Ohio State's last coaching search
Bucknuts was definitely in meltdown mode once the search went into the second week.
Jan. 1: Ohio State loses to South Carolina 24-7 in the Outback Bowl.
Jan. 2: Head coach John Cooper fired after 13 seasons (111-43-4).
Jan. 4: Ohio State's advisory committee meets; A day after he wins the national championship Orange Bowl, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops is rumored to be on OSU's wish list.
Jan. 5: Minnesota gives OSU permission to speak with head coach and OSU alumnus Glen Mason. Pittsburgh turns down permission to speak with former Cooper assistant Walt Harris, who says he's not interested.
Jan. 8: Longtime Buckeyes assistant Fred Pagac interviews for the job with AD Andy Geiger while in Atlanta for a coaches convention.
Jan. 9: Mason, Youngstown State head coach Jim Tressel and Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingam interview in Atlanta.
Jan. 10: Former Buckeyes player and Columbus radio host Chris Spielman interviews at Geiger's home.
Jan. 12: Harris takes himself out of consideration.
Jan. 13: Stoops, since rumored for the Cleveland Browns job, tells fans at an Oklahoma basketball game he is staying with the Sooners.
Jan. 14: Willingham, who does not reveal whether he was ever an official candidate, says he's staying at Stanford.
Jan. 15: Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti, previously only mentioned in rumors, tours the Ohio State campus with Geiger.
Jan. 16: Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden withdraws his name from consideration for the Ohio State head coaching job. Bellotti withdraws as well.
Jan. 17: Tressel hired as head coach, and will be introduced Jan. 18.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:14 AM ^
Very interesting perspective, thanks for posting this. I also find it interesting that Gruden and Bellotti were on that list.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:17 AM ^
Gruden is, was, and will always be on everyone's coaching candidate list. He's quite a legend as far as this goes.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:15 AM ^
And the rest is history?
January 8th, 2011 at 10:18 AM ^
Goes to go show our fans that just because things seem like they're falling apart from the outside doesn't mean they can't work out in our favor. Hope it's an indication of what's to come. It goes without saying (but I'm saying it anyway), Tressel ended up being a fantastic hire and, at the time, he was not a big name.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:00 AM ^
Tressel ended up being a fantastic hire and, at the time, he was not a big name.
Tressel wasn't exactly a nobody. He was very well know and well respected in the state of Ohio and was on a lot of team's lists for potential candidates should they need another head coach. Sure, he wasn't a national name heard in the offices of teams like USC or Texas, but the state of Ohio was gaga over him.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:18 AM ^
Couldn't they have hired one of them?!?
January 8th, 2011 at 10:49 AM ^
January 8th, 2011 at 11:00 AM ^
He was 2-1 against Michigan. I don't see it being all that fun going against him with the talent Jon Cooper left behind. If he's a nincompoop, I hate to think what we had at the same time.
The guy gets lambasted for taking two thankless jobs and making the team better. Any man who can make Charlie Weis 19-6 or get Steve Sarkisian a top-3 finish in the Pac 10 along with a Holiday Bowl win was doing a good job rebuilding those programs.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:19 AM ^
... what does it take to post on front-page entries? An iPhone or a Beveled Guilt contribution?
I don't have the former but did do the latter.
I suspect it's to Stay Classy MgoBlog, but just wondered.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:29 AM ^
MGoBlog iphone apps only on frontpage and diaries, and voting is still off-line.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:30 AM ^
... iPhone coming to Verizon soon. By then Brandon will have settled on Gerry Faust.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:20 AM ^
After reading this summary I think I need to relax and trust in DB to make the right call. No matter who the coach is, I hope we all support him 100%.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^
1. no relaxing
2. no trust in Brandon, given how he handled Rodriguez and presser (but could be gained with right hire)
3. Will certainly support whomever he hires
January 8th, 2011 at 2:06 PM ^
I support him like Rich was supported when he was hired and he is being held accountable for creating this situation.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:20 AM ^
I'm not sure I can stand another 10+ days of uncertainty only to end up with Brady Hoke
January 8th, 2011 at 10:23 AM ^
But I think the lesson from this and our last search is we don't really know how anything will shake out - both with who our coach will be, and how they'll do. But as silly as it sounds, it is important to make the new coach feel welcome. Even if it is Brady Hoke.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:21 AM ^
Did OSU fans at the time worry about losing national relevance, becoming a "regional program," and whether they'd ever beat Michigan again?
Also, one big thing that Tressel has done consistently in his time is win over the media. His first comments at OSU, when they couldn't have been happy to have hired him, made the locals start to like him. Even though his time their has been plagued by shadiness, he's still considered one of the cleanest coaches in college football. Contrast this with our last search, when we all felt lucky to get Rod, and someone whom I think really is one of the cleanest coaches in football, but who's considered "slimy" and was always thought to not "understand the rivalry."
As sad as it is, dealing with the media is just as important as what goes on at Schembechler Hall.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:26 AM ^
Cooper's last 4 recruiting classes yielded 27 NFL draft picks. Tressel also won a MNC with Cooper's players.
