NCAA Football FanHouse

What Happened to My Football Program?

Terence Moore — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:40:00 EST

OXFORD, Ohio -- As is the custom around here, new buildings are smothered with red brick and molded into a Georgian style. Just like that, they stand as gracefully ancient as Miami University, celebrating its 200th year.

Dormitory Like No Other: A Productive Animal HouseInspiring Redskins Coach Was One of Us | Ron Zook Was One of Us

I mention this, because such is the case for the decades-old-looking psychology school at the corner of Patterson and High streets, where they used to play football during my days on campus in the 1970s. Speaking of changes, they've switched the nickname of the sports teams from Redskins to RedHawks. Even more striking, the dominant sport for Miami these days is hockey. In fact, despite choking away a two-goal lead at the end of last season's NCAA championship game, Miami is ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today entering this hockey season.

That said, there is a bigger difference between Miami now and Miami during the time of the miracle I've been telling you about for three weeks -- you know, the miracle that was the collection of folks in my dormitory called Hepburn Hall. It eventually produced a slew of prominent college and pro coaches, players in the NFL, NBA and major league baseball and doctors, lawyers, CEOs and even journalists.

The bigger difference is football.

What happened to Miami football?

This doesn't resemble that 13-1 team of six years ago during Ben Roethlisberger's senior year. This doesn't resemble the team that shocked No. 8 LSU in Death Valley in 1986. Or the one that gave Rose Bowl-bound Northwestern its only loss nine years later. Or the one that upset No. 12-ranked opponents (Virginia Tech and North Carolina) in consecutive seasons through 1998.

This doesn't resemble those teams that had Miami earning its moniker as The Cradle of Coaches by spawning the likes of Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler.

This also doesn't resemble those teams during my Hepburn Hall days that had a 32-1-1 record with victories in bowl games over Florida, and South Carolina to finish 15th, 10th and 12th during those three seasons in the AP poll.

On this Saturday afternoon, with a pretty sky over the new place on the edge of campus called Yager Stadium, Miami continued the oldest rivalry west of the Alleghenies before a stuffed house against the University of Cincinnati. While most college football polls had the Bearcats entering the game ranked 10th in the country, ESPN had Miami ranked third -- as in the nation's third-worst team with an 0-4 record this season, a nine-game losing streak overall and no hope against Cincinnati.

So this wasn't surprising: courtesy of Tony Pike, Cincinnati's passing machine at quarterback, and a relentless pass rush (10 sacks), the Bearcats stormed to a 37-13 victory over Miami in the 114th Battle of the Victory Bell.

Then again, such things happen when you're a new guy inheriting a program whose predecessor gave you a ridiculous talent deficit. Smallish players. Young ones, too, and the word "physical" wasn't in Miami's football vocabulary when Mike Haywood left his alma mater of Notre Dame as offensive coordinator to take over Miami this season.

Haywood gets it, by the way. He knows that, not only does the Miami football program need players, but it needs a psychologist -- literally. The university has given Haywood permission to hire one to help examine the psyche of his players who have seen the program's glorious past become a ghastly present.

"I'd say 90 percent of their minds are not where they need to be, because when something bad happens, they anticipate something else bad happening, instead of going out and saying, 'I'm going to be the one to make the play,' " said Haywood, 45, a strong disciplinarian who demands that his players are into details -- on the field, in the classroom and during their lives.

In contrast, Shane Montgomery, Haywood's Miami predecessor, was into mellow, which led to three losing seasons out of his four as head coach.

Thus the need for a shrink. He'll be arriving to Miami soon from Michigan State as an accomplished team psychologist. Said Haywood, "When you believe you're going to be the one, and you believe in your teammate, there is slim and none of an opportunity of not having success. And right now, we're hoping. We got to start believing."

