In 2009 ASU was struggling through a middling offensive season. Pressure from the fan base led to our offensive coordinator Doug ruse to "resign" and our head coach at the time Steve Roberts was encouraged to bring in a bright offensive mind.

1. In December of 2009 Roberts hired Clay Helton, the former OC at Memphis as our offensive Coordinator.

2. In January of 2009, the Seattle Seahawks fired their head coach and chose to hire Southern Cal's Pete Carroll as their head coach.

3. To cover themselves, USC chose to make a rather strange move and hire former Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffen to be the Trojans head coach. By the end of January, Kiffen hires several big name assistants, including one Clay Helton, who resigned his 1 month position at ASU to become the quarterbacks coach in LA.

4. Much pressure from the Fan base leads Roberts to hire Hugh Freeze away from a 2 month gig at San Jose State to be our offensive coordinator.

5. After a middling season, Roberts resigned his position at ASU, and Freeze was hired as head coach. Starting the rise of ASU football.

6. After one season, Freeze left to take the Ole Miss job, and we hired Gus Malzahn.

7. Same Song, different verse. Malzahn leaves after one year and we hire Bryan Harsin from Texas.

8. In September, USC fires Lane Kiffen at the airport after three mediocre years by Southern Cal Standards. Ed Ogeron was named Interim HC. Clay Helton becomes Offensive Coordinator.

9. Today, after a successful season, Ogeron finds out he did not get the head coaching job at SC, and promptly throws a temper tantrum and resigns on the spot. Effective immediately. Clay Helton is named acting head coach for the bowl game.

10. USC chooses to hire Washington's Steve Sarkisian as head coach

11. Washington immediately contacts Chris Petersen about his interest in their position. Petersen is well known to be the mentor to.

12. ASU's Bryan Harsin who never would have been our head coach had it not been for Clay Helton leaving us to take the USC job...which started the current rise of ASU football, and ultimately led to the end of...

13. Steve Roberts

Aint coaching fun?

2001 Dan Hawkins is named head coach at Boise State. He hires a former Boise player coaching at NAIA Eastern Oregon, Bryan Harsin, as a GA and a year later makes him tight ends coach. Hawkins leaves and Harsin is promoted to OC/QB coach.

2011 Hugh Freeze leaves AState they first talk to Jim Leavitt and it goes poorly. AD Dean Lee calls former Boise AD Gene Bleymaier who had done some consulting for AState. He suggest Dan Hawkins, they meet by phone it goes well but Hawkins can't come out for a couple days. He's told what ASU can pay, that's fine. They set up a flight to bring in him on the first date he's available the consensus is if the in person with the AD and president goes well that morning they will announce him that afternoon. While that's going on Freeze and Malzahn are talking, Gus is unhappy with life with Chizik and feeling he booted it by not taking Vandy and enduring a year of not being able to run his offense. Freeze tells him to talk to AState and gives him the governor's personal cell number. Over the next couple days the deal gets put together and a press conference is held to announce Malzahn 24 hours prior to when AState insiders expected ASU would introduce Dan Hawkins.

Hawkins doesn't get the job and a year later it goes to the GA he hired at Boise.

Tommy and Houston
Just before signing day 1993 Ray Perkins quits ASU to go back to the NFL. AState interviews former ass't Tommy Tuberville. He demands a certain salary and wants to hire new assistants (current assistants have 11 months left on their contracts). ASU says you can have the salary if you keep the assistants or do a year a lower salary and have new assistants. He turns that down and later takes the Ole Miss job.

The guys ASU hired instead gets fired. Houston Nutt applies. The AD tells me he didn't consider him because his brother was head basketball coach "I never want to have to walk into a coach's office and say I just fired your brother". Houston ends up getting the Boise job (Bryan Harsin is a player there at the time).

One year later Arkansas is open. The finalists are Tuberville and Nutt. The AD is forced to have a search committee and while he wants to hire Tuberville the committee wants Nutt. The president sides with the committee and hires Nutt. A year later Tuberville goes to Auburn.

