News Article: SI's Top 10 coaches of all time

81usaf92

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I think Reilly was the best they could get. Callahan too. Don't get me wrong... I'm sure there other coaches out there that would have taken the job and maybe worked out better, but these two were the best that the hiring folks could get at the time. Just like us and Mike Shula... there were others out there that would have taken the job, but the personalities involved believed Mike Shula was the best they could get at the time. .
Yes and no. There were far better coaches with some Nebraska and midwestern ties available. One name that continuously came out was Craig Bohl. But rumors I heard was that he was willing to stay at Wyoming unless Nebraska started shelling out Nick Saban numbers because he wasnt going to come to that madness without getting paid well enough to ignore the shenanigans from the cornfield. Then they went all in after Bielema, and got played. I think Reilly maybe was the best "name" coach left after those two were off the board, but there were alot of better coaches without a big name that were available.

I believe the Nebraska folks miscalculated the value they carried on the market.. As other have said, Solich and Pelini both were really good coaches that had Nebraska running as well as could be expected, but the Nebraska folks were still living in a Big 8 world that died in 1996.

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Even though Im probably one of the biggest pelini defenders (maybe the only one) on here, he needed to be fired because he got to the point where he didnt care what he said anymore. It really got to the point that both sides needed to go their separate ways
 
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selmaborntidefan

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Impressive, indeed. The issue that many of us might have is that his career was just too short.
Meyer's coaching career was 100 games more than Knute Rockne - in a vastly more competitive era - and is 3rd behind Rockne and Leahy in winning pct among FBS.


True enough, he may come back sometime. And he will be successful again. But, the abrupt end at Florida, and the rather abrupt end again in Columbus just doesn't do his skill justice. Last season, when he was active, myself and everyone I know thought of Coach Urban as the second best in the game, still coaching.
The bizarre thing to me is this: when Kobe Bryant was facing rape charges and did well, we were told how this was the mark of a great player - his ability to "block out distractions". Same thing with Ray Lewis, when he took his team to the Super Bowl right after a murder trial.

Urban Meyer or Tom Osborne, though, puts a winning team on the field (Oz winning the 95 national title) that has all kinds of distractions to overcome........and we're told they're selling their souls for fame and glory. I can't defend what went on at Ohio St.

I'm not knocking Kobe Bryant not elevating the latter two (since each case involves abusing women, they are substantially closer in nature than the Ray Lewis one). But it just seems to me there's a predetermined narrative in some of these things.


Let's talk about Urban's end at Florida. The guy had a health scare. Yeah, he ran a modern-day Miami Hurricanes of the 1980s.


Uh, he also recruited so good a team that a no talent coach like Will Muschamp had them on the verge of a BCS title berth. So this whole "he left a mess in Florida" is sorta contradicted by what happened later. Will Muschamp is not such a legendary coach that in the second year after Meyer left he turned in one of the 5 best teams in the country.


On Coach Paterno, it's crushing to see that a lack of judgement took away all the good he did for football players at Penn State. The longevity, the discipline, all there, but poor judgement, maybe not even intentionally, will forever mar his accomplishments. I still think highly of Coach Paterno, but a bit less than I did before what we know now, became known.
I think less of Joe Paterno than I do of John Wayne Gacy.

But the fact remains he DID win those games, plain and simple. I don't consider Cam Newton to be that bad, but I have no doubt he knew what was going on.....but the dollars don't throw the passes or block the field goals, either.

Pete Rose got all those hits and Barry Bonds hit all those home runs - period.

That's just how I look at it, even with folks I don't like.
 

BamaJama17

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I think perhaps Osborne is rated higher than Switzer is because he stayed longer and didn’t leave Nebraska in probation after he left. But yeah head to head he fore sure beat Osborne like a drum. I guess it helps Osborne that he win pretty much every other game during that time and his boss was the coach he succeeded.
 

editder

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Not to start a controversy but I'm genuinely curious. What does everyone think Dabo has to do to make this list? Obviously, coach a lot more games and win more titles but how many more titles/years of winning do you all think he needs?
He could start by dropping the Jethro Bodine persona.
 

editder

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TBH with you, I wondered that in the back of my mind, but it's a dumb argument on their part to do so.

Are we going to say Barry Bonds wasn't one of the ten greatest players ever because he juiced? Lots of guys juiced, but they didn't all hit 762 home runs, either. (And doesn't the fact that he was facing juiced pitchers offset that argument at least a little bit?).


But then, well, we've got some problems here.

Bryant admitted to paying players at Texas A/M. He admitted this more than once in SI, and even said he'd been approached by folks about paying players at UA.
But nobody else was winning 323 games and six national titles and owning the SEC, either.

And Tom Osborne coached Lawrence Phillipps, for Pete's sake. I realize that's not the long-term problem of Switzer at OU, but we're not selecting saints for canonization, we're asking who was the best.



I think this notion of us as moral arbiters imposing society on sports needs to cease. The Jerry Sandusky case is the most wretched horror that has come along in the last.....forever maybe? I so enjoyed watching Penn State's defense dismantle Miami in 1987. What a game! But I cannot even watch it on You Tube without a horrible feeling of revulsion at what was going on behind closed doors.

The problem, however, is simple: Joe Paterno won those games. Period. No amount of "we don't recognize that" or "let's punish that school" or anything else changes that.


What I've begun to muse, however, is whether we don't focus too much attention on the wrong things in our assessment of greatness.


Maybe some coaches like Pat Dye, Lou Holtz, Don James, Frank Kush, Ara Parseghian.......maybe some of those guys (or some other names) should be ranked over some of the other guys who had more wins and titles but had a leg up in the first place. Nick Saban's record commends him as (probably) the greatest CFB coach of all-time, but does anyone actually think he would have won 5 or 6 national titles at Michigan State? Saban himself said he couldn't win one in Lansing, so who thinks he could have won five or six?

Maybe Bill Snyder's accomplishments at disadvantaged K-State are better IN CONTEXT than Osborne's as Nebraska.
Or maybe Bill McCartney winning one national title (and losing the other in the final game) at CU is >>>>> Osborne's or Devaney's Nebraska advantages.


I'm just saying that while winning and championships are important, I question the degree to which we arbitrarily rank or dismiss guys based solely on, "Coached for a team with huge advantages over other coaches." It's not much different from the Heisman Trophy. If Kyler Murray had the exact same stats on Iowa State last year (with their record), he's not even invited to NY. But he plays for Oklahoma, so, here's your Heisman. (And before any OU fans think I'm bashing OU or Murray, the same argument can be applied to Tua to some degree).
The argument that Saban should be ahead of Bryant based on tangible output, other than total victories, is a good one. But the bolded part above is why I think Bryant has such a strong argument for #1. He had two perennially unknown programs at the doorstep of national prominence before leaving those programs. Neither Kentucky nor A&M amounted to much before Bryant and neither has made much of an impact since. Saban seems to be better at assembling top talent, especially at a top program, but Bryant was better at motivating average players to perform over their heads.

SI may have been thinking along the same lines, as they mentioned intangibles like charisma and image as part of their rationale for giving Bryant the top spot.
 

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