Which means, what? "From where (the Roethlisberger years) were, I think we're two years away, because it's all about recruiting," said Haywood, sitting in his Yager Stadium office, with reminders of Miami's storied football history everywhere. Pictures showing the who's who of former head coaches line the hallway walls. In the large plaza (featuring red brick, of course) beyond the south end zone, they are constructing bronze statues of Earl "Red" Blaik, Paul Dietzel, Carmen Cozza, Ewbank, Brown, Parseghian and Schembechler. They all are among the 21 Miami graduates who have been recognized in some form as national collegiate or professional coaches of the year or have been inducted in the college football Hall of Fame.

This Cradle of Coaches thing isn't just a football coaching thing -- well, as you can tell by those from my Hepburn Hall days.

Even beyond those days, Miami produced Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston of the Los Angeles Dodgers, along with Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Angelo and San Diego Chargers vice president Jim Steeg.

What caused all of this?

Ara Parseghian chuckled over the phone from his home in South Bend, Ind., where he helped make Notre Dame famous, and then he said, "You know, it's a question that people have tried to answer for decades about why Miami has produced all this talent, and no one has been able to come up with the perfect answer. But I think Miami may attract a certain type of person. It's a beautiful campus. It's a beautiful environment, and then you go back to the idea that success breeds success. That may be part of it."

Then Parseghian thought about that stretch from 1949 through 1977, when he followed Woody Hayes as head coach and then was succeeded by John Pont, Schembechler, Bill Mallory and Dick Crum.

As a group, they collectively coached for 148 seasons at Miami and other places and won 67 percent of the time.

"Back then, you had one or two guys going out who may have been successful, and they'd been in school with classmates, and then they decided to hire them as their assistants, and the tentacles sort of spread out that way," said Parseghian, before jumping to the present. He remembered the call he received last winter from Haywood when Haywood still was a Notre Dame assistant.

Haywood wanted Parseghian to make a few calls to Miami on his behalf. "When I phoned Brad Bates, the athletics director, he said he already had Mike on his list," said Parseghian, who eventually saw history reverse itself. While Parseghian went from Miami to Notre Dame as head coach (with a pit stop at Northwestern), well, you know the rest, and get this: like Parseghian, Haywood feels a heavy dose of magic on the campuses of Notre Dame and Miami.

It's different magic, though.

"When you walk around the campus of Notre Dame, you feel a certain spirit, and the spirit that you feel is a holy spirit, which makes the place special," said Haywood, a running back for the Fighting Irish in the mid-1980s. "At Notre Dame, you feel like everywhere you go that God is present."

As for Miami, Haywood smiled, saying, "Once again, you still get that safe feeling that you have at Notre Dame. But it's also that people are extremely friendly. It's a warm and welcoming feeling that you get here. And as you walk around, sometimes you walk around in awe. That's because it's unbelievable that, when you drive through cornfields to get here, it's such an unbelievably gorgeous place -- from the cobblestone streets (downtown) to walking down the center of campus with all the trees.

"Sometimes, I say it's like Mayberry R.F.D."

Good description. It's true now, and it was true during my days at Hepburn Hall, still on the north side of campus with its three stories and 270 or so residents. The closer I got to the old dormitory, the more it was the 1970s again, with Ron Zook, Randy Walker, Sherman Smith, Charlie Leibrandt and all the rest.

"Who?" said Philip Dodd after I walked through the front door of Hepburn Hall, where the native of Paris, Texas is a resident assistant.

When I told Dodd that Zook and Walker were former national coaches of the year in college football, and that Smith is the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins, and that Leibrandt once was a prominent pitcher in the major leagues, Dodd apologized, saying, "To tell you the truth, I'm not much of a sports fan. Hey, let me introduce you to somebody in the dorm who really is."

So Dodd took me to Dan Nickels, a junior from Knoxville, Tenn., who recognized at least some of Hepburn Hall's noted residents from my day. Nickels even responded with a few "wows" here and there.

Who will be the stars of this Hepburn Hall?

