A Strong football coach and a Smart basketball coach isn’t always a good thing !
Well well looks like
- Thread starter Hookedonit
- Start date
I am not sure how you rank them, but for football, my list of the bottom starts at:
1. Strong
2. McWilliams
3. Akers
4. Mackovic
The reat hasn’t played out yet.
Yeah me neither . . . Ironically i thought they were great hires at the time! In my best Homer Simpson voice . . . . 'DOUGH!'
Akers?....He was one of the best.....Had his punt returner just run off the field in the Georgia game at the Cotton Bowl rather than muffing that punt late in the 4th quarter he would have won a Natty!......and if Earl and Aikman not been injured in that Cotton Bowl, he might have won another.
His arrogance eventually sealed his fate with HS coaches and brought recruiting to a stand still....but no coach could get a team ready to play like he could.
His arrogance eventually sealed his fate with HS coaches and brought recruiting to a stand still....but no coach could get a team ready to play like he could.
Recruiting is part of it and his ride off of DKR ended. Sad and an unreal when you think about it, but every coach post DKR/Akers transition has had to build a team from a broken spirited and light on talent position. Mack would have been the exception, but he waited too long in retiring and the momentum he built over the years was lost.
Akers? He was pretty damn good and won a lot of games at Texas. Had UT in position twice to win a NC ('77 & '83). Mackovic should be #2 behind Strong.
Well, Akers did get fired for a reason. It wasn't just the win/loss. Again, it is difficult to tell due to my point of the condition of the program when they took over. I like David McWilliams, but I don't think he was better the Mackovic. He had some good defenses and very bad offenses.
Akers did NOT inherit a very warm Bed from DKR. Fact is Texas was under 500 going into the last Bowl game which we won. That year Texas finished 5-5-1 and only winning the bowl game allowed Texas to avoid a losing record that year. Akers turned that around with an 11-1 record that first year and only a Cotton Bowl loss with an injured Earl Campbell and Marty Akins not playing or playing very little.
Akers came in and posted an 86-31-2 record at Texas....not too damned bad
Akers came in and posted an 86-31-2 record at Texas....not too damned bad
To say that Akers did not have to rebuild after DKR is an insult to both coaches.
I hear you and I don't disagree with everything. But, I don't agree at all that one bad season is a team in shambles when referring to DKR's last years. I can probably agree to put Akers above Mackovic, but, here is an article of the feelings at the time by Randy Galloway:
How do you fire a coach who has won nearly 75 percent of his games (86-31-2 in 10 years) and gone to nine straight bowls?
Easy.
After all, Akers is 2-7 in those bowls and twice lost in the Cotton Bowl with a national championship on the line.
Plus, the one question from the alums any coach has to answer is, What have you done for us lately? Not for 10 years, but lately?
The Longhorns just recorded their first losing season (5-6) in 30 years, and in the last three seasons, Akers is 20-14-1, including 14-14 in his last 28 games.
Those kind of numbers will get you fired at any school that considers itself a national power. Unfortunately for Fred and the Texas football program those numbers, as poor as they are, don`t represent the severity of the structural damage in Austin.
Let`s talk image here. Let`s get down to the real fact that Jackie Sherrill at Texas A&M blew the doors right off what used to be the state`s football shrine in Austin. The basic fact is the University of Texas is no longer the football school in this state. It lost that claim during the Akers Era, and that`s is the best reason of all to fire Fred.
High-grade recruits used to line up at Texas` door. Now Texas lines up at the door of high-grade recruits, and more often than not, the Longhorns haven`t been allowed in.
That could change, and in a hurry. First, of course, the coach had to change, and second, the right hire has to be made.
With Akers in control, the other Southwest Conference schools either made heavy recruiting gains on the Longhorns, or in some cases--A&M in particular
--totally passed them.
But Texas is Texas. And in this state, that proud name still means something in football. Under the right coach, it again can mean superiority in recruiting and in dominance on the field. Also, with the right coach, the now shattered Texas mystique can be pieced back together in a hurry.
I never really said he was a bad coach. I just responded to Wasatch's post about the two worst football hires. I was assuming he was including Herman. I just counted the worst up from Strong in my opinion. I should correct Mackovic to 3rd worst and Akers to 4th. From the ones I listed there is only Herman, Mack and DKR left over. So, if he is 4th on the list that means he is in the upper half.
Another way to look at it is:
The best to worst coaching hires at Texas since DKR era:
1. DKR
2. Mack
3. Herman or Akers
4. Herman or Akers
5. Mackovic
6. McWilliams
7. Strong
You know as I've gotten older I've changed my thinking about Fred Akers. Gary Cartwright once wrote that Fred Akers replaced a legend who was never going lose another game. He had some really big shoes to fill something no other TX coach had to do. And for the 1rst 7 years he did good. That loss to GA was the beginning of the end for the FA era.
