John Talty of CBS Sports is out with a list of the 25 worst coaching hires this century.
Incredibly, Don Treadwell did not make the list. It is hard to believe that Talty came up with 25 worse hires than Treadwell.
BG’s hiring of Mike Jinks came in as the 16th worst hire.
The worst hire was a tie between MIke Price at Alabama and our own Michael Haywood at Pitt. Both got fired before even coaching a game.
Absolutely deserves to be on the list. Probably was left off since his W/L record on paper wasn’t quite bad to stick out (and he didn’t have a funny backstory like Jinks), if the writer watched us for one game in 2013 he’d have included him.
His final game against UC featured 1 yard of offense in the 2nd half.
Mike Price wasn’t a bad hire. He got done in by an article so libelous that Sports Illustrated paid him millions to settle his claims.
Price did a great job at Weber State and WAZZU. Took the Cougs to their only Rose Bowl in 100 years and was national COTY. After the Bama ambush he took UTEP to three bowl games.
I think Mike Price can be a good coach and be a bad hire at Alabama regardless of the stripper controversy
And just because Treadwell doesnt make the top 25 list doesnt mean he wasnt the worst Miami football hire in history
One of the listed criteria was did the hire make sense in the first place and hiring Treadwell made sense. He was a good player at Miami, was a coordinator for a then very successful Michigan State program and had successfully filled in as an interim head coach there. He had strong support from his former Miami teammates and Cradle of coaches guys. I think everyone on Hawktalk was pretty happy at the time of the hire. So we were all wrong.
From what I remember, and other old-timers correct me if I’m wrong, but DT was told to get rid of JK, and DT refused. So both were bounced.
I was one of the ones who originally thought having a Miami guy as the HC was a good move. It worked out well with Randy Walker, who brought the program back before moving onto Northwestern after 8 years. Hep was really good, Shane not so much … then Haywood. What bothered me about Mike Haywood was him leaving after 2 seasons (!), showing no loyalty to Miami after giving him a big break. It also showed a lack of stability in Miami Athletics.
So, I thought at the time, here’s a Miami alum with great bona fides as a D-1 Asst at a winning program. He’ll bring it to Oxford, stay 7-8 years, then the Cradle will Rock! Man was I wrong!
On paper it made total sense. But I remember getting an uneasy feeling after his introduction and discussion at the Mobile Bowl Miami event when he was introduced - it wasnt quite the electricity that Martin or Steele leave you with
Yep. I know when he was hired I was thrilled, but when I actually met him in person (I’ve gone into detail on that at least once before on MHT), I walked away like…
I feel bad for Shane. He probably wasn’t cut out to be a head coach, but he was put in the worst position imaginable by an athletic department that chose that exact moment to nickel and dime the life out of the budget.
IIRC the rumor was that the Treadwell/Klacik ultimatum came from Sayler right after he got hired after the 2012 season. Something to the effect of “win eight games next year or else”, which we fell a littttttle bit short of.
@thechuck_2112 What were the university’s reasons for goin’ cheap-o on the athletic budget?
I don’t remember. But things were being run so leanly that Shane chose to be his own OC so that he could use the OC budget to pay the other assistants anything approaching a market-rate salary for the MAC.
People rightly praised the depth of the staff Haywood hired. Shane wouldn’t have been able to hire such a staff. But it’s the athletic department that stuck him hiring a bunch of guys from D-II schools instead of whatever he could have gotten with a freer budget.
If you went back and charted the student fee subsidies to intercollegiate athletics, I would guess that you’d find that Shane’s tenure was right before those started to ramp up as it became clear how much more money it would take to stay competitive even in the MAC in most sports.
@ the Chuck and @ Devil Grad: I remember that Garland did not seem to be a sports-lovin’ guy …did that impact the Miami Athletics priority? Did Pres Hodge also go light on Miami Athletics?
Kind of off-topic, but what was cool about Charlie Coles was he was a really good coach that wanted to stay within the budget. Miami was lucky that he did not want to move on to a bigger paycheck.
Charlie also ate a shit sandwich in the budget, playing that insane schedule to help fund other sports. Someone who didn’t love Miami as much as he did would have bolted.
Completely true.
I’ve never been privy to the inner workings at Miami, but my sense was regardless of whether the president was viewed as avid about athletics, there are budget realities to be managed. If you had told anyone in, say, 2004 (Hoeppner’s last year in Oxford), that we’d eventually charge every student more than a thousand dollars a year in general fees to subsidize the athletics department, people would have thought you were crazy. I’m still not convinced it’s the right or sustainable answer, and I don’t think our administrators would have been jock haters for resisting that as long as possible.
Charlie is the perfect example of an excellent alum hire … Treadwell, just the opposite.
Charlie was also a big ‘MAC’ proponent as his schedules not only were a big plus for Miami prestige and notoriety, it was the same for the MAC.
@ Devil Grad Is that similar to the amount charged by most other universities in D1 sports?
