October is approaching, and if athletic directors start listening to too many boosters with fire in their voice, in more ways than one, we direct their attention to Lexington, Ky.
At Kentucky, they did it the right way. Two years ago, an aging Rich Brooks was stumbling through a 3-8 season in his third year. They don’t just put pressure on basketball coaches at Kentucky. The fans wanted Brooks out. They wanted his ashes thrown to the four winds.
Athletic director Mitch Barnhart stood firm. Two years later, Kentucky is the biggest surprise in the country. It’s ranked 14th, its highest ranking in 30 years, has won nine of its past 10 and upset archrival Louisville, then ranked ninth. The Wildcats are coming off their first bowl win since 1984, and in one year season-ticket sales have jumped from 38,000 to 46,000. More than 2,000 blue-clad Kentucky fans descended on Brooks’ TV show Monday – in downtown Louisville.
All because an athletic director listened to his conscience instead of his constituency.
“Time is a wonderful thing,” Barnhart said Tuesday. “Stability is a wonderful thing.”
Barnhart did this in the Southeastern Conference, which is an incubator for coaching pressure. Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom is under fire in his fourth year. Mississippi’s Ed Orgeron is taking heat in his third. Have mercy on Louisiana State’s Les Miles if his second-ranked Tigers don’t make the BCS title game in his third.
However, it is not just the SEC where ADs’ trigger fingers get itchy in December as if at a shootout at the OK Corral. There are 24 new coaches this year. There were 23 in 2005, 18 in 2003 and 25 in 2001.
“In society, people want to win very quickly,” Barnhart said. “There’s a small window of patience for most folks and we, quite frankly, in college athletics and pro sports are charging high prices. If customers pay those prices, they want to be entertained and entertained well.
“But at some point in time, you have to be able to give your coaches the opportunity with which to work.”
At Kentucky, Brooks also had a handicap. In 2003, he took over a program riddled with NCAA sanctions from the Hal Mumme era. The program lost 19 scholarships and at one time had only 67 players on full rides.
“We looked like a I-AA program in the Southeastern Conference,” Barnhart said. “That wasn’t going to work.”
But Kentucky fans didn’t care. They were tired of losing to Ohio, let alone Louisville. However, in his fourth year, Brooks played with all his own recruits, including a remarkable junior quarterback from Radcliff, Ky., named Andre Woodson. The Wildcats went 8-5 last year and took 50,000 people to the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn., where they beat Clemson.
This year, stocked with 13 in-state starters, Kentucky has defeated Louisville and Arkansas, and Woodson may be the top quarterback taken in the NFL draft.
“There’s no way you can tell if someone can do a job until all his people are on board,” Brooks said Wednesday. “You need at least four years. With redshirts, five. Until you get a chance to see if a guy can recruit as well as coach, I think it’s difficult to judge whether someone is doing a good job or not.”
Brooks is a former athletic director and knows a bit about the changing college environment. Coaches can’t get tenure and too many fans think their coach should be Urban Meyer and win a national title in Year 2.
“People don’t have patience,” Brooks said. “A lot of it is a lot of the people making those decisions don’t have athletic backgrounds to understand what it takes or don’t have the conviction to stand up to some of the instant heat that comes from a percentage of fans who love to get on the Internet and talk radio.”
I have followed Brooks’ career closely for a reason. He arrived at Oregon my senior year in 1977 when the facilities were even worse than its 9-24 record the previous three years. The stadium was a concrete pillbox. Assistants shared offices. The weight room was in the P.E. department.
He had one winning record in his first seven years. He didn’t reach a bowl game until his 13th year. Even Oregon fans’ yawning indifference toward football had worn thin. They wanted him out. But athletic director Bill Byrne, now the AD at Texas A&M, stuck by him. In the 1994 season, Oregon reached the Rose Bowl for the first time in 37 years.
Under Mike Bellotti, Brooks’ old offensive coordinator, the Ducks are ranked 11th this week and boast arguably the best facilities in college football. Bellotti’s staff has five coaches left over from Brooks’ 1994 staff.
“That’s as good a continuity as you’ll get anywhere,” Brooks said.
Sure, this isn’t the ’70s anymore, and Oregon isn’t the SEC. But hopefully come December, the ADs at Mississippi State and Ole Miss will look up north. Maybe they’ll see the future.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
GAMES OF THE WEEK
No. 6 Cal at No. 11 Oregon
Jeff Tedford, Oregon’s former offensive coordinator, returns to Eugene as two of the most exciting offenses match up for the right to keep pace with top-ranked Southern Cal. Ducks QB Dennis Dixon is coming off career-highs of five touchdowns (four passing) and 367 passing yards in the win last week at Stanford; Nate Longshore led the Bears in last week’s win over Arizona with 341 yards passing and four TDs. Oregon leads the Pac-10 in scoring (48.5 points per game). Cal is third (41.5). The Bears’ last win at Autzen Stadium was 1987 (20-6).
Big 12: Kansas State (2-1, 0-0) at No. 7 Texas (4-0, 0-0) – The Longhorns will have revenge on their minds. Last year, Kansas State pulled off one of the league’s biggest upsets – a 45-42 win over the then-No. 4 Longhorns. KSU quarterback Josh Freeman, then a true freshman, threw for 269 yards and three touchdowns. Texas had to play most of the game without Colt McCoy, who suffered a shoulder injury in the first quarter. McCoy comes off a 333-yard passing day against Rice and will be fired up for this one. Kansas State should be rested, coming off a bye week.
Mountain West: BYU (2-2, 1-0) at New Mexico (3-1, 0-0) – The Lobos’ scoring offense has exploded since standing still in the season opener. BYU never lacks for offense (ranked sixth nationally in passing), but the defense is still searching for identity. The rivalry was stoked several years ago when Bronco Mendenhall left his post as New Mexico’s defensive coordinator to become the Cougars’ head coach.
COLORADO CONNECTIONS
Zac attack spurs Cowboys
Overshadowed by his coach’s postgame tirade, Zac Robinson had his second career start Saturday as Oklahoma State outlasted Texas Tech. Robinson, a sophomore who played at Chatfield High School, became just the second OSU quarterback in 30 years to run for more than 100 yards in a game. Included in his 116 yards rushing was a 48-yard TD run on a third-and-18 play. He also had 211 yards passing and two TDs. “I felt quite a bit more comfortable (against Tech),” he said Monday. “Against Troy I felt all right, but it was moving a little too fast for me.” The Cowboys play Sam Houston State on Saturday.
Sean Claffey, Wyoming: One of six Cowboys defensive starters from Colorado, Claffey is tied for third on the team with 25 tackles. The linebacker from Fruita also has four tackles for a loss.