"Oh, boy. Well, we've got a couple of figure skaters who have done very well, and that's really cool," said Nickels, pausing. "As for what this dorm will produce in the future, I know about me. I know I'll be a highly successful attorney in court and procedural law, and I'll deal with malpractice defense. I also want to be a lobbyist."

Not quite my Hepburn Hall, but it's a start.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.

What Happened to My Football Program? originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:40:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Illini's Ron Zook Was One of Us

Terence Moore — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: Illinois, Miami (OH), Coaching

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Ron Zook kept interrupting his storytelling with smiles and chuckles. Despite enough pressure around his fifth year as head football coach at the University of Illinois to tackle a Galloping Ghost (you know, as in Red Grange from the Illini's distant glory days), he was having a blast.

That's because, as Zook leaned forward on the couch inside his office near Memorial Stadium, he couldn't stop rattling off 35-something-year-old memories of Hepburn Hall, the most unusual of college dormitories.

"What game are they coming to?" said Zook, with wide eyes, looking across the way to his wife, Denise. After she replied, "Michigan State," he named some of the old Hepburn Hall gang and others that he invites to town every year. "About 20 of them," Zook said, before adding, "After the game, they come to my house, and it's a good time." Then he said with a little laugh, "They have a lot more fun than me."

I dare you to find another dormitory like this one. You won't, by the way, and to make my point, I'll occasionally tell you during the next three weeks about several of the 270 or so dreamers who spent the mid-1970s inside this three-story, Georgian-styled residence hall, located among the eternal red bricks and highly manicured grounds of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

This was one of 36 dorms on a campus of around 15,000 students, and like those others, Hepburn Hall was for anybody. It didn't exist solely to house nuclear physicists, CEOs of large companies or even sports journalists and prominent folks in other aspects of athletics. Even so, our generation of Hepburn Hall produced all of that. And here's the strangest thing: Many of us knew much about each other (as in our strengths, weaknesses, wishes, desires), but none of us saw any of this coming.

It just happened. It happened fast, and it happened big time. For instance, regarding the sporting universe, our Hepburn Hall produced ...

Two guys who captured national and conference Coach Of The Year honors at the Division I-A level of college football. A member of the NFL All-Rookie team who became a prolific runner in the league for a decade. A starting second baseman for a dozen years in the major leagues. A veteran pitcher who helped set the foundation for a team's record 14 consecutive division titles. An NFL offensive coordinator who was among the original icons of an expansion team. A multiple award-winning baseball coach who has taken his team to three College World Series trips. An accomplished minor-league manager for a storied franchise. A Division II athletic director.

Oh, and a national sports columnist for FanHouse.

So what's the deal here? I mean, this would be slightly more than incredible if you had this collection of individuals as alumni of the same college at any time -- but at the same time and inside of the same dormitory?

This is The Twilight Zone times The X-Files.

"I don't know what caused this. I really don't, but I do know that (Miami) is just a great, great university that's great academically, and it's kind of a little utopia with its beautiful campus that just grabs you," said Zook, 55, a native of Loudonville, Ohio . "I know from the sports point of view, most of us, but not all of us, were from the state of Ohio that has very, very good high school coaching. Then at Miami, people were recruiting character students, and the evaluation was much more on finding football players, for instance, and not so much on height, weight, speed. That sort of thing."

That was a good thing for Zook, a walk-on, who eventually spent his senior year as the captain of Miami's 1975 football team. Zook's Miami was THE Miami in the nation before that other one in south Florida. In fact, during his tenure at Miami (Ohio) as a hard-slamming, high-energy defensive back, his team known as the Redskins back then finished 32-1-1 with bowl victories in consecutive years over Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The only thing that kept Miami from going undefeated during that stretch was a one-point loss at Michigan State and a tie at Purdue.

