re: Worst SEC Coaching Hires in the BCS era

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I don't get the Chiz thing. He had a few mediocre years, one absolutely horrible one, but he also held up the Crystal. Was it lightning in a bottle? Who the frick cares. Also, I am not sure we have Gus as our HC if not for Coach Chiz bringing him in. There is just no way Chiz is a top ten worst hire in the BCS era.

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I agree

It'd be really interesting to see what would have happened had he not tried to switch to a pro-style offense. I bet the record would've been a lot better

He's not a great coach, but he's not as bad as people make him out to be

Mike Price is the worst hire in SEC history considering he was fired before ever coaching a game.

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The short version of this scandal, according to Sports Illustrated, is that Coach Price went to Pensacola for a golf outing, got rowdy in a bar/strip club and allowed a woman (not his wife) to run a room service bill of close to $1,000. All of this happened before he ever coached a game. In one of the quickest turn-arounds in the history of sports, and before you could say, "lap dance," Price was gone and was replaced with the infinitely respectable Mike Shula.

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I know Mike DuBose won an SEC title for bammer, but 2 losing seasons in 4 years and a near-death penalty probation surely earns him a place on this list.

Dinardo wasn't hired in the bcs era. He was hired before the bcs.

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He was OC under Brooks. That's the reason they're hired him to begin with. Easy to look back now and say it was a shite hire when they were trying to maintain consistency. No one expected it to fall off that quickly under him.

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Phillips was named coach-in-waiting in 2008, much to my surprise. It wasn't that he was a bad offensive coordinator (he wasn't) or that he hadn't had a lot of sustained success (he hadn't) it was that the entire offensive engine was powered by a former 4* QB coached by Randy Sanders. In 2006 and 2007, Andre Woodson was a very good to elite QB in the SEC.

In 2008, after Woodson left, UK's offense was awful.

Phillips may have been an attempt to maintain consistency, but UK's success under Brooks was, in large part, thanks to three factors:

1. Andre Woodson/Randy Sanders
2. The ability of Rick Petri and Jimmy Heggins to develop DL/OL talent
3. The ability of Steve Ortmeyer to identify under-the-radar talent.

Ortmeyer was the engine that made the car go. A long-time NFL scout, Ortmeyer was the quality control guy in recruiting. He made calls on under-recruited kids that ended up being stars at UK.

Brooks retired and Phillips assumed the HC job with the implicit understanding that Ortmeyer, Heggins and Petri would be retained and continue to work the successful process.

Of course, Phillips was having none of that. Phillips canned Ortmeyer for Greg Nord (a former Louisville RB coach under Petrino) and his alleged Louisville metro recruiting ties. Petri was replaced by David Turner from MSU to coach the DL and supposedly help UK break into Mississippi recruiting. Heggins was replaced by Mike Summers, another former Louisville coach under Petrino, in what was probably the only arguable lateral/upgrade move.

The reason for these changes? An alleged 'recruiting upgrade.' Nevermind that Nord was a complete failure at recruiting Louisville (or anywhere else) in addition to being a downgrade from Ortmeyer's ST coaching. Nevermind that Turner was never going to help UK break into Mississippi high school recruiting and was definitely a downgrade in coaching ability from Petri.

To compound the problem, UK lost Ortmeyer's ability to identify under-recruited talent and attempted to replace it with a strategy of recruiting higher rated kids without offers from high-level BCS programs. It was well known around the football offices that, under Phillips, the UK staff would forgo any attempt at a player with a 'power' offer because it was 'a waste of time.'

So you get what UK experienced: positional coaching (and ST coaching) downgrades, risky players with higher star ratings who routinely failed to qualify, were kicked off of the team, failed out of school, or just weren't as good as the rankings made them out to be.

Sanders wasn't a bad OC and neither was Brown a bad DC. Minter was a disaster at DC not only because his scheme was complicated and would have required years of recruiting to be effective but also because he and other members of the coaching staff were openly hostile and antagonistic to each other in front of the players.

By the time it all came to a head, UK's fans had completely given up, the coaching staff had completely given up (the OC called the true freshman 4* QB into his office after four games and told him that the QB and his failure to progress was the reason they were being fired at the end of the season) and the players had no belief that any of these clown coaches knew what they were talking about.

All in all, the Joker Phillips hire was about as damaging as it could have possibly been to a UK program just getting its feet set after serious sanctions and probation. It was ill-conceived and Phillips' plan was doomed to fail at the outset.