Virgo: I think he is and that his point is that Iowa fans are very patient with coaches. (Justifiably IMO)

Baylor really sucked for awhile after firing Chuck Reedy.

Firing Ruffin was the worst decision in ECU history.

(04-21-2021 08:08 PM)virgosports Wrote:  

(04-21-2021 07:49 PM)goofus Wrote:  I am jealous because this is a thread that Iowa fans really can't participate in. Iowa has not fired a head football coach since Bob Commings in 1978 and he deserved to be fired.

Since then Iowa has had only 2 coaches in the last 43 years, Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz. Maybe I should start a different thread for coaches that stayed too long.

Are you not grateful for the sustained success Iowa has had? Unless urban Meyer is available, it could be a Nebraska type slide.

Yes and no. Fry and Fernentz both did better in their first 10 years than their 2nd 10 years. Part of me wishes they would have both moved on to the NFL after 10 years because Iowa would never fire them.

Ferentz especially now has a reputation for consistently cranking out 8--5 seasons, and then once every 5-6 seasons, Iowa will win 11 games and go to a BCS/Contract bowl.

Is that good enough for Iowa? Probably because Ferentz keeps getting contract extensions that are hard to buy out. And this thread can be a good reminder of be careful what you wish for. But its frustrating because Iowa is kind of admitting it really can't do any better. It can be a good, sometimes great team, but not one of the elites programs. For better or worse, I guess that is good enough for Iowa.

(04-18-2021 04:38 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Any of these firings is only a bad mistake if the team could not be reasonably expected to have replaced the fired coach with someone at least as good. If you fire a coach in a situation where the guy was the best coach your team ever had and no other good coach would want to go there, then yes it was a big mistake to fire him. Otherwise, the problem is that the replacement was a poor choice.

Pelini/Nebraska is a good example. Nebraska is many years removed from the great run of the last years of Osborne's coaching career, but they should have still had enough going for them that they could be expected to replace Pelini with someone at least as good. Pelini burned bridges there. The decision to fire him wasn't crazy. The failure was in making a bad hire after Pelini was out.

Along these lines... Cincinnati fired Rick Minter in 2003.

UC was a bad program before Minter. The head coach before Minter left UC to become head coach at Harvard. He thought Harvard was a step up from UC.

There was no reason to think that the historically awful Cincinnati program could do better than Minter.

Minter was a solidly average coach with occasional flashes of brilliance. 26-24 in his final 4 years at UC, so he wasn't headed downhill.

He was good at developing talent. He graduated 18 players to the NFL in his final 7 years at UC. His assistant coaches at Cincinnati included Jimbo Fischer, Rex Ryan, John Harbaugh, Mike Tomlin, and Joker Phillips.


We got lucky and hired Mark Dantonio to replace Minter. But that doesn't mean it was a good call to fire him.

(04-25-2021 11:39 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  We got lucky and hired Mark Dantonio to replace Minter. But that doesn't mean it was a good call to fire him.

Paul Pasqualoni often ends up on lists like this. Just because Gerg Robinson was a complete and utter tire fire doesn't mean it was a mistake to fire Pasqualoni.