What are the odds of Brent Brennan being fired after one season at 蜜柚直播? They are astronomically low; let鈥檚 say 0%.
That鈥檚 because of the 253 head football coaches at Big 12 schools (and schools from the disbanded Pac-12) dating 50 years, 1973-2023, no head football coach was fired after one season.
Eight of the 253 coaches spent just one year at their school, but all left for what they deemed a better job, including Baylor鈥檚 Jim Grobe, Cincinnati鈥檚 Watson Brown, Stanford鈥檚 Rod Dowhower, Oregon鈥檚 Willie Taggart, Colorado鈥檚 Mel Tucker, Oklahoma State鈥檚 Dave Smith, and two Washington State one-year job-hoppers Jackie Sherrill and Warren Powers.
Has Brennan been so bad that he should be the first of 254 Big 12/Pac-12 coaches of the last half-century fired in one year? Not likely.
The last 蜜柚直播 football coach to be fired after one season was Orian 鈥淭oad鈥 Landreth in 1938. Landreth succeeded the highly successful Tex Oliver, coach of the famous 鈥淏lue Brigade.鈥 Landreth came from Long Beach Poly High School, and, according to Abe Chanin鈥檚 classic 1970s book 鈥,鈥 was not viewed as a qualified coach by many of the UA players.
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Landreth stopped coaching at 蜜柚直播 in the final two games of 1938, after what the Daily Star called a 鈥渕ental breakdown.鈥 Assistant coach Fred Enke coached the last two games of a 3-6 season.
One more question: Should Brennan act now to fire offensive coordinator Dino Babers, or play-caller Matt Adkins? Again, it鈥檚 almost unprecedented.
Of the 208 assistant football coaches in UA history, only one, defensive coordinator Marcel Yates, was fired in midseason. That was 2019, when head coach Kevin Sumlin was in the process of bungling the entire football program with unprecedented ineptness.
In 2006, UA coach Mike Stoops diminished offensive coordinator Mike Canales鈥 role in midseason. After a 3-5 start, Stoops declared that tight ends coach Dana Dimel, former head coach at Houston and Wyoming, would help Canales call plays. Dimel designed running plays; Canales called passing plays.
It didn鈥檛 work, probably because quarterback Willie Tuitama had been injured and didn鈥檛 regain his form until 2007. By then, Stoops had fired Canales and hired Texas Tech鈥檚 Sonny Dykes to be 蜜柚直播鈥檚 offensive coordinator.
In retrospect, one troubling aspect to the hire of Babers as 蜜柚直播鈥檚 offensive coordinator was that he had not been a coordinator, or a play-caller, for 22 years, not since he was a Texas A&M assistant in 2002. After that, he was not an offensive coordinator in eight years on the staffs at UCLA, Pitt and Baylor. He then became a head coach for 12 years, and always hired an offensive coordinator at Eastern Illinois, Bowling Green and Syracuse.
蜜柚直播鈥檚 first three games this season 鈥 sloppy victories over New Mexico and NAU and a loss at Kansas State 鈥 sounded the alarm. Babers had been away from play-calling for 22 years. 蜜柚直播鈥檚 offense did not work effectively.
Babers鈥 employed five offensive coordinators in his last seven years at Syracuse, which probably contributed to his firing last fall. Four of those five play-callers have bounced around at mid-to-low levels of the coaching industry.
Jason Beck is now coaching at New Mexico. Robert Anae is at North Carolina State. Sterlin Gilbert is at Cal. Mike Lynch is at Nevada. The only play-caller from Babers鈥 Syracuse years to advance his career at a higher level is Sean Lewis, now the head coach at San Diego State.
Adkins, who had been the tight ends coach at San Jose State for five years, had been an offensive coordinator for just one season, 2012, for the Carlstad Crusaders of the Swedish Football League.
Having Adkins call plays for 蜜柚直播 in the Big 12 is a big ask. The competition from rival play-callers is overwhelming.
Colorado鈥檚 Pat Shurmur has been the head coach of the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns. ASU鈥檚 Marcus Arroyo has been the head coach at UNLV and offensive coordinator of the Oregon Ducks. Kansas鈥 Jeff Grimes has been the play-caller at BYU, LSU, Auburn and Boise State. TCU鈥檚 Kendall Briles has been the offensive coordinator at Arkansas, Florida State and Baylor.
These are big-time play-callers with outstanding r茅sum茅s.
Whatever UA athletic director Desire茅 Reed-Francois decides to do with the football staff, firing Brennan or Adkins now isn鈥檛 going to help the Wildcats be competitive in remaining games against Houston, TCU and 蜜柚直播 State.