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Sunday’s notes continue with my preview of the 2006 CFB coaching carousel. Listed below are six of the new 2006 head coaches and the teams they will lead. See yesterday’s notes for the other five.
Kansas State (Ron Prince): Prince is only 36 years old and has never been a head coach at any level (assistant Division IA for the last five years). He was recently the OC in Virginia and is known as a great recruiter. He has big shoes to fill, as Bill Snyder resigned last year after a remarkable run in Manhattan.
Snyder took on arguably the worst program in the nation in 1989 and then led the Wildcats to 11 straight games from 1993 to 2003, contending for the national title in four seasons. However, the Wildcats have gone 4-7 and 5-6 the past two seasons, so Prince’s timing is pretty good. He has 17 returning starters and a quick look at the schedule shows his team could easily open 5-1.
The Wildcats open the year with four straight home games and play Illinois State, Florida Atlantic and Marshall in Manhattan before Louisville comes to town on Sept. 30. They then open their Big-12 schedule with a visit to Baylor and another home game with Oklahoma State. Snyder didn’t take the Wildcats to a bowl game until his fifth season at Kansas State, but Prince likely will in his first year in Manhattan.
Northwestern (Ryan Fitzgerald): Randy Walker was about to enter his eighth season as head coach of the Wildcats in 2006. His career record at Northwestern was only 37-46 (41-37-2 ATS) but had led to the Wildcats to three. bowling during his first seven years in Evanston, including a Sun Bowl appearance last season against UCLA. The Wildcats had faced one of the toughest schedules in the nation last year and still went 7-5. Even with the loss of quarterback Brett Basanez, a viable September schedule and 13 returning starters (including sophomore RB Tyrell Sutton) made it likely the Wildcats would be bowl-eligible again this year.
Then came the sudden death of Walker and, on July 7, the appointment of 31-year-old Ryan Fitzgerald as the team’s new head coach. Fitzgerald was a star on both teams that won the school’s Big 10 in the mid-’90s and becomes the youngest coach in Division IA this year. Who really knows how the show will react, but as mentioned above, the Wildcats have a chance to get off to a fast start. They open at Walker’s old school Miami-Ohio on Aug. 31 and then play home games against New Hampshire and Eastern Michigan. If the team can settle on a QB by then, a Friday night trip to Reno to play Nevada (10-2 at home the past two years) can be earned.
The Big-10 schedule comes next, beginning with road games at Penn State and Wisconsin. I’m not sure the team can match their 5-3 league mark from last year, so starting at least 3-1 (4-0 would be good) is a must. It will be hard not to root for Fitzgerald and the Wildcats this year.
Rice (Todd Graham): Graham was the DC in Tulsa these last three years, working with Steve Kragthorpe. All Tulsa did in the last three years was go from 1-10 and 1-11 seasons in 2001 and 2002 to 8-5 in 2003 (bowl appearance) plus after a 4-8 year in 2004, to 9 -4 last year. Last year’s team won the C-USA title game and the Liberty Bowl, 31-24 over Fresno State. Graham replaces Ken Hatfield, who produced just three winning seasons in 12 years.
Rice has some of the strictest academic standards for its athletes of any Division IA school, so it’s no surprise that the school’s last bowl appearance was in 1961. Graham has brought in the former Texas quarterback Major Applewhite as his OC and this run-oriented team try to set up a passing violation. Personal-option passing offenses rarely work, so expect Rice to struggle this year. However, since the team went 1-10 (3-8 ATS) in 2005, things can’t get any worse.
Rice starts rival Houston on Sept. 2, and if the Owls lose that (they’re 9-23 against the Cougars), they’ll likely open 0-4, at least. The Owls continue their season opener with a trip to UCLA, a game with Texas at Reliant Stadium and a visit to Tallahassee to play Florida State. Rice has averaged over 100 YPG in the air just twice since 2000, averaging 122 YPG in 2001 and a meager 103 YPG last year. This will take a while.
San Diego State (Chuck Long): Long is best remembered for finishing very close to Bo Jackson in the 1985 Heisman race. However, he has spent the last 11 years as an assistant, first at Iowa (his alma mater) and most recently at Oklahoma, where he was first the QB coach and then the team’s OC. He replaces Tom Craft, who led the Aztecs to a 19-29 record the past four years (22-21-2 ATS). San Diego State last had a winning season in 1998, going 7-5 (including a 20-13 Las Vegas Bowl loss to North Carolina).
Long is a good hire for this underperforming program that is the only MWC team since the conference’s inception in 1999 that hasn’t bowled. Lynell Hamilton (is he healthy?) is a talented running back, and quarterback O’Connell should improve under Long. The defense should be much better this year, and last year’s team was better than its 5-7 record (outscoring conference foes by 22 points). It wouldn’t be a surprise if the Aztecs posted a 7-5 record in 2006.
Temple (Al Golden): While UVa’s OC Ron Prince takes over at Kansas State, his DC Al Golden takes over at Temple (I’d rather be Ron!). Temple will play as an independent again, moving to the MAC in 2007. Temple is coming off a year in which he went 0-11 and was outscored 45-10, but the Owls actually went 5-6 ATS in 2005 (now that’s a trick!). Bobby Wallace went 19-71 in his eight years at Temple, so Golden doesn’t exactly have big shoes to fill.
Consider this fact, Temple hasn’t had a winning season in 15 years and hasn’t even surpassed four wins in a season since 1990. This year’s schedule is going to be tough again, but it can’t be any worse than last year, as nine of the team’s 11 opponents were eligible for the bowl at the end of the season. Temple averaged a pathetic 9.7 PPG on offense and allowed an awful 45.3 PPG on defense. I guess the good news is that only two starters return from the defensive end of the ball.
Temple visits Buffalo (see Buffalo article in Part 1) to open the season on August 31 and if the Owls don’t win there, the next best chance to win won’t come until a home game with Kent State (1-10 in 2005) on October 7. Wins should be few (and possibly far between) in 2006, but there may be a couple wins for Golden in his first year.
Wisconsin (Brett Bielema): Like Prince at Kansas State (Bill Snyder), Bielema replaces the school’s most successful head coach, Barry Alaverz, in Wisconsin. If it weren’t for Fitzgerald’s sudden hiring at Northwestern, Bielema (at age 36) would have the youngest Big-10 coach this season, by 15 years!
Álvarez led the Badgers to 11 bowls in his 17 years, going 8-3 in those games and 118-73-4 in his tenure. Bielema is his handpicked successor, and while it will feature a seasoned defense, the offense loses eight starters from a team that averaged a school-record 34.3 PPG in 2005. Brain Calhoun is the biggest loss (1,636 rushing yards/571 receiving yards). / 24 TD) goal QB John Stocco is back.
Wisconsin needs to start fast, opening with Bowling Green at Cleveland on Sept. 2 (LY’s score was 56-42 at Wisconsin!) and then home to Western Michigan plus San Diego State. The Badgers open the Big-10 game with a road game at Michigan, but then play at Indiana and at home to Northwestern and Minnesota. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the Badgers start 5-1 this year. Wisconsin won’t win 10 games like it did last year, but it likely has a winning record and a bowl offer.
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