Thing was everyone wanted and Coach Royal wanted to name his longtime dc Mike Campbell to replace him. But Alan Shivers made a made a power play over Coach Royal and named FA coach over Coach Royal's wishes. And really from day 1 FA's were numbered. Coach Royal's friends never accepted him. And for a long time afterwards they did everything to make his life miserable. I'm speaking of that Freeport McMoran bunch Moffet, and especially that a**hole Mack Rankin. MR actually told recruits not to come to TX. He thought he was hurting FA but what he really did was hurt UT far worse than what he thought he was doing to Akers.
I could go on but I'll stop here. On his own FA recruited and coached a lot of great players. The thing I appreciated most about him is that he went 5/4/1 against Barry Switzer the only coach to have a winning record against the man. Time has softened the fans feelings towards FA. He was fired and a change had to be made. He finally got into the Hall of Honor which was long overdue. Point from all this is replacing a legend is hard most can't do it.
Thing was everyone wanted and Coach Royal wanted to name his longtime dc Mike Campbell to replace him. But Alan Shivers made a made a power play over Coach Royal and named FA coach over Coach Royal's wishes. And really from day 1 FA's were numbered. Coach Royal's friends never accepted him. And for a long time afterwards they did everything to make his life miserable. I'm speaking of that Freeport McMoran bunch Moffet, and especially that a**hole Mack Rankin. MR actually told recruits not to come to TX. He thought he was hurting FA but what he really did was hurt UT far worse than what he thought he was doing to Akers.
I could go on but I'll stop here. On his own FA recruited and coached a lot of great players. The thing I appreciated most about him is that he went 5/4/1 against Barry Switzer the only coach to have a winning record against the man. Time has softened the fans feelings towards FA. He was fired and a change had to be made. He finally got into the Hall of Honor which was long overdue. Point from all this is replacing a legend is hard most can't do it.
I didn't know anything about all of that. I don't some of those men. Pretty sad to put there own crap ahead of Texas' best interest. Frustrating.
at the time for some reason Akers was almost a panic hire. DKR said he was retiring and Akers( who coached under DKR a long time at Texas) looked like he had turned Wyoming around in just 2 years and was the next hot coach nationally. It is very true that he was never given complete support from the Big Boys.
I have to say the man could get a team ready. We had a home and home with Auburn for our first game 2 years in a row. At the time Auburn had some jake leg RB named Bo Jackson or something like that. We won both games and Bo never came close to hurting us. Now the rest of college football didn't have as much luck with him.
Without a doubt, Akers deserves to be ahead of Herman. Not saying Herman can't turn it around, but he has done nothing at this point to be better than Mackovic other than not be a pompous ass.
A better look would be why each failed.
7. Charlie Strong - He was in over his head at Texas, no other way to put it, he made mistake after mistake here. He was fighting an up hill battle, but he was just a terrible fit for Texas.
6. McWilliams - Just a terrible hire, he got the job because he was a favorite player who many felt was unjustifiably fired by Akers and had a good year with Tech. He had a great defense, but knew nothing about offense. Then he goes out and hires the worst OC in Texas history. Still he had a nice season in 90.
5. Herman - Book is still open on him, so he can move up, but so far he has shown to be in over his head, just like Strong. He did however put in a 10 win season.
4. Mackovic - Only gets this position because of the 1996 Big 12 title. He knew less about defense than McWilliams knew about offense. So what does he do, hires the worst DC in the history of Texas football. He did have a good offense and did recruit Ricky Williams.
3. Akers - Played for two national titles and coached a Heisman winner, the only difference between him and Mack is that he didn't win one. He had a good run but his arrogance killed recruiting. I can tell you what was told to me by some of his players back in 1984. If he had a white player and a black player, the white guy would play even if the black guy was more talented. He refused to recruit inner-city black kids.
2. Mack - Great recruiter IMO. He did a masterful job of bringing together a lot of Alumni and making them feel apart of the program. Mack was a CEO and relied on his assistants to get the job done. His biggest accomplishment was letting Vince be Vince. His biggest failure was not retiring when he said he would.
1. DKR - 3 national titles. Creater of the Wishbone. One of the greatest all time coaches. There are guys here who know much more about him than I do, so I will leave it at that.
Make nomistake…..DKR was not fired.....had he stayed on he might have been.....but even the BMD guys were not big enough to fire DKR
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