Not only that, with Zook demanding that his teammates do nothing less along the way, Miami finished those three seasons ranked 15th, 10th and 12th respectively in the final Associated Press polls. Said Zook, "I can remember many times that we would be down playing Kentucky or whoever, and it would be a tough game, but never was there a concern on our sidelines as to whether we would win or not.

"It was always like, 'We better get our butt together. Hey, we got to get going.' And all of those lessons that I learned at Miami are the lessons that I've tried to instill into our team here and at every place I've ever coached."

In case you're wondering, Zook has coached forever, and this makes no sense. "I know I never saw this coming," he said, shaking his head, reflecting back on his days at Hepburn Hall, where he often returned from the grueling summer practices of hard-driving coaches Bill Mallory and Dick Crum with earaches, other aches and deep thoughts of never seeing shoulder pads or chinstraps again.

Which leads us to Zook chuckling again while sharing one of his favorite Hepburn Hall stories. To have him tell it, he wasn't chuckling to start his senior year at Miami -- not with the prospect of suffering more aches from those coaches by arriving late to summer drills. In fact, Zook said he was frowning back then as he roared down one of the extremely scenic but infamously dangerous two-lane highways that winds through southwestern Ohio into Oxford.

"So we're coming down that long hill heading toward town, and I'm driving, with Jim Feucht (noted Hepburn Hall wild man and Zook teammate), knowing that we're going to hell with another one of those football camps, and I'm passing these cars, and there's a car coming right at us," said Zook, rocking on the couch, with hands moving to describe the scene. "Well, Feucht looks at me and says real calmly, 'I don't think we're going to make it,' and I just keep flying down the highway."

Then Zook glanced at his wife, Denise, and said, "You never heard this story," and he continued in the same breath, "The next thing you know, I'm zipping around on campus, and we pull right up on the front yard of Hepburn Hall.

"We're out there unloading our stuff, and there's a freshman named Pat McDermott and his mom, and she's telling Coach Crum, 'You wouldn't believe it, these kids. Whoever was driving this car out there on the highway almost got killed.' "

With a baffled expression, Denise said, "Did your brakes go out?"

Zook responded, "No, I was just ..."

He laughed. In addition to his story of the moment, he could have been tickled by his career path since leaving Miami. Somehow, this northern Ohio kid who wished to become a dentist evolved into a prolific football recruiter and defensive coaching specialist. His career has spanned from Murray State, Cincinnati, Kansas and Tennessee to Virginia Tech, Ohio State and Florida. There were stops in the pros with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints.

Zook also did the equivalent of shoving a kicking tee down his throat by succeeding Steve Spurrier as head coach at Florida. Not surprisingly, he was fired after three decent seasons in 2004, mostly for not being the other guy, and then he took over a traditionally mediocre Illinois program that showed a pulse two seasons ago. The Illini pulled an upset at Ohio State along the way to a 9-4 finish, but they ended as losers overall last year for the third time in Zook's four years at Illinois.

Thus the pressure on Zook right now. Consider, too, that the Illini were wretched during a 37-9 loss in their opener this season against Missouri. They handled lowly Illinois State last week, but they play three real teams in a row (Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State) beginning a week from Saturday in Columbus.

Still, Zook's goal for Illinois hasn't changed, and it is expressed in the word "believe," which is written everywhere throughout the football complex.

"The best chance you have at reaching your own goal is to have everybody having the same goal and also having everybody help each other reach those goals," said Zook, who sounds like Ara Parseghian, which is to say his voice is inspirationally hoarse. He also is a 21st century version of Woody Hayes, a noted scholar of military history. In other words, as a disciple of the Blue Angels and all things U.S. Navy, Zook resembles the late Hayes by taking a soldierly approach to coaching.

It's just a coincidence that Zook has the traits of Parseghian and Hayes, both College Football Hall of Famers and both among the slew of those who rocked the Cradle of Coaches at Miami (Ohio) with Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Bo Schembechler and others that I'll discuss in the future.