Carr's last 4 recruiting classes (so far) have yielded 7 draft picks.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:34 AM ^
Thesis: Tressel's ownership of Ohio blue chipp recruits benefiited from timing and his historical ties/knowledge of Ohio HS.
1. Carr was lax in recruiting in his final years
2. Tressel steps in to OSU, strong Ohio ties, combined with Lloyd's junk effort to recruit and creates a fortress around Ohio for OSU.
3. Hence, it will take at least c. 3-5 year for Mich to get back to the level of recruiting competitiveness in Ohio that got us a guy like Woodson.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:49 AM ^
While Michigan football hasn't been down often in its history, when we fall, we fall hard. Before we went 3-9, it seemed like every other program had had a losing season in the past twenty years except us. But theirs were just blips, whereas ours is an extended period of DOOM. As an MVictors addict, I read about how we followed up back-to-back national titles in the 1930s with the worst 3 year stretch in M history (worse than the RR era). The 1950s and 1960s were an extended period of mediocrity that are the "outlier" in Michigan's history. And they followed a couple of titles in the late 1940s.
I guess what I'm saying is, I hope that we're getting all kinds of winning karma by the pain of these last few seasons.
January 8th, 2011 at 12:45 PM ^
January 8th, 2011 at 10:41 AM ^
The state of Ohio is loaded with HS football talent that grew up dreaming of going to OSU. Not so much so in Michigan as there is not as much talent and we have another BCS school in the state (I'm not counting Cinci as they haven't hardly ever been relevant).
There also wasn't a concern about a total scheme change offensively which may render a lot of players as after thoughts or transfers. Finally, don't forget about academics.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:01 AM ^
January 8th, 2011 at 11:29 AM ^
January 8th, 2011 at 12:22 PM ^
I would play for that SOB in a heartbeat. I would send my children to play for JG. What are the cons? Perhaps he longs for the same "professed" temptress named the NFL that afflicted JH. I can deal with that. Not a "Michigan Man"? I can deal with that also - neither was Bo. Let's go get him.
January 8th, 2011 at 2:49 PM ^
Can we afford 10 scholarship QBs.
/s
January 8th, 2011 at 2:11 PM ^
who cares. michigan gave up some ground in ohio and Rodriguez and company more than made up for that by recruiting florida quite well. now thats gone and we have recruits dropping everywhere. great decision brandon, what are you going to do for an encore?
January 8th, 2011 at 10:33 AM ^
... but Ohio State's position when Cooper was let go was closer to Michgian's position when Carr left (bound to a decent bowl, only a couple years removed from a top-five ranking, etc.). They hadn't lived through the equivalent of the last three years, which made them doubt their program.
As for the Tressel hire, a lot of the fans thought he was too small-time, and too risky to wager that his I-AA success would translate to the next level. But those were the fans fixated on pipe-dreams like Stoops and Urban Meyer and Gruden, who were never realistic candidates. Tressel got rave reviews from the people who actually knew him, and from Ohio HS coaches.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
Cooper finished #2 in the country two seasons before he got fired. Michigan hasn't finished in the top-5 since 1999 (8 seasons before Carr left and 11 from the present day).
Cooper had a ridiculously strong program that just for whatever reason could never win against even the most average Michigan teams.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:08 AM ^
January 8th, 2011 at 2:03 PM ^
OSU never seemed to have the elite QB that Michigan had.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:47 AM ^
For the Buckeyes. But maybe you are right and Bowling Green was a much better place for him to go that year????
January 8th, 2011 at 2:14 PM ^
urban meyers schemes would never work in the big ten eleven twelve or thats what I keep hearing.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:36 AM ^
regarding the Sweatervest. Another thing that struck me when he was first hired is that he took the very thing that was lacking with Cooper (and ultimately got him fired)-inability to beat Michigan and, to some extent, downplaying the rivalry-and embraced it. He put the M/OSU rivalry to the forefrunt and basically made it a rallying point amongst members of the fanbase. To me this was huge in terms of the way the local/regional fans initially received him. Obviously he secured that long term by winning but having that initial support probably helped. Indeed had he not backed that up by winning we would not be talking about him now.
As much as I supported RR I noticed he liked to put our big rivalries in one category (ND, MSU, OSU) as though they were pretty much the same. While I don't see that as being ultimately bad, I think having an obvious appreciation for the specifics of each of those or at least acknowledging that publicly may have squashed some of the perception that he didn't understand Michigan or doesn't get the rivalry etc.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:45 AM ^
OSU only has one rivalry. If our new coach makes OSU the kind of priority that Tressel did, fans will still be pissed/disappointed if we drop games to State and ND. Tressel's genius was being clued into the OSU psyche, which especially after 2-10-1 was driven almost entirely by its pathological hatred of all things Michigan.
I think most Michigan fans have a wide variety of things they would like to see accomplished by the new coach and his future teams. OSU fans only wanted to beat us.
January 8th, 2011 at 12:51 PM ^
That's still all the Bucks want. Just Beat Michigan. Seriously, I know these people. They think they should be awarded a MNC in addition to a pair of gold pants every time they beat Michigan.
Good thing we still have the SEC, the best (and most corrupt) conference in football.
