OT: Baylor hires Jim Grobe as Interim Head Coach
http://baylor.247sports.com/Article/Baylor-To-Hire-Former-Wake-Forest-H…
Looking at this dude's record... yikes. His Wake Forest teams got worse every year, before he randomly won the ACC (how) and then following that his teams kept on deteriorating again. I guess he has a rep of being a good guy with no scandals, but it seems to me like Baylor just basically hired Brady Hoke if Brady Hoke was at Michigan for like 14 years.
But he's a really nice guy.
They ended the season beating a more talented UCLA team which is a good sign, and have been recruiting much better under Riley than they ever did Pelini.
With Pelini you knew you were getting a 9-4 record. With Riley, you will get a year like last year. But if he continues recruiting like he is, has a few years to develop players and implement his system, and actually catches a few breaks on the field, I think Nebraska has a decent shot of winning a B1G title on an annual basis.
I think with Pelini you got a consistently good team, but with Riley you will get a baseline solid team that could be mediocre like last year but could also have a great hear every once in a while and win a B1G title. And if I'm a Nebraska fan I'll take that over Pelini any day.
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Grobe is obviously just a stopgap coach, but I think Pelini actually would be a decent fit at Baylor.
Ran the spread, and won't be dealing with an impatient Nebraska fan base.
Also, with the exception of a few profanity laced tirades, is a pretty squeaky clean coach too, which is exactly what Baylor needs.
I don't remember where or when but there were rublings of him fore warining his players of random drug test and genral un Nebraska like practices that the powers did not like.
He is a buckeye so lose morals and all.
I could see why Nebraska fans would be so mad about Bo Pelini's job as head coach. Nebraska fans still think of themselves as an elite program. During Pelini's tenure at Nebraska, the Big 10 was down, way down, both in perception and reality. If you lose 4 games to some middle of the road B1G teams you were stinking up the place and every time he had a chance to win a "big game" he tended to blow it.
If you're an elite program and you go 9-4 with close losses to Alabama, Florida State, Ohio State and just about another other yearly top 5-10 team, your not as bummed out as if you lose to
Indiana, Purdue, Illinois and Minnesotta.
Baylor is not Michigan. They never were. They never will be. At this moment they'll be lucky if their program only goes downhill to a point they can recover from. Grobe is a better hire than they should have been expected to be able to make.
What's the point of judging an interim hire from a pool of unemployed coaches by the standards of the top coaches in the country? What Baylor needs is someone with experience, especially in challenging circumstances, who'll be flexible in using their talent, who won't be cutting corners and is willing to step into their mess. Grobe checks every one of those boxes.
What they don't need is an ambitious young up and coming coach or someone who will spark controversy,
That's a brutal place to win.
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IIRC Groce was offered by the Huskers and turned them down. That event made me realize CFB is upside down -- like Schiano turning down UM. In the 70s or 80s no coach could have turned down Big Red. But by the 00's TV money made it such that small programs like WF are financially viable alternatives to Neb -- not the same money, but still good money and way less stress.
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anything more than a competitor in the ACC. Grobe is a solid coach who could never recruit the kind of skill and talent to compete with the likes of Clemson, Va Tech, Florida State and Miami, and its three companion NC schools that it competed for in-state talent in UNC, Duke and NC State.
The fact that Grobe broke through with a conference title is actually remarkable. The school has been better known for basketball than football. Grobe has a reputation for being a straight shooter, a solid coach whose teams featured the kind of offense that Baylor played under Briles. At Baylor, he will have better athletes than he ever had in Winston-Salem.
Under the circumstances, this was a good hire. Grobe was respected and well-liked when he coached at Wake Forest.
and it's not even close --- TCU is next smallest but they're still ~ 33% larger.
As you said, Grobe did a good job in his time at Wake. That's not an easy place to win --- they have a lot of structural disadvantages vs. their peers. Yet, they won the ACC once, and in that same year won 30-0 (!!!) in Tallahassee.
If in 1996 someone said: 10 years from now Wake will win by 4+ TDs against Florida State, they would have immediately been thrown in an insane asylum.
Yeah, but it's not like Florida State was really tearing it up at that time. They were 7-6 that year. Miami was down. Clemson wasn't the team they are now. I mean, who was actually that good in the ACC? The ACC was by far the worst Power 5 conference. Still a decent coaching job, but let's not like the ACC was murderer's row.
Grobe had the best winning percentage at WF in the last 65 years. You act like he did a terrible job, but that simply isn't the case. The team has won two ACC titles and Grobe has one of them.
I don't think it would matter if the SEC had a crap year.
They need a guy willing to be a placeholder whilst they endure several years of probation and scholarship reduction penalties.
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Lane Kiffen
Mac Brown
YonHerman
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Jim Grobe is a good coach. I was a law student at Wake Forest early in his career. He took a group of two star players and won the ACC. The fact is that Wake Forest, historically speaking, is like Indiana, but a lot worse. In the last century, WFU has one of the worst winning percentages of any D-1 football team. Jim Grobe turned them into winners (for at least a few seasons).
He may not be a super star like Harbaugh, but he will do a very respectable job for one year while Baylor looks for a permanent replacement.
Frankly, I'm quite unhappy that Baylor hired him. I like Grobe a lot and consider Baylor to be the scum of the earth.
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I hope you are being facetious.
"I hope you are being facetious."
You're good at reading lips.
which is remarkable considering how historically awful Wake is. It's a real difficult place to win at.(Think of Duke football up until two years ago)
Jim Grobe is a solid football coach.
It's exceedingly difficult to win at Wake. No one has done it consistently in a long time, if ever.
Baylor just got Re-Baylor'd.
The good times are most certainly over for da Bears.
You can just feel all the Baylor "fans" throwing back on their old orange and white Texas gear.
Grobe went 42-62 for a .403 W%.
Basically, he was average at Wake. So he didn't change Wake's program trajectory like Barnett did at Northwestern, but he did acheive a level of success comparable to that of Cutcliffe at Duke.
for 13 seasons. Wiki has him at .484.
He lied, protecting gibbons and ultimately cost us any moral high ground when it comes to sexual assault...
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