This isn't a coincidence: Once upon a time, when the world was decades younger, Zook was one of us.

Terence Moore, Class of '78, was part of Hepburn Hall, a dormitory at Miami (Ohio) University that produced a slew of prominent sports figures. He will continue with part two of this four-part series next Wednesday.

Illini's Ron Zook Was One of Us originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Greetings From Flyover Country, Where the Football Hasn't Quite Thawed Out Yet

Mark Hasty — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:15:00 EST

Filed under: Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas, Miami (OH), Minnesota, Ohio State, Toledo, Big 10, Big 12, MAC, Police Blotter, General CFB Insanity

Hey, it's always football season at FanHouse. Welcome to "Greetings From Flyover Country," a new weekly feature that will keep you up to date on Big Ten, Big 12, and MAC football. We'll also cover any Midwestern stories which have national repercussions, along with rounding up the week's arrests and suspensions.

We start this week with a decision bound to have people from San Ysidro to Bangor scratching their heads. Please give a moment's thought to the worst aspect of the last postseason. While the Big 12 championship was settled on the field, the Big 12 South championship wasn't. Instead, the conference gave the division title to Oklahoma, because they use the BCS rankings as a tiebreaker.
You remember how dumb you thought that was. You think, "Surely no other conference would be so stupid as to allow the BCS poll to pick a champion." You are about to see how wrong you are.

Apparently the Big Ten doesn't think it's hated enough already, because they've just decided to use the BCS rankings as their final tiebreaker for a conference title.

Note that word "final." Head-to-head record still remains as the first tiebreaker, as it should. The second tiebreaker used to be the last gasp of the Division I-AA Football Championship Subdivision Tomato Can Rule, wherein the team who played the fewest FCS opponents would get the nod. Apparently, though, that tiebreaker has been tossed out too, which has probably made athletic directors in the Missouri Valley and Great West conferences very happy indeed.

So now tiebreaker No. 2 is overall winning percentage, followed by "last team to get a BCS bid stays home," and then, finally, BCS rankings. It seems to me that the likelihood of this ever being invoked rounds down to zero.

More troubling is the elimination of the FCS tiebreaker. It's no secret that I think good football teams have no business ever playing against lower-division squads,Appalachian State notwithstanding. I don't think much of value comes from these games, other than the crowd-pleasing W and the chance to give some of the second- and third-string players meaningful playing time. Competition creates competitors. How many times have we seen an untested Big Ten team puke all over the field turf in October and November? Or, even worse, how many times have we seen a .500 team from any BCS conference become "bowl-eligible" on the backs of the Nebraska States and Alabama Techs of the world?

Okay, it's not fair to say the games aren't good for anything. They're very good for the FCS schools, who usually get a big fat check that doesn't bounce. And fans like victories. Still, for us fans, the only value college football actually has is entertainment value, so I hope you'll pardon me if I believe that a 24-20 squeaker against a non-BCS conference team is more fun than a 66-3 blowout of a school that was playing Division II ball four seasons ago.

AROUND THE LEAGUES

Big Ten: Indiana moves quarterback Kellen Lewis to wide receiver in reaction to the Hoosiers' terrible basketball season, which was so bad people might start to notice IU has a football team ... From the "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" department: Ohio State may use the Wildcat formation to take advantage of Terrelle Pryor, because nobody will expect any shenanigans involving Pryor, right? ... Minnesota running back Duane Bennett returns from a torn ACL to take part in spring practice while the rest of the team tries to figure out what "spring" is.

Big 12: Iowa State to install spread offense ... In other news, Iowa State to install offense ...Snowstorm cancels spring practice in Lawrence; Taco Bell drive-thru personnel reminded not to forget the chalupa ... ESPN blogger says Baylor is the only school in South division whose "marquee sport" is not football ... Also claims water is wet, feet are useful, and John Belushi wasn't really a samurai.

