A History of Coaches Fired at Blue Blood Programs
M-Dog posted this comment last night in the who will OSU get thread:
If Urban gets canned, every single Ohio State coach since World War II has been fired.
Not a single one has left on his own terms in over 70 years:
Bixler 1946 (lasted only one season),
Fesler 1947-1950 (fired after loss to Michigan in the '50 Snow Bowl),
Hayes 1951-1978 (heh),
Bruce 1979-1987 (too many 9-3 seasons),
Cooper 1988-2000 (2-10-1),
Tressel 2001-2010 (tat's all folks),
Fickell 2011 (interim, not renewed),
Meyer 2012-2018 (depends on what the definition of "Paid Administrative Leave" is).
So I thought I'd see how this history stacks up to other blue bloods dating back that far. We know our own history, so I didn't mess with that. Also didn't include interim coaches that didn't get the head job afterward. And I did not show current coaches since they haven't had the chance to be terminated yet.
I included only Bama, Nebraska, ND, OU, USC, and Texas. We don't need to know what Penn State's coaching history is and I didn't want to expand this much further (I may or may not have stayed up way too late putting most of this together last night). I only went back to 1947 or so on some of them because coaching during the War got interesting for everyone. I apologize if some of my perspective of the history here is a little off. I did the best I could knowing sometimes very little of the history of various controversies. On a side note, this was actually really fun to research and I learned a ton about each of these programs that I didn't know before. Enjoy:
Alabama:
- Mike Shula 2003-2006: fired after 6-6 season.
- Mike Price 2003: fired for visiting strip club on a trip, among other things.
- Dennis Franchione 2001-2002: left for A&M amid 2 year bowl ban.
- Mike DuBose 1997-2000: fired after a 3 win season and saw the program slapped with sanctions from his staff afterwards.
- Gene Stallings 1990-1996: retired on his own terms, but left the program with 30 lost scholarships until 1998.
- Bill Curry 1987-1989: left a contract on the table for Kentucky.
- Ray Perkins 1983-1986: left for the NFL after bama's first losing season in 27 years.
- Bear Bryant 1958-1982: retired after a legendary career.
- Jennings B. Whitworth 1955-1957: fired after winning just 4 overall games in his tenure.
- Harold Drew 1947-1954: fired a year removed from winning the SEC with a 4-win season. Stayed on as bama's track coach until 1964.
Nebraska:
- Mike Riley 2015-2017: fired after 4-win season.
- Bo Pelini 2008-2014: fired after not winning "the games that really mattered."
- Bill Callahan 2004-2007: fired after some true Big 12 drubbings. Gave up 76 points to Kansas. That happened.
- Frank Solich 1998-2003: fired after a couple disappointing seasons.
- Tom Osborne 1973-1997: let's just say that the man later became a Nebraska congressman because of course he was.
- Bob Devaney 1962-1972: retired to give way to Osborne after a Heisman winning year followed back to back national championships.
- Bill Jennings 1957-1961: fired after a 3-win season.
- Pete Elliott 1956: yes that one. Brother of Bump. Coached one 4-6 season before leaving for Cal.
- Bill Glassford 1949-1955: retired and left football.
Notre Dame:
- Charlie Weis 2005-2009: fired after 6-6 season and made lots of money for it.
- Tyrone Willingham 2002-2004: fired after finishing ND career 13-15.
- Bob Davie 1997-2001: fired after a season that contained ND's first ever 0-3 start. (Note here that - - George O'Leary was hired but "resigned" after news came out that he lied on his resume. Not exactly an interim but I didn't want to totally exclude him.)
- Lou Holtz 1986-1996: retired, did not take a lifetime contract, and then denied the chance to coach the Vikings to coach USC (NTUSC).
- Gerry Faust 1981-1985: "resigned" after some disappointing seasons of last minute losses.
- Dan Devine 1975-1980: resigned after riding Joe Montana's coattails to a national championship.
- Ara Parseghian 1964-1974: retired due to health after a legandary career.
- Joe Kuharich 1959-1962: resigned after being the only ND coach to post a losing record.
- Terry Brennan 1954-1958: fired after a 6-4 season.
- Frank Leahy 1941-1943, 1946-1953: retired due to health or something after a legendary career.
Oklahoma:
Bob Stoops 1999-2016: retired after a legendary career.
John Blake 1996-1998: fired after the worst 3-year stretch in OU history.
Howard Schnellenberger 1995: resigned out of the blue after one losing season.
