By NICK SLOAN, NJSloan212@gmail.com
Following Kansas State thumping the Kansas Jayhawks for the second year in a row in Lawrence,
I called for Turner Gill's firing.
A little after that, I wrote why Mike Leach
should be the top candidate at Kansas.
With the firing now official, it might be interesting to see why and how Gill failed as head coach of the Jayhawks.
Five particular reasons stand out:
1. He was never an offensive or defensive coordinator. Look at the top two or three coaches inside the Big 12 and SEC. Nick Saban was a defensive coordinator in the NFL. Les Miles was an offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State. Bob Stoops was a defensive coordinator at both Kansas State and Florida. The great Bill Snyder was an offensive coordinator at Iowa and he, not Hayden Frey, deserved the credit for how well that team did in the 1980s. Position coaches are key to a good staff. Good ones make a staff better. Bad ones can hurt a staff. But being a position coach is not the fast track to becoming a head coach. Coordinators have a ton of responsibility and running one unit is good preparation for becoming a head coach. Heck, you could argue the coordinators are more important than the head coach himself. Gill never had experience as a coordinator and it hurt him and the Jayhawks. KU must - and I mean
must - either get an experienced head coach or a coordinator to run that team.
2. He was too 180 degrees different than Mark Mangino. When you fire or run off a good head coach for whatever reason unbeknownst to people not named Lew Perkins, naturally you want someone different. However, Mangino was a good head coach for KU. It was clear he was doing some things right. Gill was a complete 180 from Mangino - good and bad. By all accounts, Gill is a great man in terms of being a human being. I was never a fan of Mangino's simply for the fact that he allegedly recruited players to Oklahoma while he was serving on Bill Snyder's staff in 1997-98. But Mangino's discipline and intensity were good for an average job like KU is, a job that has a track going around its football field. Sometimes, you need a jerk to be the person to win at schools. Mangino had the appropriate edge to win at KU. Gill did not.
3. He was never a good head coach. When he got the job, many Gill supporters pointed out the fact that "20-30" is special at Buffalo. To me, 20-30 at a MAC program is not special. It's a .400 winning percentage. A 40 percent grade is an "F." In small conference football, it's not that much better. I know Buffalo's a tougher job, but it's not exactly the type of turnaround Bill Snyder had at Kansas State. Coaching in the MAC, a conference that does not generate too much attention from the national media, also did not allow the media to properly evaluate Gill. The media was certainly the co-defendant in Gill's hiring, often propping up the "incredible rebuilding job" he did at Buffalo.
4. Gill's staff was filled with big names, but empty suits. The play-calling on offense was down right horrible all year long - and it hit a peak against Missouri. As someone who follows Big 12 football, that was Missouri's single worst performance in conference play in a long, long time. Yes, they won. Missouri's talent level should have resulted in a 55-17 win. But a competent coaching staff would have won that game Saturday. A Mangino-coached team wins that game and probably by 14 points. Chuck Long was a horrible offensive coordinator, one that often infuriated Oklahoma Sooners fans. My Sooner friend celebrated when he left Oklahoma. He bombed at San Diego State as a head coach - the same program that's made it to multiple bowls recently.
5. He treated his players as if they were his sons, not players. I've always mentioned that a high school coach should come off like a father-figure sometimes. Key words: "father-figure," not "father." Gill banned Twitter. He took the names off the backs of the jerseys. He banned women past a certain time of night. (Be honest - it's college.) He was more Sunday school teacher than Saturday game day coach. You need your program to show respect, but some of the things Gill did made me feel like I was watching a Pee-Wee team being coached.
Those are not the only five reasons why Gill failed.
But those are among the biggest.
