With Bob Davie's New Mexico team coming to South Bend this weekend, (minus Bob Davie, who is staying home recovering from a heart attack), this article appeared in The Athletic.

If anyone wanted evidence just how bad of a coach Bob Davie is, this article is it.


This was Bob Davie's coaching staff at Notre Dame:




Gregg Mattison was the defensive line coach and Mickey Marotti was the strength coach. Jim Colletto was offensive coordinator.


"Seven future college head coaches, 14 future national titles, four future Super Bowls.

Those are the numbers from the men who made up one of the greatest coaching staffs in the history of college football — at least that no one knew about at the time.

Those would be the assistants of the Bob Davie era at Notre Dame (1997-01).

Those numbers, and that collective coaching brainpower, get lost when talking about Davie’s tenure with the Irish, considering his teams went just 35-25 and he was fired after five years."


https://theathletic.com/1197616/2019/09/...ban-meyer/

Davie was a poor fit at ND. I know they also interviewed Gary Barnett and Tom Clements. I'm sure the administration wanted to keep the luster of Holtz going, so it was only natural to promote one of his coordinators. Terry, was Dave Roberts under serious consideration for the job (he ended up becoming Baylor's HC that same year)?

(09-10-2019 09:05 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  Davie was a poor fit at ND. I know they also interviewed Gary Barnett and Tom Clements. I'm sure the administration wanted to keep the luster of Holtz going, so it was only natural to promote one of his coordinators. Terry, was Dave Roberts under serious consideration for the job (he ended up becoming Baylor's HC that same year)?

Nobody other than Davie (who had maneuvered behind Holtz's back to replace him) was a serious contender for that job.

(09-10-2019 08:47 AM)TerryD Wrote:  "Seven future college head coaches, 14 future national titles, four future Super Bowls.

Those numbers are very exaggerated.

Look at the claim of "14 future national titles" -- all of them are just re-counting Meyer's national titles (because his assistants are counted as separate national titles), except for the one guy who was an assistant on the LSU BCS title team coached by Saban. They're counting Florida's 2006 title five times, and their 2008 title four times -- and even with all the multiple counting, the writer miscounted, it still only adds up to 12.



In other words, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban have been the head coaches of teams that won national titles. Duh.

The Super Bowl claim isn't much better. All the guys listed were non-coordinator assistants on Super Bowl winning teams. Sometimes a non-coordinator assistant is a huge contributor; sometimes he's just along for the ride.

As for the future head coaches -- at most three of those guys were/are good head coaches.

(09-10-2019 08:47 AM)TerryD Wrote:  With Bob Davie's New Mexico team coming to South Bend this weekend, (minus Bob Davie, who is staying home recovering from a heart attack), this article appeared in The Athletic.

If anyone wanted evidence just how bad of a coach Bob Davie is, this article is it.


This was Bob Davie's coaching staff at Notre Dame:




Gregg Mattison was the defensive line coach and Mickey Marotti was the strength coach. Jim Colletto was offensive coordinator.


"Seven future college head coaches, 14 future national titles, four future Super Bowls.

Those are the numbers from the men who made up one of the greatest coaching staffs in the history of college football — at least that no one knew about at the time.

Those would be the assistants of the Bob Davie era at Notre Dame (1997-01).

Those numbers, and that collective coaching brainpower, get lost when talking about Davie’s tenure with the Irish, considering his teams went just 35-25 and he was fired after five years."


https://theathletic.com/1197616/2019/09/...ban-meyer/

Ara Parseghian was on some pretty good staffs at Miami. His first year, Woody Hayes was his head coach. Johnny Pont was there and Bo Schembechler followed Parseghian. John Mackovic was a GA during those years.

Or you could say... those guys learned a lot from Davie and went on to do great things.

Kind of like Bob Stull at Missouri. His coaches went on to the NFL though.
Andy Reid
Dirk Koetter
Marty Mornhinweg
Dave Toub
Ken Flajole

I think Bawb was a great fit. Loved him in the Gator Bowl. He coulda been YUGE if ND just kept him. :)

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(09-11-2019 10:33 AM)Wolfman Wrote:  Or you could say... those guys learned a lot from Davie and went on to do great things.

Yep, Bob Davie is proving that at New Mexico....

(09-10-2019 10:37 AM)Wedge Wrote:  Those numbers are very exaggerated.

Agreed. First, coaching is a very tight fraternity, so coaching trees tend to be very entangled. I bet you could do this with a whole lot of staffs from the mid-90s.

Second, as you note, few of those coaches have gone on to be GOOD head coaches. A few have been obvious failures.

All that said, Terry is right about one thing: Davie was a terrible coach at Notre Dame. Maybe the least imaginative coach at a major program I've seen. And, he also "maneuvered" behind Holtz to get Holtz's job.

I didn't like Davie at ND from Day One.