Blatant Homerism: Sooners keep playing the hits with coaching staff
Let’s get something out of the way: Kevin Wilson is a good football coach.
Wilson is not a good football coach in the sense that a college can put him in charge of its team and expect to win a lot of games. In fact, he has an awful track record in that regard: Between eight seasons as head coach at Indiana and Tulsa, he has a combined record of 33-63. Wilson’s tempestuous relationships with his players and stormy exits at both schools also tell you he’s not Mr. Morale.
However, Wilson deserves credit as one of the most influential tacticians in college football in recent decades. His twists incorporating bigger personnel and more robust run schemes into the uptempo spread offense radiated outward across college football from his outposts in Evanston, Illinois, and Norman, Oklahoma.
His skills with the Xs-and-Os are what make him a good football coach. As I mentioned when talk surfaced of Jim Knowles possibly coming to OU, it usually doesn’t hurt a program to have more good football coaches on your staff. That explains why Wilson is returning to work for the Oklahoma Sooners as an offensive analyst under head coach Brent Venables. Moreover, Venables has seen Wilson’s work up close as both a colleague and competitor. He has a clear idea of what Wilson can bring to the table in what is shaping up to be a crucial season for Venables’ future at OU.
Keep in mind that we’re talking about an analyst role. Wilson doing the standard analyst stuff – breaking down tape, brainstorming at the whiteboard, chiming in on game plans – makes a lot of sense for Venables and OU. The job fits with what Wilson appears to do best.
At the same time, it’s getting hard to muster enthusiasm every time OU brings back a member of the old guard like Wilson.
Think about the former OU players and coaches hired, or rehired, by the Sooners in the last two-plus decades:
Venables
Mike Stoops
Joe Jon Finley
DeMarco Murray
Jeff Lebby
Seth Littrell
Brian Odom
Calvin Thibodeaux
Brandon Hall
(Let me know if I forgot someone.)
Jeff Lebby’s two-year stint as OU’s offensive coordinator is arguably the most successful second act on this list, and he left under a cloud of dissension for his lame-brained defense of disgraced ex-Baylor coach Art Briles. For the most part, the tenures of these coaches could be graded somewhere between “huge bust” and “acceptable.” None would qualify as a smashing success.
Contrary to popular belief, the problem here isn’t cronyism. All of these hires had track records and qualifications beyond their ties to Norman and former OU head coach Bob Stoops. It’s nonsensical to say the disappointments have anything to do with the coaches’ pre-existing relationships with the OU program.
But the fact that we keep seeing so many familiar faces resurfacing around the Switzer Center appears to reflect a lack of imagination in the football brain trust. It doesn’t matter that Stoops has a well-established reputation as a coaching mentor – OU’s pattern of hiring retreads when it comes to filling out its coaching staff feels tired.
The formula for a boring bracket
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports got his hands on leaked information about the imminent changes to the College Football Playoff. They’re as lamentable as would be expected.
The upshot is that the SEC and Big Ten will each receive four automatic qualifiers in the expanded field of 14 or 16 teams. The ACC and Big 12 would each get two guaranteed spots. It sounds like the auto bids in the SEC and B1G would be based on conference standings.
My overriding objection to the constant drumbeat to expand college football’s postseason hasn’t changed in the last 15 years: The season is long enough as it is, and adding more games to it without including the players in those deliberations is borderline sociopathic. To wit, Dellenger’s piece indicated conference championship weekend seems likely to turn into a series of play-in games in the B1G and SEC for the teams that finish between third and sixth in the final standings. That means a team could conceivably need to play 17 games to win a national championship – it’s too much.
Ironically, the inevitable expansion of the CFP will arguably make the sport even more plutocratic, not less. Teams in the SEC, for example, will literally start the year with a one-in-four chance of making the postseason tournament. The programs in the SEC and B1G will wall themselves off even more from the outside world as the people running college football further orient it around the CFP. The nuances of college football will disappear even faster than they already are as a result.
Fun while it lasted, I guess.