you am i

There is absolutely no reason why Akron cannot field a good MAC football team, especially with these facilities. One good head coaching hire is all it would take to turn things around. Unfortunately, I think we may have to wait a few more years until the TW era is over to get a realistic shot at the next Saban, Meyer, Pinkel, Hoke, Beckman, or Kelly.

I haven't read through all the posts so I don't know if this has been mentioned, but Winters' decision kind of reminds me of Caleb Porter's decision to stay at Akron after his championship season. Caleb could have left for a professional job and more money, but he made the decision that felt right. I would have loved to have had him, but I admire his loyalty. Good for him. The grass isn't always greener, etc ... The problem for us is that it is reflects really poorly on Akron to have people saying no and withdrawing their name from consideration. It still could work out. There has to be some hungry young guy we have never heard of ready to take charge. I'm worried that if they use one of these professional search companies, the same old names that pop up on everyone's list will be recycled until someone says yes. TW does not strike me as the creative-thinker type. Like most everyone, I worry he will mess it up again.

I find it hard to believe that Scott Loeffler has had any significant involvement in the search for a coach. First, he is not just the QB coach at Temple, he is the offensive coordinator. He's been totally focused on Wyoming the last month. Second, its hard to imagine that Temple would appreciate him advising Akron - a conference division opponent - about which coach would be best to turn the program around. Maybe he's had some informal and minimal input. I thought the mystery candidate might have been Matt Campbell, now the Toledo coach. I think Campbell signed a contract at UT for something like $235 thousand a year as a base salary. Dirt cheap. If it is PW, the announcement should be coming pretty quickly.

Interesting quote in there.... When other MAC teams were beating Akron senseless the past two years, it looked to me like it was a coaching issue as well as a talent issue.

When Tressell was named the OSU head coach, I knew plenty of people who had the same "little league" complaint about him. Your comment about Winters having just a "slightly above" average record was the same thing I heard when OSU hired Earle Bruce. Earle's over-all record was just a bit above .500 when he was hired, but that was because he had taken over two losing programs and it took him a few years to build them into winners. What has Paul Winters done that would make anyone believe he would be a good coach? Just took a crappy program and made it steadily better, and now has it among the best in its class. That sounds like a good coach to me. Someone who gets the most out of his players. Bob Huggins was a only coach in the basketball "little leagues" before Akron took a chance on him. Of course, so was Hipsher. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.

I like the resume. 1. mac experience so he knows how hard it is to win in the mac. 2. Good experiece in the midwest 3. Coached with winning teams 4. Offense, offense, offense wins games in the mac and puts people in seats. 5. Looks like the under the radar guy I would like to see Again, bringing in good candidates makes for a good decision. It's like going to a party and all 20 girls there are good looking. If you pick one up, you couldn't make a bad decision. All 20 girls at the party may be good looking, but you could still end up picking up the prettiest one and then find out later that you made a bad, bad decision.

Other than Walt Harris, has any D1-A coach ever been fired 2 years into a 5-year contract? Turner Gill (Kansas); Larry Porter (Memphis) I don't know if they had five year contracts, but here are four other college coaches I could find that were fired after only two years. Bob Valesante, Kansas (3-8; 1-9-1), fired in 1987. Rod Dowhower, Vanderbilt (2-9; 2-9), fired in 1996. Dave Roberts, Baylor (2-9; 2;9), fired in 1998. Keith Gilbertson, Washington (6-6; 1-10), fired in 2004. I wonder if this is an aberration (three in one year) or the beginning of a trend.

Scratch that reference to the Bearcat messageboard. That was an old post form our previous vacancy. Lembo took the Ball State job and I think Warriner is now with Note Dame.