Gary Gibbs 1989-1994: forced to resign after winning 2 games against their 3 main rivals in 6 seasons.
Barry Switzer 1973-1989: resigned amid sanctions being handed down on his watch after a legendary career.
Chuck Fairbanks 1967-1972: left for the NFL mid-contract 3 months before NCAA violations hit.
Jim Mackenzie 1966: died of a heart attack after his first season.
Gomer Jones 1964-1965: resigned after 2 disappointing seasons while staying on as AD.
Bud Wilkinson 1947-1963: retired after a legendary career.
USC:
Steve Sarkisian 2014-2015: fired for problems with drinking interfering with work.
Lane Kiffin 2010-2013: fired after disappointing seasons.
Pete Carroll 2001-2009: left for the NFL before NCAA violations could be handed down.
Paul Hackett 1998-2000: fired after back to back losing seasons.
John Robinson 1976-1982, 1993-1997: resigned the first stint to work elsewhere for USC. Was essentially fired in '97 without them explicitly calling it that even though that's totally what it was.
Larry Smith 1987-1992: fired after a few bad seasons.
Ted Tollner 1983-1986: fired after 1 overall win over a rival.
John McKay 1960-1975: left USC to become the Bucs' first ever head coach in the NFL.
Don Clark 1957-1959: resigned after season-finishing losses to ND and UCLA.
Jess Hill 1951-1956: stepped down to become AD.
Jeff Cravath 1942-1950: forced to resign after a 2-win season and allowing UCLA's first victories of their series.
Texas:
Charlie Strong 2014-2016: fired after 16-21 overall record.
Mack Brown 1998-2013: retired after a legendary career.
John Mackovic 1992-1997: fired after a 4-7 season including rout-66.
David McWilliams 1987-1991: resigned after 5-6 season with national championship hopes.
Fred Akers 1977-1986: left to coach Purdue after UT's first losing season in 30 years.
Darrell Royal 1957-1976: retired after a legendary career.
Ed Price 1951-1956: resigned after the worst season in school history at 1-9.
Blair Cherry 1947-1950: abruptly retired due to health and criticism despite multiple top 10 finishes.
It looks like Nebraska is the most like OSU, but that only gets us back to Osborne with the 4 straight firings, and 2 of them of objectively good coaches. ND has had 3 in a row now too. Bama had their firing stint between Stallings and Saban, but that wasn't that long honestly. USC has really only ever had coaches get fired/forced out or leave for the NFL, with a 2 decade slide of firing coaches between Robinson's first reign and Carroll. Texas and Oklahoma have only fired a handful of coaches between them.
However, looks like OSU is truly on its own level of hiring scumbags and failures. A tradition like no other, lasting 73 years. The look fits them well. Here's to them continuing the trend and punting most of their current coaching staff shortly. And good riddance to the domestic violence enablers.
August 2nd, 2018 at 10:32 AM ^
Glad I waited to post until this morning because the format would have been awful on mobile.
August 2nd, 2018 at 11:27 AM ^
So in summary, at most blue blood programs you either retire a legendary coach OR resign/get fired for underwhelming performance -- which is more or less what you'd expect. What makes OSU distinctive is that they've fired two legendary coaches and may fire another. Oklahoma and USC are the only other schools on the list to lose even one legendary coach to scandal, and in both cases those coaches were able to leave on their own terms before the sh*t hit the fan. (Though in truth, that probably just means OSU has had more coaches get caught. Does anyone really thing Tom Osborne was clean? Or that Saban doesn't have at least a few bodies buried somewhere?)
August 2nd, 2018 at 11:57 AM ^
Yea - my take from this is it's really hard to be a college football coach. Most get fired. If you can string a couple of good ones together in a row, wow. And most (probably all?) blue blooded programs had at least one legendary coach give them a decade of success since WWII.
To the OP - great work on putting this together.
August 2nd, 2018 at 12:21 PM ^
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain
Unless you're Paterno, then both happen...
Really tangential - but this quote is so relevant to Benedict Arnold. Had he died on his suicide charge at Saratoga, he'd be the hero of the battle that turned the Revolutionary War. But he survived, Congress didn't give him his due, the war kept dragging, he got disillusioned and became America's most infamous traitor.
But then you think of George Washington - who perhaps knew this quote, and so gracefully stepped aside. And was pulled back into the fray. And when politics started to get his name dragged into the mud as a villain by some, he stepped to the side again and set one of the great precedents in American political history, one that survived until FDR and when it was broken was amended into Constitutional law.
