Letโs say Tedy Bruschi wants to coach your football team โ Arizonaโs football team โ and arranges to have a staff that includes a UA legend like Chuck Cecil or Ricky Hunley. Would you bite?
Bruschi has never coached a down of football, in a Pee Wee League or anywhere, but he has played for three Super Bowl champions, tied the record as college footballโs career sacks leader and is in the College Football Hall of Fame.
He has a big personality, is a motivational speaker at the A+ level, married an Arizona softball/volleyball player from Sahuaro High School and is regularly seen by millions of viewers in his role as an ESPN studio analyst.
Does he know Xโs and Oโs? He played for Bill Belichick for nine years. Next question.
Would hiring Bruschi be viewed as (a) taking a perilous gamble or (b) outsmarting the other guys?
Has any Pac-12 athletic director ever been so bold to step in that direction?
Oh, yes.
After the 1981 football season, Cal athletic director Dave Maggard hired Bears legend and Super Bowl quarterback Joe Kapp to coach the Golden Bears. Like Bruschi, Kapp had never coached a game.
The 43-year-old Kapp had been out of football for 10 years, acting in movies with Burt Reynolds and in TV shows with the Six-Million Dollar Man.
In his first season as Calโs coach, 1982, Kapp was voted the Pac-10 Coach of the Year. Look it up. Itโs true.
Remember the epic โThe Band Is On The Field!โ game, Calโs miracle victory over Stanford? Kapp was the man who designed that play.
It wasnโt that Maggard was a reckless athletic director who got lucky with a desperate, unconventional maneuver. He was Calโs AD for 19 years before he was hired away to be the AD of the Miami Hurricanes, then the nationโs No. 1 football school.
Joe Kapp had never coached before when he was put in charge of Calโs football program. He was named the leagueโs coach of the year.
Maggard made hiring/firing decisions for so long that in 2009 he hired a young Kevin Sumlin to be the head coach of the Houston Cougars.
Win a few, lose a few, right?
Whatever route Arizona AD Dave Heeke chooses, itโs got to be better than his 2018 decision to hire Sumlin. Based on my rankings of the 77 football coaches hired in the Pac-10/12 since Arizona joined the league in 1978, Heekeโs got a 50% chance to get it right, the same as the ADs at Oregon, USC and ASU.
Over those years, Iโve calculated the success ratio of those 77 coaching hires (not including those hired in the last two seasons):
โข33 Pac-10/12 coaching hires were hits.
โข33 Pac-10/12 coaching hires were misses.
โข 11 Pac-10/12 coaching hires were so-so.
Thatโs 50-50 on the nose.
The school with the most misses, five, is Stanford. Arenโt those guys supposed to be smarter than anyone else?
In my opinion, Stanford is 4-6 in football coaching hires.
Hits: David Shaw, Jim Harbaugh, Dennis Green and Tyrone Willingham.
Misses: Paul Wiggin, Jack Elway, Buddy Teevens, one-year coach Rod Dowhower, Walt Harris and, yes, the great Bill Walsh, who was a disappointing 17-17-1 in his second tenure at Stanford, 1992-94, including a 7-14-1 finish after which he quietly stepped down.
There is no science to hiring football coaches in the Pac-12. Itโs like flipping a coin. Heads you get Pete Carroll at USC. Tails you get Paul Hackett at USC.
In my observations of 42 years of Pac-12 football, the best at each school to coach in that period mostly fits into a similar package: a low-profile, 40-something up-and-comer with ties to the school. Hereโs how I see it, school by school:
Washington: Don James, 42, was the head coach at Kent State;
Washington State: Mike Price, 43, a former Cougars running back, was the head coach at Weber State;
Utah: Kyle Whittingham, 42, was an assistant coach for the Utes;
USC: John Robinson, 41, was an assistant coach for the Oakland Raiders and had been an assistant coach for the Trojans;
UCLA: Terry Donahue, 32, a former Bruins lineman, was a UCLA assistant;
Stanford: David Shaw, 38, was a former Cardinal receiver and a Stanford assistant coach;
Oregon State: Mike Riley, 44, was a USC assistant coach who grew up in Corvallis, where his father was a Beavers assistant coach;
Oregon: Mike Bellotti, 45, was a Ducks assistant coach;
Colorado: Bill McCartney, 42, was an assistant at Michigan;
Cal: Jeff Tedford, 40, was an assistant at Oregon;
ASU: Frank Kush, 29, was a Sun Devils assistant;
Arizona: Dick Tomey, 49, was the head coach at Hawaii.
Of those 12 men, the modest, low-profile Tomey was the biggest โnameโ to be hired.
Sometimes these successful hires were the residue of good fortune.
Washington athletic director Joe Kearney, for example, pursued Arizona coach Jim Young before he was able to lure the soon-to-be-legendary Don James away from Kent State.
In his memoirs, Young wrote that after the 1975 season โ Arizona went 9-2 and was ranked as high as No. 11 in mid-November โ UA athletic director Dave Strack mentioned that the Washington AD had called two weeks earlier seeking permission to talk to Young about the UWโs coaching vacancy.
โStrack said he did not want to bother me until after the ASU game,โ Young wrote.
โI called Washington but it was too late; they had hired Don James.โ
Kearney and Young both retired to Tucson in the 1990s and got together one day, talking about the 1975 Washington coaching search.
โJoe told me that they were really interested in me but could not understand why I did not get back to them,โ Young wrote. โI donโt know if I would have gotten that job, but I sure would have liked to at least try.โ
Young left Arizona to become head coach at Purdue a year later. The Boilermakers had hired two straight clunkers, Bob DeMoss and Alex Agase, who combined to go 31-43-1. Once at Purdue, Young went 9-2-1, 10-2 and 9-3.
Sometimes hiring the right coach only requires getting him to pick up the phone.
