re: Every Teams most underrated football coach

Meyer didn't arrive until 2005, mediocre Ron Zook beat Arkansas and was fired.

Fulmer started the decline and made them more beatable as the years went on. A known cheater, he got exposed as a fraud.

Besides one great season at Auburn, Tuberville was average and couldn't get Auburn to the next level. Auburn is Auburn.

O sucked at Ole Miss and he admitted he didn't know what he was doing. They are a lot better now with Kiffin.

Spurrier didn't arrive until 2005 and didn't have his better teams until later on.

Nutt had some dudes on his teams, certainly more than Pittman. The problem is they couldn't stay out of jail.

Gene Stallings wasn’t underrated. He won a National Championship in the very few years he coached, and beat what was considered the best Miami U team of the 90’s.

It may be Mike Shula. In 2005, if Tyrone Prothro doesn’t get hurt and sadly never plays football again, we would have never gotten Nick Saban. We were up by 30 points with him in the game against Florida. After that we could barely score. Beat Tenner and Mother’s and lost by 13 total to LSU and Auburn. Ended up beating the T.Tech 13-10 who at the time said they would score 50 on us.

We were number one in the country and undefeated. With Texas and USC behind us.

porthro had better stats than Bush who won the Heisman at the time of his injury and was just as electric.

Shula wasn’t a bad coach. He was who Bama wanted. Inside guy, played football at Bama, dad was famous of course. Sometimes you just have some bad luck.

I would probably say Leach for State. His national reputation is more about what he did at Tech and Wazzu, but State fans are very meh about his time in Starkville. Other than Saban shoving him in a locker three years in a row, he was highly competitive or had success against everyone else. 2020 State-LSU and 2021 State-Auburn are two of the most objectively entertaining games you will watch.

There’s definitely an argument that he won with Joe Moorhead’s recruits and State’s roster was in shambles by the time all those guys filtered out. But basically averaged 8 wins a year in his only two full seasons and was far more successful against the Top 25 than most State coaches have been historically.

Yep, Stallings wasn’t underrated. You get a statue at BDS you aren’t exactly flying under the radar. I think Shula was an asterisk kind of coach. Like you said he had the name and was a former player but we were dealing with the probation aftermath so he was more of a fill in. I think you probably have to say it was probably Perkins for Bama. Took over after Bryant so obviously huge shoes to fill like our current coaches situation. Perkins didn’t exactly light it up but didn’t let the program down either. I would have said fRan but the way he bailed was complete dog shite but the dude did beat Auburn and absolutely skull drug a Saban coached LSU team in BR.

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Would A&M be RC?

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RC lasted longer than he should have because we got lucky in 1998 and won the Big12. RC's success came in a dying Southwest Conference. All that being said RC is a stand up dude.

I think Mike Sherman is the better candidate. His problem was that he wouldn't hire an offensive coordinator. His final year we would dominate the first half and then fade away in the second half. He got the message he was fired while out recruiting, showing the true nature of the asswipes who run our football program.

Sumlin's success came with Sherman's players. But Sherman never would have started JFF. If I was in charge I would have given Sherman one more year with the requirement he hire an OC. You could see we had the roster, it just wasn't being used correctly.

So you’re saying Auburn has the name Alabama does? No. And some polls had us number 1. But most had us 4 or 5. I think we would definitely have been in the conversation for sure. Tenner, Georgia, LSU and others were highly ranked in the top 10. Win over those and our name would have gotten us in, I believe

Most LSU fans would say our best coaches since the 50s are (chronologically):
Dietzel
McClendon
Arnsparger
Saban
(grudgingly argue between Les and O)

Arnsparger is not underrated at all, maybe un-remembered since his time was short, but his three years were highly successful.

The answer is Gerry Dinardo. He took over a dumpster fire, enjoyed some huge moments, embraced the job, and left it better than he found it. It wasn't a great breakup, but 25 years later, he looks like a pretty significant bridge between misery and over two decades as a consistent championship-contending/winning program.

good topic, OP!!

I'd second Faurot. He also created the template that later became wishbone, I think.

That was the split T. All the wishbone did was move the fullback up a yard or two.