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Top 5 football coaches in hot seat

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Top 5 football coaches in hot seat Empty Top 5 football coaches in hot seat

Post  MULECHOPS Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:53 pm

5. Paul Wulff, Washington State Cougars
Career with team: 5-32 (3 seasons)
2010: 2-10
Salary: $600,000



The Cougars showed signs of life throughout 2010. They had UCLA on the ropes and gave both the Oregon Ducks and Stanford Cardinal headaches. But they also lost those three games by an average of 15 points. The Nov. 13 stunner over the Oregon State Beavers -- Wulff's first road win at Wazzu -- was enough to give him one more year of rebuilding.



4. Mike Locksley, New Mexico Lobos
Career with team: 2-22 (2 seasons)
2010: 1-11
Salary: $750,000



Locksley's predecessor, Rocky Long, never won a conference title during his 10 seasons in Albuquerque (though he did post seven years of six-plus wins) and when he looked into his crystal football he realized that he'd likely never have a real chance to do so. So he resigned. Locksley was brought in to, in the AD's words, "take Lobos football to another level." Perhaps the boss should have been more specific about what level he was talking about.



3. Rick Neuheisel, UCLA Bruins
Career with team: 15-22 (3 seasons)
2010: 4-8
Salary: $1.25 million



One story from last fall that I would like to go back and rewrite was my listing of the top 5 schools that should be superpowers but aren't. Why? Because I should have had the Bruins on that list. Maybe at the top.



UCLA has history, cash, a national brand and sits squarely in the center of one of America's most talent-rich recruiting mines. So how has Neuheisel managed only one winning season out of three? The momentum of the Bruins' early-season win over the Texas Longhorns vanished by midseason (in part because the Longhorns' season went in the tank). And since the 4-8 year ended he took forever to hire a defensive coordinator, experienced a publicly awkward divorce with offensive coordinator Norm Chow and brought in a recruiting class that ESPN Recruiting has ranked 11th in the Pac-12.



2. Houston Nutt, Mississippi Rebels
Career with team: 22-16 (3 seasons)
2010: 4-8
Salary: $2.5 million



The good news? Nutt posted consecutive 9-4 seasons to start his Ole Miss tenure, ending with back-to-back Cotton Bowl titles. The bad news? He reversed that record in 2010, the first year with his recruits largely at the helm, a harder pill for the Rebels faithful to swallow because it coincided with the sudden rise of the Mississippi State Bulldogs, who have beaten Ole Miss in the last two Egg Bowls. An incoming top-20 recruiting class has given cause for optimism, but recent history says that they will fire up the guillotine pretty quickly down in Oxford. Just ask David Cutcliffe.



1. Lane Kiffin, USC Trojans
Career with team: 8-5 (one season)
2010: 8-5
Salary: $4 million (reported)



Yes, USC athletic director Pat Haden has said repeatedly that he stands behind his coach, a stance that he reiterated Wednesday when the Trojans received their notice of allegations against Kiffin. Yes, those allegations surround his time with the Tennessee Volunteers, not USC.



However, if anyone really believes that this will not have some sort of effect, even if it is subconscious, on USC's pending appeal of its current NCAA sanctions, they're kidding themselves. And there is a precedent that says recruiting restrictions could be placed on Kiffin at USC as punishment for what he did at Tennessee. In 2002-03, Neuheisel wasn't allowed to participate in off-campus recruiting with the Washington Huskies for violations he committed while with the Colorado Buffaloes.



Would USC be willing to take on more restrictions on top of their current ones? Would they be willing to endure another year or more of embarrassing media coverage just as the noise has finally started to quiet down from the Reggie Bush-Heisman-Pete Carroll PR disaster?



Maybe so, but that doesn't mean that Kiffin's seat won't be at least a little warm for comfort in the meantime.



MULECHOPS
MULECHOPS

Posts : 1068
Join date : 2010-02-08
Age : 53
Location : Sullivan Kentucky
Favorite College team: : UK
Favorite NFL team: : Vikings

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