There is no way Tom Osborne should be ahead of either Wilkinson or Switzer.
Agreed on Switzer.
Wilkinson is a different matter altogether (although just to be clear, I tend to agree with you here as well).
I think what's difficult for a lot of folks to accept or deal with is just how precisely to evaluate coaches from different eras. (This, of course, is unique neither to CFB nor to coaches). We have to give credit to the Yosts, Rocknes, and Shaugnessys, who invented concepts upon which the game is now based. Of course as I said to B1G, these were inevitable in some sense - these names just happened to be the ones that did it. We have to recognize that fact as well while conceding them being light years ahead of the curve in some cases.
We have to concede IN GENERAL that there has been an improvement over time in quality of athlete as well as sport, viewed on a sort of incline where there's a gradual enough difference that some guys now would have been superstars in the 1930s - but some of the superstars then would be stars today, too (that's the harder part). And the stats used to build these cases are what leave me a little bit frustrated.
Bud Wilkinson (to use one example; I'll use Bryant in a moment) set a record that is never going to be broken, the infamous 47-game winning streak. Nobody has even come close to that one - and never will. The closest anyone has come is that loaded Miami team from 2000-2002 that won 34 - and even they fell AN ENTIRE SEASON short of breaking that record in an era of much more parity. But let's not confuse ourselves - Miami's winning streak is SUBSTANTIALLY superior to OU's in terms of accomplishment and difficulty. I don't say that to impugn Wilkinson. I mean, look at Dabo right now. What are they at, 28 games? Sure, folks want to slam them with, "But they haven't played anybody!" The problem, of course, is that UCF didn't play anybody either, but they didn't win 28 games in a row (Clemson's games against A/M in 18, Alabama, and Notre Dame were tougher than any opponent UCF faced). Boise didn't win 28 games in a row, and neither did BYU's mid-80s team that won a national title.
So I'm not slamming Wilkinson or OU by admitting reality. It was MUCH tougher for Miami to win 34 in a row than it was for Wilkinson to win 47 in his time. That's all I'm saying.
Likewise - and it's not a popular view here - but the whole Saban vs Bryant thing isn't even very close. Saban's accomplishments are substantially superior to Bryant's and even the people who want to get caught up on "but six national championships" have to take into account that it's MUCH harder to win a national title now than it was back when there were two of them and they were the result of voting without actually playing games (this should not be hard for rational people to understand). They have as many national titles as each other, Saban has him on winning pct (.791 to .780), their bowl records are comparable (15-12-1 vs 14-10), and Saban is coaching in an era of scholarship limitations and a MUCH more competitive SEC (esp 2008-2012) than Bryant faced in the 1970s in particular).
Of course, it IS reasonable if one wishes to argue (since we are, after all, discussing OPINIONS) that, "Bryant was a better coach than Saban." That IS a reasonable position provided you're not saying, "Bryant's concrete accomplishments exceed Saban's," because other than the number of wins - which are the result of coaching for more years while Saban was off as an NFL assistant and later head coach - this isn't even true.
So coaches have to be evaluated in the context of their time. I've long been one of those that has said that Bob Devaney - not Dr. Tom Prichard, er, Osborne - is the straw that stirred the Nebraska drink. Bob Devaney is the one who put Nebraska on the map and handed off a championship roster and team to Osborne. Now - we DO have to give Osborne credit for sustaining it and building it and winning with it as long as he did. After all, Phil Bengston, Frank Solich, Mark Helfrich, and dozens of guys have taken over teams that were champions and watched them implode. George Seifert sustained the Niners for a few years (credit) and then showed he wasn't all that good when he went to Carolina.
For some reason, when you say, "Tom Osborne is overrated," people hear, "Tom Osborne sucks and was a horrible football coach." That's not true, either, and it's also not true that just any bozo could have done what he did at Nebraska. If Osborne would have taken over for Bryant in 1983, he would have been a little bit better than Ray Perkins was because the style of ball he ran was so similar. I doubt he could have won a national title because the SEC from 1983-1989 was a monster. But he was a good coach, and he would have won anywhere.
But he wasn't in the top 10 all-time. Maybe top 20.
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