August 11, 2005
The 2005 Coaching Hot Seat - Part III - The Big East
Moving right along, the third conference we'll take a lengthy coaching hot seat look at is the Big East.
This was a feature we started here for the first time last season, and with the start of the 2005 season around the corner, time to dust this off, shake out the cobwebs, re-evaluate some coaches and see whose job security is most perilous during the upcoming season.
We will be doing this as a multi part series, showcasing the last 4 seasons of results of all of the major football conferences. For some accountability, we'll also go over how we predicted last year's musical coaching chairs would end up.
Part III - The Big East
Cincinnati
Head Coach: Mark Dantonio (2nd year: 7-5)
-2004 - 7-5
-2003 - 5-7
-2002 - 7-7
-2001 - 7-5
Connecticut
Head Coach: Randy Edsall (7th year: 32-37)
-2004 - 8-4
-2003 - 9-3
-2002 - 6-6
-2001 - 2-9
Louisville
Head Coach: Bobby Petrino (3rd year: 20-5)
-2004 - 11-1
-2003 - 9-4
-2002 - 7-6
-2001 - 11-2
Pittsburgh
Head Coach: Dave Wannstedt (1st year: 0-0)
-2004 - 8-4
-2003 - 8-5
-2002 - 9-4
-2001 - 7-5
Rutgers
Head Coach: Greg Schiano (5th year: 12-34)
-2004 - 4-7
-2003 - 5-7
-2002 - 1-11
-2001 - 2-9
South Florida
Head Coach: Jim Leavitt (9th year: 55-33)
-2004 - 4-7
-2003 - 7-4
-2002 - 9-2
-2001 - 8-3
Syracuse
Head Coach: Greg Robinson (1st year: 0-0)
-2004 - 6-6
-2003 - 6-6
-2002 - 4-8
-2001 - 10-3
West Virginia
Head Coach: Rich Rodriguez (5th year: 28-21)
-2004 - 8-4
-2003 - 8-5
-2002 - 9-4
-2001 - 3-8
The Big East gets two new members of the coaching fraternity for 2005, and both have a distinct NFL background each hopes will give them a leg up when it comes to recruiting. Dave Wannstedt and Greg Robinson take over two schools with a lengthy and rich college football history, and both went to bowl games in 2004, so the bar will be set height. Wannstedt looking like the early winner by walking into a job where the team just won a portion of the Big East last season. His Pitt roots will hopefully sooth the faithful who never took a liking to Walt Harris, whose yearly participation in the coaching rumor mill made the Pitt job seem like a stepping stone. Robinson needs to work on overhauling an offense based around a power option running attack and turning it into a West Coast passing attack.
Both UConn's Randy Edsall and USF's Jim Leavitt are in similar situations, where they have taken football teams from non-entities to BCS conference members in less than a decade. USF took a step backwards last year against tougher competition, and the road gets rougher this year. Leavitt likely might be in trouble if his administration loses sight of how far the Bulls have come in recent years, and gets impatient. UConn will lose Edsall long before the other way around, something the school hopes to cut off with Edsall signing a long term contract over the winter.
Rich Rodriguez's Mountaineers took a step backwards last season compared to the lofty expectations the team had at the beginning of the season, but his successive 8+ win seasons will buy him some time thru his rebuilding year.
Mark Dantonio would be wise to look at his predecessor, Rick Minter, who was the coach for nearly 10 years and was rewarded for his hard work building up Cincy as a viable football power but had a 5-7 bump in the road in 2003 that ended up with him getting a pink slip. Might suggest that Dantonio is on a short leash.
And then we come to Bobby Petrino. An odd study indeed, all Petrino has done on the field since being named head coach at Louisville is win football games. For the second straight year, Petrino was target number 1 for the off season rumor mill, something Petrino did little to stop. A year removed from the fly by night meeting with the Auburn administration to discuss an opening at that school that didn't yet exist, he certainly didn't make any addition friends among the Louisville faithful when the Ole Miss AD said that Petrino was pursuing the Mississippi job. Will an automatic BCS bid for the Big East victor and a raise sooth Petrino's wandering inclinations? That remains to be seen. But another off-season or two like the last couple and the Louisville management will just cut ties and move on.
If you read any of the preseason media guides, or listen to the talking heads, the dial gets turned up to 11 this year on Rutgers coach Greg Schiano. Rutgers AD Bob Mulcahy has been vocal to anyone who will listen this year that this is simply not the case. Schiano came into Rutgers amid a blaze of glory, with the idea that the "local boy who comes home to save the day" would turn Rutgers around by keeping the in-state talent at home. The effort to broaden the recruiting horizons went so far as to turn Sopranos star James Gandolfini into the Rutgers billboard spokesman in South Florida, attempting to cut into that rich recruiting base. Yet those efforts haven't come to fruition as of yet. This will be the first season made up entirely of Schiano's guys, and Rutgers has seen several seasons of alternating embarrassments and solid accomplishments, such as last years opening weekend defeat of Michigan State followed up with a loss at home to Division I-AA New Hampshire. So for the short answer, Schiano may not be under the gun for 2005, but in a conference that has seen a ton of turnover, both in coaches and teams in the last 24 months, Schiano's hold on his job is the least secure.
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