There was an interesting nugget inside a St. Petersburg Times piece that ran over the weekend looking at the emails sent to USF regarding their football coaching job when it was open (thanks to a public records request). FSU President T.K. Wetherell wrote to his USF counterpart to recommend Kevin Steele, who's currently Clemson's defensive coordinator. Wetherell reveals that "we were grooming him for Bobby (Bowden)'s job until Nick Sabin (sic) and (Alabama) hired him away". Rumors about Steele being a possible Bowden successor had surfaced in the past, but Wetherell's confirmation of that raises a number of interesting questions:
1. T.K. doesn't know how to spell Saban's name? It's been in all the papers.
2. The first man you thought would be the right guy to fill Bowden's shoes was a man who had just gone 9-36 and 1-31 in conference during his four years as head coach at Baylor?!
3. You thought Steele was the guy to groom for Bowden's job, yet let him leave for a Bama assistant spot? Why would you do that?
4. What are the shared qualities that a linebacker coach with four years of failing head man experience had with your actual Bowden successor Jimbo Fisher, an offensive coordinator and QB coach with zero head coaching time prior to his hire?
By the way, if Steele would have been a good Bowden successor, exactly why has he not received even a sniff from another program for their head coaching job? Rather than aiming high, FSU's president appears to have had lower standards for his football coach hire to replace a legend than most MAC programs do. That's puzzling.
With signing day a week away, all college football coaches are trying to make their classes as good as possible. As a result USC is looking to get in on a kid from Frostproof, who's currently committed to Georgia for college. That's not surprising, but this observation from Frostproof's AD stands out...
"He’s planning to visit Southern Cal next week. Monte Kiffin has been very persistent. He’s probably been in here more than is legal. Of course they don’t pay attention to the rules.”
They don't? Sounds like that's worth a phone call to the NCAA or two. Monte Kiffin won a Super Bowl seven years ago with Tampa Bay. He's got to ask himself sometimes why he left that behind to be involved in this kind of nonsense. Now he gets to deal with kids who say things like this as they're committing...
"I may take other visits, but I don't know for sure. I don't want to say I am, but I'm not going to say I'm not."
Again that's a kid who "committed" to start the week, as he's announcing the news. Is it too much to expect a commitment to last longer than a sneeze?
Mike Leach hasn't seen his name surface for any coaching gigs, but he's been on the move regardless. The former Texas Tech gridiron boss has moved to Key West. The pirate theme should work well down there, and this plays into the eccentric image that Leach benefits from (which may also hold him back). If he sits out a year or two, eventually he'll find a good fit for his return to the sidelines like Colorado.
The Who has announced their setlist for the Super Bowl show. Like a lot of bands working with a reduced window of time, they're going to play a medley of songs and not the full version of any of them. So much for the prop bets that were being offered on what the band would do for an opening number. Not sure what led them to believe "I Can't Explain" would be the probable opener when you consider all the good Who tunes there are to choose from.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Were you at the USC-UK game last night? How'd that happen?
Post a Comment