Wow. I didn't think that ANYONE saw all of that coming. We thought that it would be a relatively calm year. I believe we ended up with 22 changes not including Urban Meyer taking his leave at some point. The biggest change is still probably Brian Kelly at Notre Dame. Lane Kiffin will have success at USC, we just don't quite know how much. Derek Dooley might have a bit of a rough start at Tennessee, but he should win there. Skip Holtz needed a new challenge, having done about all that he could do at East Carolina. South Florida will be just that. It will interesting to see how all of this shakes down.

Mark Mangino was the man. Kansas will be ok but he put 'em on the map as far as Football goes.

Alright, I jumped the gun on Urban Meyer. I don't, however, think that I am jumping the gun on Mike Leach. He is fired. I wish Texas Tech would give the job to Ruffin McNeill and be done with it. There is no reason to change anything. The players love him. The other coaches love him. Keep the same offense. Don't mess with success!!

There might be one or two coaches that will interview for NFL jobs, like Kirk Ferentz with the Browns perhaps, but I don't see any college coaches being hired by the NFL for a long time. Bobby Petrino and Nick Saban have ruined that for a while. Jags is still out there potentially for Central Michigan, but I think that he would want a BCS job or another NFL OC job first. Central Michigan will likely make an internal hire, however.

This is the fewest head coaching openings at this time of the season in a long time. No AFKA 1-AA head coach is going to leave his current job to go to Central Michigan, except maybe another coach in the MAC. I don't think that will happen, though. We might have one or two changes after the bowl games. That always seems to happen. Other than that, it could be one of calmest years that we have seen in years in coaching changes. Some of the changes have been big, but the number has not been big.

Gill proved his worth as a head coach last year in winning the MAC. He lost Drew Willy after last year, but almost got to another bowl game if a couple of bounces went his way this year. The MAC is an offensive conference. The challenge that he will have in the Big XII, especially in the North, is getting the defensive players to go there. Carl Torbush MIGHT be a good start. Kansas has never really been good in that department. We shall see if that changes.

The coaches before Gill were horrible, and he's been bad, and the public is suppose to be impressed with a guy that couldn't coach at a 500 level in the MAC conference?

In the past, there's been alot of coaches that have taken over Vanderbilt, Baylor, Duke, Wake Forest, Washington State, all in much tougher conferences than the MAC, and they had losing records, but they were fired after their losing season, not hired at a bigger university.

This is the best Kansas could do? A guy that has a 20-30 record as a head coach? A guy that has a winning percentage of 40%? This is what the definition of a "qualified" head coach has been redefined as? A guy that was 14-18 in the MAC, and he's the "next great thing"?

Here's something that Sports Center won't let you know.

Out of Gill's 20 wins…

3 were against Temple, 06, 07, 08 when Temple went 10-27 in those three years.
3 were against Akron, 07, 08, 09 when Akron went 12-24 in those three years.
3 were against Kent St, 06, 07, 09 when Kent St went 14-22 in those three years.
2 were against Miami-Ohio, 08, 09 when Miami-Ohio went 3-21 in those two years.
1 was against Texas-El Paso, 08, when Texas-El Paso went 5-7 that year.
1 was against Garden Webb, 09, a I-AA (or whatever it's called now) school that won 5 games in 09.

13 of 20 wins came against teams with a combined 44-94 record, a 31.8 winning percentage, and a 5-6 Division I-AA program.

Against top schools in the MAC Gill was…

0-3 against Central Michigan, 06, 08, 09 when Central Michigan went 29-11 in those three years.
1-2 against Ball St, 06, 07, 08, when Ball St. went 24-15 in those three years.
1-3 against Bowling Green, 06, 07, 08, 09, when Bowling Green went 25-24 in those four years.

Gill has a weak 2-8 record against conference opponents with winning records. That's a miserable 20% winning percentage against MAC teams with a combined 78-50 record, a 60.9 winning percentage.

Gill went 11-5 against conference opponents with losing records.

3-1 against Temple. Temple was 19-30 in those four year, 38.7 winning percentage.
3-1 against Akron. Akron was 17-31 in those four years, 35.4 winning percentage.
3-1 against Kent. St. Kent St was 18-30 in those four years, 37.5 winning percentage.
2-2 against Miami-Ohio. Miami-Ohio was 11-38 in those four years, 22.4 winning percentage.

Since Gill was 14-18 in the MAC, 11 of those 14 wins came against conference teams with a combined 65-129 record, a 33.5 winning percentage.

Gill has proven to beat up on teams that could hardly win 1/3 of their games, and Gill has proven that he has failed against teams that win at least 60% of their games.

As I asked at the beginning of this post, this is the best Kansas could do?

Charles,

This isn't a video football game where you can switch teams at random because that's what you want to see. This is reality, and Boise St going to the PAC 10 will 100% never happen.

Back to the topic of head coaching changes.

I have to believe that Kansas will go with a "cheap hire" since they paid off Mangino an incredible amount of money to go away.

I have also read that Kansas is "casting a wide net" in their interview process.

Dennis Franchione has burned his last bridge in college football when he flopped at Texas A&M.; Prior to that, he didn't do himself any favors in the way he ended things there.

All these jobs openings and no school has interest in Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster, or Oklahoma defensive coordinator Brent Venables? Amazing.

Take Boise State out of the WAC and switch them with Washington State from the PAC-10. That will force them into playing one another so Boise has a better strengh of schedule.

I hear ya on Bud. Surprised he hasn't gotten a job sooner…especially someplace like CUSA (ECU a few years back woul dhave been a good pick).

I'm a big Whipple fan as he was the coach of UMass when I was there. I'm always hoping he gets am FBS job with one of the regional schools like BC, Syracuse, Uconn, Rutgers, etc.

One of my favorite coaches is Paul Johnson. The day he got hired, I said Gerogia Tech will be in the championhsip hunt in 3 years. They went into the last week in the top 10 this season. Impressive guy at Georgia Southern and Navy.