College Football: The 15 Worst Coaching Hires in College History
With spring practices coming to a close and the 2011 NFL draft now in the rear view, the world of college football is set to enter its late spring/early summer dormancy period, leaving plenty of time for new coaches across the country to do more than just twiddle their thumbs in anticipation of their first games at their new institutions.
From Brady Hoke at Michigan to Will Muschamp at Florida to Al Golden at Miami, there's no shortage of coaches eager to establish legacies at schools all over the nation.
Of course, not all of those legacies will turn out to be good ones in the end. After all, the sport of college football is no stranger to bad coaching hires, even—and perhaps especially—at the biggest powerhouses in the game.
That being the case, let's have a look at 15 of the worst moves made by athletic directors to fill their football vacancies, in no particular order.
Dan Hawkins, Colorado
1 of 15
Kicking off the list is one of the most recent casualties of the annual coaching carousel—Dan Hawkins.
Colorado hired Hawkins out of Boise State, where he helped to keep going the tremendous success established by his predecessor and Arizona State failure Dirk Koetter.
After posting a 53-11 mark on the Smurf Turf, Hawkins took his coaching talents to Boulder, where he promptly fell flat to the tune of a 19-39 record in just over four and a half seasons.
Hawkins was survived at CU by his son Cody, who finished out his senior season as the Buffaloes' starting quarterback.
Paul Hackett, USC
2 of 15
Colorado will begin play in the Pac-12 next year, which will look significantly different from the old Pac-10 that Paul Hackett knew when he was at USC.
Hackett had the unenviable task of succeeding legendary coach John Robinson after Robinson's second stint with the Trojans, though Hackett wasn't exactly a horrible coach by any means—at least as far as wins and losses are concerned.
At most schools, a record of 19-18 in three seasons would be forgivable. However, at USC, a school with a long and storied tradition of football greatness that had fallen on hard times, that kind of ho-hum performance was unacceptable.
Hackett was hacked in November of 2000 in a somewhat controversial move that saw 'SC buy out the last two years of his five-year, $3.5 million deal.
Once Hackett was gone, Trojans AD Mike Garrett went out and hired some nobody named Pete Carroll to take over a program with some schlub of a quarterback named Carson Palmer waiting in the wings.
I wonder how that turned out...
Rick Neuheisel, UCLA
3 of 15
Certainly better than Rick Neuheisel's tenure at UCLA has thus far.
Neuheisel returned to Westwood amidst tremendous fanfare, taking over his alma mater following the largely underwhelming regime of Karl Dorrell and his revolving door of assistant coaches.
With Norm Chow and DeWayne Walker by his side, Neuheisel was set to end the "football monopoly" in Los Angeles, though the full-page ad he took out in the LA Times clearly wasn't enough to reverse the trend.
Since taking over, Neuheisel's Bruins have gone 15-22 in three seasons, with one bowl win sandwiched between ugly 4-8 campaigns.
If Slick Rick can't get his team to shape up in 2011, he'll likely be shipping out before the calendar turns to 2012.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Walt Harris, Stanford
4 of 15
Then again, the folks at Stanford likely wouldn't have minded if Walt Harris had been at least as "successful" as Neuheisel has been thus far at UCLA.
Harris' stint in Palo Alto was nothing short of pathetic, as he lasted only two seasons thanks to a 1-11 record in 2006 after coming to the Cardinal from Pitt, where he guided the Panthers to a respectable 52-44 record in eight seasons.
Luckily for long-suffering Cardinal fans, Stanford AD Bob Bowlsby made memories of Harris' failure fall back into the recesses of their collective football conscience when he hired Jim Harbaugh out of the University of San Diego.
Tyrone Willingham, Washington
5 of 15
Harris had been brought in to clean up the mess left behind by Buddy Teevens who, in turn, replace Tyrone Willingham at Stanford after Willingham bolted for a short-lived coaching job at Notre Dame.
And though one could include Willingham on here for his work with the Fighting Irish, his days in South Bend look positively golden compared to the doom and gloom of his tenure at the University of Washington.
Ty's teams in Seattle compiled an abysmal record of 11-37 in four seasons, the last of which saw the Huskies go 0-12.
Needless to say, the folks at UW couldn't find an axe big enough with which to do away with Willingham on the coaching chopping block after that winless 2008 season.
Charlie Weis, Notre Dame
6 of 15
Willingham was succeeded at Notre Dame by Charlie Weis, who, to be fair, had a decent record during his time in South Bend, posting 35 wins against 27 losses.
Granted, Weis' overall record was buoyed significantly by the success he had in his first two seasons, in which he led the Fighting Irish to back-to-back BCS bowls.
Both of which he lost while coaching players that Willingham had coaxed to the Golden Dome.
That fact became apparent in 2007, when the Irish went 3-9, posting the most losses in a single season by any team in the history of Notre Dame football.
This, of course, after Weis had proclaimed himself a coaching genius and Notre Dame had extended his contract until doomsday, which evidently came early when Weis was fired on November 30th, 2009.
George O'Leary, Notre Dame
7 of 15
Then again, at least Charlie Weis had the opportunity to actually coach a few games in South Bend.
George O'Leary wasn't so lucky.
O'Leary left Georgia Tech in 2001 to become the head coach at Notre Dame, only to be fired shortly thereafter when the school discovered a number of glaring inaccuracies, including claims that he had earned a master's degree from "NYU-Stony Brook" and that he had lettered in football while at the University of New Hampshire.
Of course, resume padding is nothing new in the working world. However, when it's done so flippantly, and in pursuit of a job as prestigious as the head coaching position at Notre Dame, such fudging of the facts is ill-advised, to say the least.