January 8th, 2011 at 1:18 PM ^
Ohio State only has one rival. The OSU program is historically defined by how it does against Michigan. I believe this is because of UM's sucess early in the last century and OSU's efforts to emulate it. Cooper never got it, he wore a blue suit with a yellow tie to his first press conference and later said that: "I guess Michigan is the big game around here." Tressel of course wore a gray suit with red tie and later made his half time speech about being proud of the team in x number of days in Ann Arbor. If you asked Tressel right now how many days to the Michigam game he could tell you. There is a count down clock in the lobby of the football center and another one in the weight room. Ohio State only has one rival.
January 8th, 2011 at 12:19 PM ^
- Yes, there were talking heads talking about OSU not being that big of a job
- LOL @ Walt Harris for thinking he was all that
- Supposedly, Gruden was very close to accepting the job
- Rumor has it that Bellotti was eliminated after he asked Andy Geiger if it was possible to move the OSU-UM game to earlier in the year
- Andy Geiger had a very structured process for the search. Each candidate was required to interview, which turned off a couple of the prospects. It also frustrated many fans, but the same process also yielded Thad Matta.
- Mason was begging for the job, and had a lot of supporters in the state. It also pissed off Minnesota to no end.
- As stated before, for those in the know, Tressel was held in very high esteem.
- Besides the Michigan/Bowl record, the other reason for firing Cooper was the terrible performance in the classroom by some football players, culminating in Reggie Germany pulling a fantastic 0.00 in his last quarter.
- Tressel did a decent job keeping the 2001 recruiting class together, but all in all, it was a mediocre class
- the 2002 class, on the other hand, included Troy Smith, Nick Mangold, AJ Hawk, Clarett, Santonio Holmes and others.
- Buckeye nation was pretty "meh" about the hire, but the halftime speech at the basketball game made him a lot of fans.
January 8th, 2011 at 1:19 PM ^
We already we're wondering if we'd ever beat Michigan again. Dammit Cooper!
January 8th, 2011 at 10:22 AM ^
The prospect of Ty Willingham at OSU gives me some hypothetical good feelings on this crappy day with a cold I contracted from some kid or octogenarian on the flight back from the Sunshine State.
Watching Fuckeye fan jump into the Scioto River en-masse would have allowed me to die happy, no matter what.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:22 AM ^
Who is the coach at Youngstown State and are they interested (if, and only if, they haven't adopted the sweatervest or stuffed animals)?
Tim
January 8th, 2011 at 11:11 AM ^
they are not as prominent as they once were.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:23 AM ^
I just hope that if we have to settle for Hoke that he proves me and just about everyone on this board wrong that he can be succesful in the spotlight. I just don't see it happening ...
January 8th, 2011 at 10:42 AM ^
THe more I read about Hoke, the more I am inclined to think that he can do the job. One if the indictments against Hoke posted here by Brian was that Ball State went 2-10 the year after Hoke left. Granted, several NFL players left the team that same year, but one can also consider that the fact that the team did so poorly after Hoke left also might say something about how he was able to coach up those players. I mean, a three star recruit is probably considered big news at that school. We might want to give him a chance. I mean, can things get much worse?
January 8th, 2011 at 11:23 AM ^
Why was the team worse in his first 5 seasons than in the final 3 under Lynch?
Hoke had one good season out of the blue and bailed. He should not be a candidate for this job under any circumstances and his name would never be mentioned if he hadn't coached the d-line here 8 years ago. The list of much better coaches is enormous. Someone like Dirk Koetter, who would never get a sniff of this job, has ten times the resume of Brady Hoke.
Brandon should be fired immediately if he hires him.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:45 AM ^
I agree with this. As much as I would love to be proven wrong in a good way about someone, Hoke gives me the least amound of optimism of anyone. In addition to what you just indicated, based on what Brian cited in his comments about being closed-minded about spread offenses-"basketball on grass" if I recall- he would be the worst fit in terms of players currently on the roster. Based on one of DBs points for criteria he mentioned in the presser-having someone who can adapt to the talent on the team-I just can't see how Hoke is anything other than a decided non-option.
January 8th, 2011 at 12:58 PM ^
Hoke seems likely to dismantle the one part of the program that's working well.
January 8th, 2011 at 11:47 AM ^
That was his first HC gig. Witness, in his second HC gig the compressed turnaround time. Perhaps he finally gets it, and his first years at BSU represent a learning curve of sorts
January 8th, 2011 at 12:05 PM ^
Wow, what a turnaround! Let's give him a ten year deal!
SDSU is better because Lindley is a junior and Chuck Long recruited well before getting the axe after just three years. Hoke hasn't shown he can build a solid program or have elite level success, even against lesser competition. There are a host of coaches out there who have.
Settling for Hoke without exhausting close to 100 options first would be the ultimate in Michigan Man bullshit cronyism. If Rodriguez got fired because of the record, Hoke can't get hired because of his.
January 8th, 2011 at 12:31 PM ^
I have an issue with a guy that is under .500 with nearly 100 games under his belt. It took him five years to get to a respectable record at Ball State. I have to believe there is someone a lot better out there that wants the Michigan job.