August 3rd, 2018 at 10:31 AM ^
It must be nice to have Washington on your side.
Hamilton quotes aside, this was a wonderful post - Mr. Washington was a great, great man. Not without fault, being human, but worthy of the praise he's been given over the last 2 centuries, IMO. An amazing general, a superb manager of some super talented guys who did not like each other or agree with each other. A gentleman of Virginia who believed in states rights, but started the car down the "it's a real country, and the federal government is more than just a club for state leaders" road, including on the economics front.
Rob
Nice work! Thanks for sharing!
for those curious:
Michigan (3 fired, 3 retired, 2 resigned):
- Fritz Crisler 1938-47, won a lot of games, retired
- Bennie Oosterban, 1948-58, resigned after doing poorly against our arch rivals
- Bump Elliott 1959-68, resigned under pressure in order to usher in the era of....
- Bo Schembechler 1969-89, won a lot, rivalried a lot, legendaried a lot, retired
- Gary Moeller 1990-94, won games and then got drunk... fired
- Lloyd Carr 1995-2007, won a lot, including the big one that one time, had ups and downs, consummate professional, retired
- Rich Rodriguez 2008-2010, right, that thing. fired.
- Brady Hoke 2011-2014, right, that other thing. fired.
- Jim Harbaugh 2015-present
Penn State (0 fired, 3 retired, 3 resigned)
- Bob Higgins 1930-48, decent record (91-57-11), but retired due to poor health
- Joe Bedenk 1949, after one year, requested to step down and be OL coach again... resigned, i guess?
- Rip Engle, 1950-65, won a lot (104-48-4), kept players fit with a weird non-football game called angleball (I know some other coach who does similar things), retired
- Joe Paterno, 1966-2011, blah blah blah, retired mid-season under pressure
- Tom Bradley 2011, Interim, resigned b/c he was not selected full-time HC
- Bill O'Brien 2012-2013, couldn't get out of there fast enough, resigned
- James Franklin 2014-present
michigan state (4 fired, 3 retired, 4 resigned*) - I'm not doing them line-by-line b/c they've had 12 (!) coaches since WWII.
- Charlie Bachman, Clarence Munn, Duffy Daugherty (retired)
- Denny Stolz* 1973-75 forced resignation (basically fired)
- Muddy Waters, George Perles, Bobby Williams, John L. Smith (fired)
- Darryl Rogers, Nick Saban, Morris Watts (resigned and moved on to other gigs)4
Yeah MSU is part of the reason I didn't want to open it up too much. Some of these borderline schools that are in the next tier down like georgia, florida, lsu, fsu, miami, etc. have too many coaches to comb through in their really down years. Zeroing in on the very top tier of college football gave me at least the prospect of some long-ish tenures due to success. Dipping down into these others would have been overwhelming and if you go down too much, I'm sure there's some schools with similar histories. The thing that sets osu apart is that it's been literally every coach, even the legends.
Technically, Joe Pa was fired. He announced he would retire at the end of the season. The board of regents rejected this and terminated his contract immediately.
Ah good call. For some reason, I had it in my head that it was a forced retirement, but it wasn't. Too bad I can't edit, lol.
As an aside - how come there is no link to Diaries on the mobile page? Can it at least be a menu option under MGoBoard??
Interesting list.
One minor quibble - Nebraska was not a blue boold program until Devaney. The best recent parallel to him would be Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin (if you consider them a blue blood).
Yeah I did the programs that universally would be considered blue bloods now not just back then also. I'd have to get into ivy league schools if I went back too far by that definition. But you're not wrong.
Who were our coaches to not leave unceremoniously (fired or resign or forced retirement)? Yost, Crisler, Bo, anyone else?
August 2nd, 2018 at 11:44 PM ^
Maybe someone before Yost but I think that might be it. It's really hard to pull off even if you have success. Especially with these programs, 9-10 wins on repeat don't work. Not beating rivals for an extended streak doesn't work. It's hard to stay consistent.
Carr
Where is Michigan? We are a blue blood who has fired several coaches, like the one who got drunk, Rich rod and Brady hoke
I posted it in a comment above yesterday. Also, OP explained why he didn't include Michigan (or psu or msu, which I did out of morbid curiosity).
August 3rd, 2018 at 11:27 AM ^
Covered in the "we know our own history, so I didn't mess with that" portion of the OP. Your comment proves my point that I didn't need to spend too much time giving that rundown.
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