Nutt eventually ends up being pressured to hire Malzahn who quits a year later to go to Tulsa.

Tuberville runs into a rocky patch eventually at Auburn and the president has a secret meeting to try to hire Bobby Petrino. It becomes public and blows up and Tuberville survives a little longer.

Nutt is fired and takes the Ole Miss job he interviews Ole Miss interim head coach Hugh Freeze for the OC position but opts to not retain him.

Chizik is hired to replace Tuberville and hires Gus Malzahn.

Freeze gets the AState job Nutt couldn't get then replaces Nutt at Ole Miss.

Petrino replaces Nutt instead of Tuberville

Malzahn takes the AState job his former boss Houston couldn't get then replaces Chizik.

Harsin ends up getting the job his former head coach Houston couldn't get.

So the last three AState coaches all have Houston Nutt ties!

If Petersen took the Washington job(I don't think he would), where would Harsin rank on Boise's list I wonder...

(12-03-2013 01:09 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  If Petersen took the Washington job(I don't think he would), where would Harsin rank on Boise's list I wonder...

I've seen him in the top three of most fan lists. My guess is they would try Dirk Koetter first.

To be honest, Harsin has what is essentially a 2 million dollar buyout. I am not sure Boise could afford that, not to mention hiring a 7-5 Sun Belt Coach probably wont make waves in the national landscape.

(12-03-2013 01:09 AM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  If Petersen took the Washington job(I don't think he would), where would Harsin rank on Boise's list I wonder...

In the top three or four until they start trying to figure out how to come up with $1.7 million to get him out of his AState deal.

Probably the coolest thread I've read on Arkansas State ever.

(12-03-2013 12:14 PM)gsu95 Wrote:  Probably the coolest thread I've read on Arkansas State ever.

It really is amazing how much of this has come full circle for us. The Helton story is certainly freaky when you consider how much ASU fans were against his hiring to begin with, and how much we were for Freeze as OC.

I'm just totally lost

The only thing I can make heads or tails of is that a few of those names were on our short-list when we were "searching" for a HC to take us to FBS. (Even if they wanted Fran all along)

Yall join in. It's just a fun way to see how the coaching community is really a small group with a lot of connections. Houston Nutt is generally deemed a boob but he in a short period of time had ties to the last three AState coaches and fired the guy leading Ole Miss and all but ran off a guy playing for the SEC title.

Here's one.
Mack Brown. Left App, eventually went to Tulane and led them to one of the four bowls they've been to in four years. Eventually landed at Texas, hired AState head coach Bryan Harsin. Brown also hired Will Muschamp who became head coach at Florida and was coaching Florida as they lost to App's rival Georgia Southern giving the Eagles their first win over an FBS.

(12-03-2013 02:26 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Yall join in. It's just a fun way to see how the coaching community is really a small group with a lot of connections. Houston Nutt is generally deemed a boob but he in a short period of time had ties to the last three AState coaches and fired the guy leading Ole Miss and all but ran off a guy playing for the SEC title.

Yes, well, we had Dennis Nutt (his brother) as our BB coach for 7 seasons (2000-06) with a record of 70-97. Not one winning season.

Dennis leaving caused the decline of ASTATE hoops.

(12-03-2013 02:44 PM)CatMom Wrote:  

(12-03-2013 02:26 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Yall join in. It's just a fun way to see how the coaching community is really a small group with a lot of connections. Houston Nutt is generally deemed a boob but he in a short period of time had ties to the last three AState coaches and fired the guy leading Ole Miss and all but ran off a guy playing for the SEC title.

Yes, well, we had Dennis Nutt (his brother) as our BB coach for 7 seasons (2000-06) with a record of 70-97. Not one winning season.

This is the one thing that shows me how little the TxSt AD cares about basketball. Thirteen years, two coaches (Nutt and Davalos) and not a single winning season between them.