what the Heels accomplished on the football field is again being trumped by the basketball team. Basketball coach Roy Williams has piloted UNC to both the ACC regular-season and conference tournament titles and is a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. He's looking to get the Heels back to their first Final Four since 2009, when he won his second national championship at the school.
Fedora's success is drawing praise and recently earned him a seven-year contract extension. But the only way he and his team share the same stage with Williams and the basketball team is in how each squad's uniforms incorporate UNC's penchant for argyle.
Darrell Hazell, Purdue
6 of 10
Year at school: 4th
Record: 6-30
Purdue's basketball team was one of the unlucky ones to go out far earlier than expected from the NCAA tournament, losing to upstart Arkansas-Little Rock in the first round last week. The Boilermakers had their most wins in five years, but by having their season end already it will go down in the books as a major disappointment.
Darrell Hazell would love to be in a position to come up short in the postseason, because that would mean he'd actually won enough to get there.
Hazell's best year with Purdue was in 2014, when he went 3-9 overall and 1-7 in the Big Ten. He's won just two conference games in three years, and at almost any other FBS school that would be grounds for termination. Instead, he's in the middle of spring ball ahead of what he and Purdue fans hope will be a much better year.
But if it doesn't go well, they'll know that basketball will be just around the corner, and head coach Matt Painter has the Boilermakers established as a contender in the Big Ten. And as long as that's the case, Purdue football will remain in the background.
Rocky Long, San Diego State
7 of 10
Year at school: 6th
Record: 43-23
The job Rocky Long has done at San Diego State has been tremendous, taking the program to a bowl game in all five of his seasons (and winning the Mountain West title this past year) after the Aztecs had gone bowling once in the previous 12 years. But in a pro sports town that is desperately trying to hold onto its NFL team, having collegiate success on the gridiron only earns so much attention.
Especially since SDSU has already witnessed a reclamation project on the basketball court. Head coach Steve Fisher took over one of the worst programs in Division I in 1999 and has led it to eight NCAA tournament appearances (it had been dancing just three times before that) and a pair of Sweet 16s. Fisher has built up the Aztecs to the point that not making it into the tourney this year was more noteworthy than what Long did in the fall, when SDSU went 11-3 and finished with 10 consecutive wins.
It doesn't help that SDSU plays football off campus at Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers, where it rarely can fill half the 71,000 seats. Fisher's basketball team regularly sells out 12,414-seat Viejas Arena, which is on campus.
Rich Rodriguez, Arizona
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Year at school: 5th
Record: 33-20
It's not too far-fetched to say Rich Rodriguez has been the most successful football coach in Arizona history, at least in terms of performance at the start of his tenure. No other coach has led the Wildcats to four bowl games in his first four seasons—predecessor Mike Stoops only went bowling three times in eight years—and Rodriguez led them to their first title of any kind (the Pac-12 South in 2014) since sharing the Pac-10 crown in 1993.
Arizona is in the middle of spring practice right now, yet all anyone interested in the school's athletics cared about this past week was the basketball team's first-round exit from the NCAA tournament and the inaccurate reports that Sean Miller was considering leaving to coach his alma mater at Pittsburgh.
So it goes in Tucson, Arizona, where even Rodriguez's unprecedented early success in football is perpetually overshadowed by even the most minute of basketball happenings. Only until recently did the football team have its offices and training facilities in its own stadium, having previously operated out basketball's McKale Center.
Mark Stoops, Kentucky
9 of 10
Year at school: 4th
Record: 12-24
Being at Kentucky is both a blessing and a curse for Mark Stoops. Because of the Wildcats' lineage as one of college basketball's true blue bloods—and not just because of their color scheme—Stoops knows that he has the luxury of being able to work on improving the football program in small, gradual steps. At almost any other SEC school, he would have been on the hot seat after his second year, if not earlier.
But even if Stoops gets Kentucky to a respectable level in football, he's always going to play second fiddle to basketball despite being in the most football-obsessed part of the country. The Commonwealth is the outlier to that, however, since it's the only state in SEC country where hoops is bigger. Much bigger.
The term “Big Blue Nation” refers to all Kentucky fans, but it mostly means those who follow basketball. Which is basically all of them. And why not, as the Wildcats are a perennial contender on the court under head coach John Calipari and have been so for decades. The school has eight national titles, second only to UCLA's 11.
Kevin Wilson, Indiana
10 of 10
Year at school: 6th
Record: 20-41
Indiana's patience with what Kevin Wilson was trying to achieve paid off, as the Hoosiers reached their first bowl game since 2007 this past season. However, the win that clinched bowl eligibility—Nov. 28 against rival Purdue—didn't get as much attention as it should have because most Indiana fans were still steaming over the basketball team's 1-2 performance at the Maui Invitational a few days earlier.
Hoosiers hoops coach Tom Crean has his team in the Sweet 16, after winning the Big Ten regular-season title, yet any time he slips or struggles it's front-page news. Wilson's exploits, good or bad, are just as often below the fold or on an inside page as they are the top story in Bloomington, Indiana, and the surrounding areas.
Indiana hasn't won a national title in basketball since 1987, but that was the program's fifth and thus cemented its place among the game's greats. Crean, who has three Sweet 16s and two conference titles in his eight seasons, is constantly being compared to his predecessors, something Wilson doesn't have to deal with since the average Indiana fan probably couldn't tell you who coached before him.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