Paul Winters has been under the radar nationally. Up until the last couple of years, he had done a solid, if unspectacular, job as head coach. The past few years they have become a D-II powerhouse. He is a little old for a first time D-I head coach and that works against him. Campbell is too young for a bigger program to pick, but he would be a nice choice for a MAC school willing to take a chance. I think Akron is the only MAC school with a coaching vacancy. If so, that's a little unusual. Most years, somebody is getting a better job and a few coaches are being shown the door. If other MAC schools were looking for a coach, there could very well be competition for Campbell. New facilities notwithstanding, its hard to see this job as being attractive to anyone with options. A Cincinnati Bearcat messageboard says that Akron has interviewed Winters, Mark Stoops, Pete Lembo of Elon, and Ed Warriner of Kansas,

The best candidates, I think, are the ones with a history of winning as head coaches, for the reasons stated in the original post. The problem is there are so few and they get snatched up quick. Even then, it is not a guarantee of success. Dave Clawson at BGSU is a case in point. His first HC job was at Fordham in 1999. He took a terrible program and was 0-11 his first year, but turned them into a big winner in five years. He took over at Richmond in 2004 and did the same thing. After going 11-3 in 2007 and then spending one year as OC at Tennessee, he was hired as HC at Bowling Green, where he has struggled. After a decent season his first year, BG was 2-10 last year and 5-7 this year. The jury is still out on him, but so far, he has not had the same magic at BG as had at the smaller schools. There are far more qualified assistants out there with no HC experience than successful small college HCs, so that is usually the route mid-majors go. At least, that's how it seems to me. One factual correction to a prior post in this thread: Nick Saban is no relation to Lou Saban.

They can legally can him for just about any reason they want. Unless we have a contract, we're all at-will employees. I don't really see the conflict of interest problem here. It's one thing for a high level employee to use inside information for his own benefit or to use it to damage the university, but it's another thing for a low level part-timer to publicize a rumor he heard at work. That's not even using snide information, since UA is saying it never happened. They are just saying he was wrong and they are ticked off at him for spreading a rumor about the university. I doubt Tressel was at the game. If he was, plenty of people have had the opportunity to step forward and say that they saw him, but I have not heard anyone say that. Just rumors. I'll admit, I was beginning to wonder if it could possibly happen. It was actually a fun few days.

Solich coached his team to defeat through some of his play callings late in the 4th quarter and NIU took advantage. I'm glad for the Huskies. They have had some tough luck in the MAC championship game. That winning field goal squeaked by the left post. Five yards further out and he misses it. Very entertaining game. BTW, NIU's new head coach was a career assistant with no head coaching experience when he got the job. He was a Wisconsin assistant for six years. He inherited a decent team, but he did a nice job and got the most out of his players.

This has turned into a great game, surprisingly. Down to the wire.

That's my thought too. If he was going to leave, he would have left last year. He could have written his own ticket. Instead, he signed a 10 year contract with Akron. He has a great situation here and he is not a grass-is-always-greener-someplace-else kind of guy.

If a mid level Sun Belt team can get a guy like that, with Ohio roots, he should have been on our radar too. Yet, some folks on here are hanging their hopes on a D-II coach with barely a .500 record? Come on folks. Talk about lowering the bar. But I know, it really wasn't that bad if you eliminate the years where he had a bad record I assume your last sentence is sarcasm. If so, its misplaced. Winters took over a bad team and turned it into a winner. If you look at his over-all record, it has to include the early years where the team struggled, which lowers his winning percentage. Put it this way, lets say the next Akron's coach goes 2-9, 5-6, and 9-3 in his first three seasons. His over-all record would be 16-18, but we'd be calling home coach of the year after three years and begging him to stay. He'd be a prime candidate to move up to a bigger job, and someone at a BCS school would be posting, "He's got a losing record." I remember when Butch Davis was coach of the Browns for the 2004 draft. Roethlisberger was available for the Browns in the first round, but Davis passed on him. I read that people on the staff were telling him to take Ben, but Davis had a thing about not taking a high first round pick on a player from a mid-major school. It was just a bias on his part. I wonder if TW has the same thing going on. When it came to RI, I think TW got stars in his eyes about picking someone from Notre Dame. I hope he's over that and can look objectively at a guy like Winters. I just saw a promo on TV for the OU-NIU game. Interesting contrast in coaches. OU got a big name in Solich and NIU went the other route. The NIU coach is another guy who was hired in the MAC who was a career assistant with no head coaching experience. You can have success ether way, or you can go the Paul Winters route and go for a successful head coach at a smaller school. I don't really care which way they go, as long as it works.

It worked out well for OU with Solich, but I'm not crazy about hiring a coach whose career is in a downward trajectory. I'd rather try to catch a guy on the way up.

