Petrino 10th best coach in SEC?
The Sporting News‘ Tom Dienhart seems to think Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino isn’t all that he’s cracked up to be.
In his newest rankings of the SEC’s coaches, Petrino is ranked below a bevy of coaches, including Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt.
So where does Petrino stand? Tenth out of 12. Nutt stands at No. 8.
If you are looking for warm and fuzzy, keep looking. But if you are looking for calculating and clever, Petrino is your man. His track record speaks for itself. Petrino took Louisville to places where it never had gone. Now, he’s coaching an SEC program with big resources. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yeah, Petrino is gonna build a power in Fayetteville.
Dienhart links to a lot of YouTube videos in his rankings. Some go to a video that doesn’t even exist, such as the one above. I guess we’ll never know the cleverness Dienhart was alluding to with his power of hyperlinking.
May we remind our readers that Dienhart ranked LSU coach Les Miles No. 10 as well this time last year.
If Miles didn’t do it last year, he never may get it done. Is that a clock I hear ticking?
In case you haven’t heard, Miles went on to win the national championship. Rankings be darned.
5 Responses to “Petrino 10th best coach in SEC?”
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In my opinion, under Petrino, the Razorbacks will be playing in a BCS bowl in 2 to 3 years.
Hehe.. given the “brillance” regarding the Les Miles projection, perhaps the better question, is where will Tom [ DimWit ] be? ESPN comes to mind. Another talking head shares his “wealth” of “knowledge”.
I don’t think you can reasonably rank order these coaches. There’s not a bad coach in the league. If you asked yourself, who would you most want to coach your team, I would have to begrudgingly say Nicky Saban. He resurrected LSU and built a powerhouse that Les Miles has benefited from.
Of the list, I think I would pick Less Miles last. Yeah, he has a national title, but it’s only because his players won games in spite of the bonehead decisions he made from the sideline. If he had gone to LSU at the time Saban did, LSU would have remained mediocre at best.
Next on my list would be Petrino. What he did with what he had at Louisville was amazing. The sky’s the limit with him, but if he doesn’t get it done at Arkansas, he will quickly move down the list. Everyone else in the league is a known commodity. Petrino hasn’t had a chance to prove himself at a big-time school yet. We’ll know in about three years if he’s for real or not.
Mark Richt is an excellent coach, but he hasn’t been able to win the NC with a school with Georgia’s resources and tradition. He puts a good team on the field every year though and I think it’s just a matter of time until he wins it all.
You could make a strong argument to put Urban Myer at the top of the list or in the middle depending on how much you think Florida’s success is because of him or that he just created such an excitement in recruiting and the latest gimmick offense. Put him at a school like Bowling Green or Utah and see how he does. (Oh, wait…)
Darth Visor and Fulmer are yesterday’s headlines that are trying to put it back together. I would put them in the middle of the pack.
Although everyone took it as a slight, I agree with Saban when he said that Houston Nutt did more with the talent he had than anyone in the league. You can grow weary of his offensive style, but you can’t deny that he’s a good coach.
Tuberville will soon be exposed for the above average coach that he is. He’s benefited from the Tide’s lean years in recruiting. Now that Saban is at Alabama, Auburn isn’t getting the top recruits anymore. I would rank him even with Nutt.
Croom, Brooks, and Johnson are all good coaches at below average football programs. I wouldn’t take them over anyone else in the conference though.
The comparison with Nutt is amusing when you consider that Petrino is in the upper-tier pay scale in the SEC (better incentives than Richt has at Georgia) and Nutt has digressed to the lower tier.
Dienhart’s not in my top 25 sports writers so I never pay any attention to what he writes. That being said, Petrino will have a hard time keeping up the first couple of years he is here because some of the other schools have a big jump on him. I really doubt he’ll ever have a better record at Arkansas than HDN did. It is a tough league that nobody stands out in…it is fun to watch though!
Time will tell!