When Jerry Claiborne retired from UK. The one coach at the the time that UK could have & should have hired was Schnellenberger. Instead C.M. Newton wouldn't even let the thought of hiring the one coach (Schnellenberger) that could have taken UK to the next level even enter his mind. Instead he hired that Alabama reject Bill Curry. I always thought it was so sad that Schnellenberger never coached here. Now it's the same situation with Mike Leach, who might be the brightest offensive mind in the game. I'm of the belief that under no circumstances will Mitch Barnhart consider hiring Leach when the UK job comes open. Why the A.D's at UK would never want coaches like Schnellenberger & Leach is the reason our football program has been the SEC's doormat for as long as I can remember.
Howard Schnellenberger, Mike Leach
- Thread starter TopCatCal
- Start date
HS should have been hired instead of Claiborne.
Not a bad rant, I wanted Leach also, listened to a long interview with him at the time and sounded like he really wanted to come here, but I was impressed with him in that interview, seemed very sharp and down to earth to me. He has a law degree, so I think he is pretty smart, saw him on the sidelines when they upset UCLA late Saturday night, and they said the little piece of paper with a few notes was his game plan, most of it was in his head.
Agree that the University has done its best with non support and their scaredy cat approach to the NCAA to not give UK football a chance. Schnellenberger wanted control of the football program and UK wouldn't give it to him.
Bill Curry had a great record at both GT and Bama, steady improvement in both programs while he was there, and the only reason the Bama fans ran him off after a ONE LOSS regular season was because the one loss was to Auburn, who had a great (cheating?) program at the time.
An amazing FACT, both those programs won a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP with senior leaders from his recruiting three classes after he left.
UK wouldn't let him hire the assistants he wanted and generally handicapped him. Good man, but hard to say how good a coach he was, great at other programs but a great failure here------Sound familiar?
What was/is the story with Newton and Howard S....and Mitch and Leach. Why did both ADs not want either coach? Don't think I've ever heard.
Like x 10 Jauk you nailed it especially re: Curry. The perfect example of why someone that might be good at a real Football school may not be all that good at Ky
I heard Leach was black balled due to his part in the Tony Franklin/Mumme/ and the fat guy (can't remember his name) MB had excuses other than w's and l's
It wasn't CM Newton who rejected Howard. That was Cliff Hagan who was perhaps the most arrogant, reviled AD outside of Larry Ivy. Cliff couldn't stand an ego bigger than his. He was not about to allow Howard upstage his lowly agenda that was protect basketball.
Howard went to UofL and the rest is history.
Never understood why Roy Kidd was never given a shot especially after winning 2 NCAA 1AA titles.
Probably the best college coach in the state was 20 miles away.
Probably the best college coach in the state was 20 miles away.
yep After Curci was fired, he was probably the best coach in Kentucky for the next 20 years
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The mysteries of why various UK decision makers allowed our football program to wallow in mediocrity from the 1900s to 2015 (with a few sparse years of achievement) remains unexplainable.
Some said Kidd was to old, but they hire Brooks.
Some said he coaches a lower collegiate level, but they hire Mumme.
[eyeroll]
Some said he coaches a lower collegiate level, but they hire Mumme.
[eyeroll]
Had Kidd been coach after Curci, we'd have won a lot more games the next few years. He was always able to recruit good players from Fla.
Sadly the only 2 coaches that have been worth a damn the past 25 years have been mumme and brooks. Mumme brought in a new style of offense that changed the game to a certain extent. Brooks came in and wanted uk to be tough and the toughest team on the field regardless of the outcome.
Leach was gone before Mumme got in trouble. However, he would have testified in Mumme's defense and that is why UK didn't consier him. A total mistake because Leach had Head Coach9ing experience and has done an exceptional job at WAsh State, a program that was in worse shape than UK at the time that Leach took over.
Mike Leach was in his first year at WSU when Stoops was hired, not sure he was gonna leave that soon after starting there.
Mike Leach was 12-25 after 3 seasons in Pullman. The same people who wanted to hire him here would have been screaming for his head....