Of course there should still be a process. But if it's an honest process, it'll lead to Paul Winters. He's everything we want and need in a head coach, we're just not going to do better in my opinion. My mind could be changed if I see the right candidate with the right qualifications. But if I see another another BCS assistant coach come out of this process I'm literally going to go insane. When Tim Beckman was hired by Toledo he had only been a BCS assistant. I would love to see Akron end up with a guy like that.

I don't get people who say they would rule out anyone who has "only" been as assistant and does not have head coaching experience. Do they realize that, under their criteria, they would have ruled out Nick Saban at Toledo, Brady Hoke at Ball State, Al Golden at Temple, Urban Meyer at Bowling Green, Gary Pinkel at Toledo, Turner Gill at UB and Bob Pruett at Marshall. All of those guys were college assistants with no head coaching experience. Each one got their first head coaching gig in the MAC. This is the cream of the MAC coaches in recent times. All assistants.

Leach's name is being thrown around for just about every vacant coaching position, mainly Washington State, but also Mississippi, and Kansas. Memphis and Tulane are also being mentioned, but they probably are not in the mix due to his salary requirements. Florida Atlantic is a longshot possibility just because he lives in the Keys. I don't see Akron as even a blip on the radar for this guy.

One more thing, when Saban, Meyer and Pinkel were hired, it was clear from the get-go that the right decision had been made. Meyer and Saban each took over a program that was slumping and made a noticeable positive impact in the first season. Pinkel took over from Saban and kept the ball rolling. That was what was so discouraging to me about RI's first year - straight into the crapper.

Since I've been following MAC football there have been a number of quality head coaches pass through the conference. The ones that come to mind are Brian Kelly, Al Golden, Gary Pinkel, Nick Saban, and Urban Meyer. Bob Pruett and Joe Novak were also good. Brian Kelly was the only one hired that had previous head coaching experience at the college level. The rest came to the job as career assistants, most with some experience as either a player or assistant coach in the MAC. A lost of posters have said they want someone at Akron who has a big name or has head coaching experience, but, in the MAC, the guys who have been the most successful have had neither, except for Kelly. I lived in NW Ohio when Saban, Meyer, and Pinkel were hired and in each case the response from the fans upon the naming of the new coach was, "Who?" If there was a proven successful formula for hiring a head coach everyone would know about it. It is always a crap shoot. You have to depend on the decision makers to make the right decision. Unfortunately, the track record of the decision makers at Akron has been bad. I want to believe they'll get it right this time. I have zero confidence at all in TW's judgment in this regard. We need to find a leader. Someone the players believe in. Caleb Porter has those qualities. That's the kind of intangible that cannot be quantified or easily identified. That's why I would love to see Caleb on the committee.

If he is ever going to get back in college coaching, it will have to be at a non-BCS school and probably in Ohio. It's not like he's got a whole lot of options. Plus, there's a nice redemption angle where he'd be coming back to where he got his first coaching job. At first, this seemed unrealistic. Now, if they offer the job to him, I think he'll have to seriously consider it.. I think the guy is a heck of a coach.

From a Terry Pluto column shortly after RI's hiring: "I would have taken a safer path and hired Paul Winters, the former Akron star running back who later was the Zips offensive coordinator. He has a done a solid job as the head coach of Wayne State, a very difficult place to attract recruits in the heart of Detroit. Winters would have felt as if he died and and awoke in football heaven with the new fieldhouse and stadium at his old school. *** But new athletic director Tom Wistricill selected Ianello, who he knew from Wisconsin. *** This appears to be a quick decision by Wistricill." Of course, Winters' credentials are even stronger now. Fickell would also be a good choice, but I'm not sure he wants the job right now. A few years learning on Meyers' staff at OSU might do him good. In any event, the less input TW has on this decision, the better.

Dambrot had D-1 coaching experience, and success before getting boned for being a players coach. Winters is not comparable, sorry. I'm not saying its a perfect analogy. I'm just saying that this is an opportunity to get a hometown guy who happens to be a heck of a coach. This would not be "just another coaching job" to Paul Winters. It would have special meaning to him. Just like the Akron basketball job is not "just another coaching job" to KD. He wants to be here.

Paul Winters would be to Akron football what Keith Dambrot is to Akron basketball. An Akron guy who is a quality coach who wants to be here.