Mike Price, Alabama
8 of 15
Like O'Leary at Notre Dame, Mike Price was fired from his post as the head coach at Alabama before he had coached a single meaningful game in Tuscaloosa.
However, unlike O'Leary, Price was let go for things he did rather than things he didn't do. According to a story published in Sports Illustrated, Price allegedly had sex with a stripper at a hotel in Pensacola, Florida in the spring of 2003, which he denied while acknowledging that he was rather intoxicated on the night in question.
Price went on to sue SI for defamation and libel, settling out of court in 2005, though that victory did little to make up for the fact that 'Bama was free to fire Price without any financial repercussions, as Price failed to actually sign a contract with the university before the incident in question.
Whoops.
Tim Brewster, Minnesota
9 of 15
Certainly, the good folks at the University of Minnesota must wish they could've avoided the disaster of the Tim Brewster era so easily.
Brewster came to the fore after coaching tight ends for the Denver Broncos, though that experience did little to prepare him for the failure he was soon to endure with the Golden Gophers.
The Illinois alum went 15-30 in three-and-a-half seasons in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, fitting in two bowl-losing seasons between a 1-11 campaign and a 1-6 start in 2010.
And, to add insult to injury, Brewster couldn't even get his son Clint to commit to Minnesota coming out of high school.
Imagine the difficulty he had convincing other people's kids to come play for him.
Rich Rodriguez, Michigan
10 of 15
That being said, at least Brewster's hiring didn't rub people the wrong way like Rodriguez's did at Michigan.
The former head man at West Virginia, where he led his alma mater to four Big East championships, arrived in Ann Arbor in 2007 as everyone's second choice behind LSU's Les Miles, a Michigan alum who played for legendary coach Bo Schembechler.
From this point in history, it's difficult to figure out what the athletic department at Michigan saw in Rodriguez, who had practically no ties to the program whatsoever and brought with him a spread offense that was practically anathema in the Big Ten.
The move to hire Rich Rod became even more of a blunder in the aftermath of his departure from Morgantown, which saw his split from West Virginia devolve into a legal bloodbath of breached contracts and buyouts.
In the end, Michigan ended up on the hook for $2.5 million of a settlement between Rodriguez and WVU, though that somewhat startling sum pales in comparison to the damage wrought by his three forgettable seasons with the Maize and Blue.
Bill Callahan, Nebraska
11 of 15
The failure of Rich Rod at Michigan could very easily have been avoided had the folks in charge at Ann Arbor paid any attention to the mishap at Nebraska known otherwise as the Bill Callahan era.
Callahan landed in Lincoln in 2004 after being fired from his post with the Oakland Raiders, bringing with him, like Rodriguez's spread, a style of play that no Big Red loyalists cared to welcome into their midst—the West Coast offense.
Callahan's offenses put up big numbers in the passing game, though those posted in the win-loss column left something to be desired.
After four seasons and only one bowl win, the 'Huskers administration gave Callahan his walking papers and replaced him with Bo Pelini, who has since returned the program to its traditional winning ways.
John Blake, Oklahoma
12 of 15
Even Oklahoma, Nebraska's former Big 8 rival, has had its issues with bad coaching hires.
One need look no further back than 1996, when the Sooners brought in John Blake, an alumnus of the university who had been a defensive coach for the program before joining former OU head man Barry Switzer as a defensive line coach for the Dallas Cowboys.
Blake's Super Bowl success in Dallas hardly followed him back to Norman, where his Sooners went 12-22 in three mundane seasons.
Oklahoma has since returned to national prominence under the guidance of Bob Stoops. Blake, on the other hand, has had his fair share of problems after destroying the school's recruiting records upon departure, as he became a central figure in a recruiting scandal at North Carolina involving noted sports agent Gary Wichard.
Greg Robinson, Syracuse
13 of 15
Like Blake, Greg Robinson became a hot name in coaching circles after establishing himself as a defensive guru in the NFL with the New York Jets, the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs before working his magic at the University of Texas in 2004.
Somehow, the inconsistent performance of the Longhorns defense that year earned Robinson enough praise to follow up Paul Pasqualoni at Syracuse, where he attempted to rebuild the foundation of the program by installing entirely new offensive and defensive schemes.
Unfortunately for the Orange, that foundation quickly crumbled, as Robinson's teams stumbled to an abysmal 10-37 record in four seasons.
Following his firing, Robinson landed on his feet at Michigan, where he served as Rich Rodriguez's defensive coordinator before once again being shown the door, along with Rich Rod, in 2011.
Steve Kragthorpe, Louisville
14 of 15
Robinson's hiring at Syracuse is far from the only case of poor coaching choices in the Big East in recent years.
For example, Steve Kragthorpe was the pick to replace Bobby Petrino at Louisville less than 48 hours after Petrino departed for his ill-fated stint with the Atlanta Falcons.
Relatively speaking, it didn't take much longer for the folks in Louisville to realize they'd jumped the gun just a bit. Krag lasted three years in Kentucky, posting a 15-21 record before being forced to vacate the Blue Grass State.
Ted Roof, Duke
15 of 15
At one point, Coach Krag had on his staff at Louisville a man with a vastly more unfortunate coaching record than his own—Ted Roof.
Roof took over the football team at Duke after the midseason dismissal of head coach Carl Franks in 2003 and, by virtue of leading the Blue Devils to two wins in the team's final three games, earned himself the full-time gig.
Apparently, taking the pressure off of Roof wasn't the best thing for Duke, as the Devils managed only four more wins over the course of Roof's four full seasons as the head man in Durham.
Then again, no one seemed to care about how mightily the football program was struggling so long as Coach K was having his way with opponents on the basketball court.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