You can wait all day and chant toward the northwest, but Mike Leach ain't coming to UK. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
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anon_q409idbs5m40a
Guest
It was obvious midway through Joker's second year - and really sooner - that he was going to eventually be fired by UK. There wasn't a one in 1,000,000,000 chance of his coaching tenure at UK ending any other way. It was an absolute certainty, the only question was when. Had we cut our losses and pulled the plug at the end of year 2 then Mike Leach could be coaching UK today. Of course, we probably wouldn't have hired him but we absolutely could have. Were some people's job actually contingent upon winning at football, he'd be the coach.
Claude Bassett (last anyone knew) was teaching junior high school in an obscure town south of San Antonio. This incredibly obese hideous human being came very close to having the death penalty given to UK. Thank you, CM Newton for basketball "on grass." And thank you to the university for naming our football stadium for Mr. Newton.
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Not buying it with Curry...you bring in the #1qb in the country and an option OC and let him put Couch in that position...TOTALLY stupid
CM Newton was an idiot as an AD...just look at this pic tells you all you all need to know because of the three worst decisions ever made in UK football
CM also refused to hire Howard...both afraid for their precious bb tam
Gabe...I have a feeling this job will be open 2017 and hopefully we will have an ad smart enough to bring Leach here
We had basketball ADs and that is why Howard or anyone else that would have been successful was not hired. Period..Plain and simple..Hagan was an idiot and Newton was right there with him. Disgusts me to this day.
By then he'll be 56 and may really have it going at Washington State. I'm not sure at that point he'd have a whole lot of interest in a rebuilding job at Kentucky. And that's even if we'd be willing to give him a call.
Howard wanted more control of the football program than folks were willing to give him.
He said if you want him to fix it he would have to have the final say on all aspects of the FB program including a say on his secretary, stadium announcer, medical staff, etc all aspects.
Those were his terms, what he felt he'd need to fix it and management wasn't willing to do that. In their minds FB wasn't broke enough to give that kind of control to him.
We're still paying the price ...
He said if you want him to fix it he would have to have the final say on all aspects of the FB program including a say on his secretary, stadium announcer, medical staff, etc all aspects.
Those were his terms, what he felt he'd need to fix it and management wasn't willing to do that. In their minds FB wasn't broke enough to give that kind of control to him.
We're still paying the price ...
It was said at the time KIDD was to conserative on offense. Curry like Stoops was force to bring in a OC with pass first offense in Bowden who like Brown soon left for greener pasturess and Curry went back to his conserative coaching of course it appears Stoops has required his AIR RAID OC'S to be Conserative
But Leach was long gone when that happened. He was at OU by then. In fact, in Franklin's book there was a passage about Leach calling Franklin to warn him that a mutual recruit was on his visit to OU bragging about what he was given on his visit to UK (no strippers involved though). Leach is supposedly very serious about not breaking NCAA rules due to his background as a lawyer. He is too strong of a personality for Mitch, and I think that is the bottom line on why he'll never coach at UK while Mitch is AD. I bet he would leave Washington State to coach UK in a heartbeat.
I believe the Adam Craig issue was also something that kept Leach from getting any response from Mitch as well.
I have always heard from those days (I'm 65)that Howard took the job on a handshake with Hagan ,but when Hagan told him that everything he did had to be approved by him and HS talked away..biggest mistake by two idiot bb ads and UK has paid for it for 40 yrs..CM really thought he had down something hiring Curry...this is hilarious when the fans at Ala were dancing in the streets when if CM had tried he could'be probably get Ala to pay his salary the first couple years[banana][banana]:joy::joy::joy::joy::smiley::smiley::sunglasses:
Here is an interesting read that may explain why Mike Leach was not hired by Kentucky. It end rather abruptly, and is not complete, I think he may have sued Texas Tech for wrongful termination. But it gives a lot of the background of what went on at TT. I guess it can be read either way, in the beginning ML is made out to be the bad guy but the further you get into the story it seems that maybe the things that happened were not of his doings, at least so he said and stood by his word and fought the administration. It is a long read, but it enlightened me. It kind of changed my mind about ML., I did not support his hiring myself until I read this, he stuck by his guns and fought them. To me, that is why MB never pursued him
http://www.si.com/college-football/2013/09/09/system-leach-excerpt
http://www.si.com/college-football/2013/09/09/system-leach-excerpt