Best Coaching Hires To Date:

Terry Bowden, Akron-At first I wondered why the Zips would fire a coach after only 2 years unless they had a big name coach in hand and obviously Terry Bowden is a big name. He had the undefeated season at Auburn, has had some recent success at Div II North Alabama and is the biggest name here since Gerry Faust and will have more success than what Faust had here.

Rich Rodriguez, Arizona-At each of Rodriguez’ last two stops he did not have a mobile QB in place when he took over and naturally was under intense pressure from the outset at Michigan. He will have no such problem here as Matt Scott has plenty of experience, is a mobile QB that can also throw and former HC Stoops did him a favor by redshirting him this past season.

Tim Beckman, Illinois-I met Beckman a couple of years ago at the MAC Media Days and immediately was impressed and clearly he had a lot of success at Toledo. I think he steps into a tremendous situation here benefiting from Ron Zook’s solid recruiting classes and remember Urban Meyer won a national title at Florida just two years after Zook left with most of Zook’s players and I think like Meyer, Beckman will get the most out of the available talent.

Charlie Weis, Kansas-First, Weis will not have anywhere near the pressure he had at Notre Dame. While the Florida offense this year certainly wasn’t great under his tutelage keep in mind that he had to start a 3rd string QB at LSU. I think Weis will be able to bring in the type of recruits he needs to be successful with his NFL background and it helps that he already had success in this area of the country with the Chiefs just two years ago giving him credibility. I think Weis has much greater success at this stop and even if he had the same record he had a Notre Dame, Jayhawk fans will be happy after going just 5-19 the last two years.

Larry Fedora, North Carolina-I got a chance to meet Fedora at the CUSA Media Days two years ago and immediately his energy and enthusiasm was noticeable. He likes to play aggressively on both offense and defense and in his mind there is no obstacle he can’t overcome. NC had a tough situation this year firing Butch Davis a day before Fall Camp started with an interim coach all year but Davis has the talent stockpiled for Fedora who will bring out the best of them.

Urban Meyer, Ohio St-Despite the bowl ban for next year, Meyer is set up for big success here. He is a proven HC at the highest level in CFB with 2 national titles and he inherits a QB tailor made for his offense. Meyer has already had a lot of success on the recruiting trail picking up several players who were already committed to other schools and Buckeye fans have to be excited thru the roof for the future.

Jim Mora Jr, UCLA-I thought Mora did more than I thought he would at Atlanta and Seattle and while he has been out of touch with college football for awhile I like the job he did at the NFL level more than what cross-town rival USC was getting when they hired Pete Carroll back in 2001 which is what UCLA is obviously trying to replicate here. I do not think Neuheisel was a bad coach as he could not keep his QB’s and OL healthy. Neuheisel had the Bruins pointed in the right direction and I think Mora gets them there.

Mike Leach, Washington St-Leach fits in perfectly here as Pullman is much like Lubbock in that it is out in the middle of no where which lessens the media scrutiny. Leach also inherits 3-4 quality passing QB’s from an offense that avg’d 300+ pass ypg LY and I believe he will benefit from Wulff who was starting to turn the program around after inheriting a bad situation. I believe Wulff would have been successful in 2012 had he been given another year and clearly Leach will be the beneficiary as the Cougars could primed for a bowl game. 

With six bowl games down, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look at how the The Bowl Confidence Contest is shaping up. Congratulations to the top player gman57 who is just one of 20 players out of 3000 to go 6-0 so far. However many times the players that rank in the top early are those that wagered the most pts and if you are not on the top leaderboard right now, naturally you still have plenty of opportunities to rise up/fall down the standings in the coming weeks. I am pretty happy to be sitting at 5-1 with only 5 pts lost as many of my higher confidence games are later.

Top 10 Overall Standings