MAC: Miami drops game with Colorado, setting off a massive ten-team non-conference scheduling debacle...Toledo takes Miami's spot, gets CU in Toledo this season, hopesDan Hawkins is the Rich Rodriguez of the Rockies ... Circle it: Temple at Akron on ESPNU, Friday, November 13.

AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' ... Or Maybe They Are

Arrested: Iowa DE Adrian Clayborn, for allegedly assaulting an the Iowa City cab driver.

Suspended: Kansas WR Dezmon Briscoe and DT Jamal Green for the ever-classic "undisclosed violation of team rules."

Demoted: Texas Tech WR Edward Britton, for ripping the thin veneer of normalcy which covers big-time college football academic reasons.

Greetings From Flyover Country, Where the Football Hasn't Quite Thawed Out Yet originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:15:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mike Haywood Becomes Sixth Black Head Coach In Division I College Football

Brian Grummell — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:36:00 EST

Filed under: Miami (OH), Notre Dame, MAC, Coaching

Miami of Ohio -- not to be confused with Miami Florida, which also has a black head coach in Randy Shannon -- has hired Notre Dame "offensive coordinator" Mike Haywood to run its program. He succeeds Shane Montgomery, who stepped down after a 2-10 season.

Color us a little confused if encouraged by this hire. Just today we wrote about Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis' continued decision to call plays for his offense instead of his, you know, offensive coordinator, who just so happened to be Haywood. It's very likely that speaks to Weis' own massive control demands, but it may also speak to Haywood's abilities. Regardless it's nice to see another black head coach among the ranks.

For a while, the prospects for minority head coaches in D-I-please-don't-call-it-the-Football-Bowl-Subdivision looked grim, as their numbers shrank when Washington canned Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State parted ways with Ron Prince, and Sylvester Croom stepped down at Mississippi State.

What has happened since has been a needed surge of black /minority coaching hires.

Eastern Michigan has taken on former Michigan and Louisville defensive coordinator Ron English. New Mexico hired Illinois offensive coordinator Mike Locksley, and now Haywood joins Miami of Ohio. They all join the aforementioned Randy Shannon, Houston's Kevin Sumlin and Buffalo's Turner Gill as the small handful of black head coaches in Division I football.

Meanwhile, there's the hot candidate Gill, who has turned around lowly Buffalo but failed to land a gig after interviews with places like Iowa State and Auburn. That one has people including outspoken Charles Barkley puzzled, but Buffalo's given him an extension and his name will likely remain among the strongest for future openings.

As for what Haywood brings to Miami of Ohio, we just don't know. He played and coached at Notre Dame and has also coached in high pedigree places like Texas and LSU. That's not a bad starter background for learning about winning in the college game.

Mike Haywood Becomes Sixth Black Head Coach In Division I College Football originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:36:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Montgomery Steps Down at Miami

Chris Burke — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:33:00 EST

Filed under: Miami (OH), MAC, Coaching

Another FBS head coach spot opened up on Saturday, as Steve Montgomery resigned at Miami University. The RedHawks completed a miserable 2-10 season this week with a home loss to Ohio.

"Shane Montgomery is an extraordinary person who has contributed to our department, university and community in exceptional ways," said Miami-Ohio athletic director Brad Bates. "Ultimately, however, our responsibility to Miami University is to maximize our students' development, and we believe that winning championships facilitates student growth and development in substantial and meaningful ways."

It's pretty clear from that quote that Montgomery did not have much say in the decision. I guess that's what happens when a program hits the skids for a few seasons - Miami struggled after Montgomery took the RedHawks to a 7-4 mark in 2005. They followed that up with a 2-10 season, then a 6-7 mark (which included a trip to the MAC title game) and this season's stinker.

Montgomery's biggest claim to fame might be helping to develop Ben Roethlisberger while he played in Oxford. He faced heavy expectations, being the head man at the "Cradle of Coaches" and all. It never really worked out, so both parties will move on.

