Hogs should hire OU's Patton
Published: 12/6/2007 11:14 PM
Last Modified: 12/6/2007 11:14 PM
Hey, Arkansas AD Jeff Long, you've been going about this coach search thing all wrong. Why are you wasting your time with West Virginia guys? Jim Grobe? Huntington. Tommy Bowden? Morgantown.
Let me clue you in, pal. I'll do it with a question: Where are BCS coaches Bob Stoops, Les Miles, Jim Tressel and Ron Zook from? Same place shoulda-been BCS coach Gary Pinkel is from. Same state 2006 national championship coach Urban Meyer is from.
Basically, same state any coach who's ever been worth the wind in his sprint is from.
O-H-I-O. You can't spell "national championship" without it. Really, you can't.
Joe Castiglione figured it out nine years ago and plucked Stoops from the Buckeye tree. Jeremy Foley, the AD at Florida, wised up a few years later and started shopping exclusively Ohio -- first Zook, then Stoops, and then Meyer when he couldn't land Stoops. Even the old baseball coach-turned-AD at LSU, Skip Bertman, figured it out a couple years ago and swiped Miles from OSU, after another guy with Ohio roots, Nick Saban, brought the Tigers a national title.
See a pattern here, Jeff?
Now, you aren't getting any of the aforementioned to coach your football team. In fact, the way your search has, ahem, worked out to this point, you aren't getting another head coach.
Still, I can tell you having covered OU football the last six years that Stoops has a way of grooming assistants. The guy who Tom Osborne just hired at Nebraska? Coached OU's secondary for a year. Bo Pelini.
Did I mention his home state? Starts with "O," ends with "o," real friendly in the middle.
Jeff, dude, pick up the phone now. Call Stoops, offer him the job, don't be offended when he laughs, and ask if he's got anyone on staff from the state where they send babies home with whistles around their necks.
Then let him tell you about James Patton, OU offensive line coach. Miami alum. Ohio, not Florida. Native of Lafayette. Ohio, not Louisiana.
Hire the guy. Tell the Tysons, Clintons and Broyleses to lay off. And let coaching karma work its magic.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