Montgomery Steps Down at Miami originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:33:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Charlie Weis Is Underpaid. Wait, What?

Mark Hasty — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Georgia, Miami (OH), Michigan State, Notre Dame, SMU, Coaching, General CFB Insanity

Look, I'm not the one saying Charlie Weis is underpaid. It's the fine folks over at Coaches Hot Seat who claim that the best-paid coach in college football isn't making enough. Notre Dame's head coach makes $4.2 million a year, but Coaches Hot Seat says he ought to be paid $5.25 million.

Where do they get off saying this stuff? They didn't just pull that number out of thin air. Coaches Hot Seat figures that a coach should be paid 7.5% of his school's football revenue. Why 7.5%? I don't know, but they claim that the average coach takes in 7.61% of the team's football revenue, so their numbers seem reasonable. Still, take all this with a grain of salt.

Weis is getting shafted by more than a million bucks a year, so is he the most underpaid coach in college football? Nope. Not even close. The school getting the biggest bargain, as measured in sheer dollars, is Georgia. Few can argue with Mark Richt's record as the head Bulldog and, at $2.2 million a year, he probably doesn't remember what ramen noodles taste like. CHS says he ought to be getting just under $5 million. Mack Brown? Underpaid. Jim Tressel? Ditto.

The list of underpaid coaches doesn't stop there.

Complaining about Kirk Ferentz's salary is threatening to become a national pastime. Guess what? CHS says he's underpaid. Iowa has the tenth highest revenues of any college football team, and Ferentz's share of that should be $3.75 million, quite a bit more than the $3.03 million he makes.

Just making the tour of coaches who are the subject of fire[INSERT NAME HERE].com sites, Ty Willingham is underpaid. Tommy Tuberville is underpaid. Tommy Bowden was underpaid. So who's overpaid?

June Jones at SMU is the most overpaid coach in America, they claim. His $2 million salary is quite a bit bigger than the $750,000 they say he should be getting. But please, a little perspective. Of the ten most overpaid coaches (according to CHS) only three are in BCS conferences: David Cutcliffe, Bob Stoops and Pete Carroll. Good luck finding any Duke, OU, or USC fans who think their coach is overpaid.

Then again, sheer dollars alone might not be the best measure of overpaid/underpaid. The coach who takes home the greatest percentage of his school's revenue is New Mexico State's Hal Mumme. About one out of every four dollars NMSU takes in from its football program goes directly to Mumme. Of course, Mumme's salary is $349,000 a year. That's $1,000 less than Charlie Weis makes for one game.

There are plenty of proven coaches who get a too-small slice of the revenue pie. Mark Richt gets 3.33% of Georgia's revenues. Joe Paterno gets 3%. Mike Riley has had an acceptable run at Oregon State, but only gets 2.77% of the Beavers' bucks. Mark Dantonio (pictured right) gets a dismal 2.56% from Michigan State. No word on whether he has to work a half-day on Christmas and bring his own coal for the furnace. He'll get a big raise in the off-season, I'm sure.

But who is the coach who's getting the worst deal? You'll find him at Miami of Ohio, a school which openly refers to itself as The Cradle of Coaches. Some of the biggest names in coaching history got their start at Miami, coaches with names like Hayes, Parseghian, and Schembechler, all of whom went on to great success at other schools.

If those giants were paid like the current RedHawks coach, Shane Montgomery, it's not too hard to figure out why they left. Montgomery makes the least of any Division 1-A Football Bowl Subdivision coach by any measure. His salary of $144,000 a year is the lowest in the FBS and represents just 2.4% of Miami's income from football. There are more than a few 1-AA coaches who make more than that. Every assistant coach on the Florida Gators staff makes more money than that. Even if RedHawks fans aren't totally pleased with Coach Montgomery (and they're not), they ought to be ashamed that their university pays him so little.

Charlie Weis Is Underpaid. Wait, What? originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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