Nick Daschel is a veteran sports writer and columnist who has worked on the West coast for nearly three decades. Nick has covered the Pac-10 for about 15 years, primarily focusing on the Northwest schools.
During the past 10 years, what Pac-10 football coaches have done the most with the least? Made a good team great? A great team one for the ages?
Here are what we consider to be the best six Pac-10 coaching performances of the past decade:
1. Mike Riley, 2006 Oregon State: It was Oct. 7, and the Beavers were going through the motions of a lifeless 13-6 home loss to Washington State. A group of fans sporting a sign supporting quarterback Sean Canfield did a little improv and turned their signs into “Can Riley.”
It was hard to argue. Oregon State was 2-3, its only wins coming in body-bag games against Eastern Washington and Idaho. The Beavers already owned lopsided losses to Boise State and California, and appeared on the verge of more after the pathetic performance against Washington State.
But led by a defense that suddenly turned salty, Oregon State began to win. At Washington and Arizona. Then a historic home win against USC. By season’s end, Riley turned what was a season – and perhaps a coaching career – headed south into a 10-4 record. Since then, OSU has been the Pac-10’s best program outside of USC.
2. Pete Carroll, 2004 USC: Yes, we know. Carroll has the best players on the West Coast. But it’s hard to ignore 13-0. Particularly when it has never been done before in Pac-10 history.
It doesn’t matter that Carroll had an NFL-ready team. To pull off 13-0 for a team of college-aged kids takes a special coaching performance. To get a team on edge every week and have them produce a victory doesn’t happen often. In fact, even the great Carroll has done it just once ‑ in 2004. It was an unappreciated season even by his peers, who made Jeff Tedford the league’s Coach of the Year, even though the Bears were expected to finish second.
The Trojans had some close scrapes in 2004 – Stanford, Cal, OSU and UCLA – but always found a way to win. And then when USC reached the biggest stage, it gave Oklahoma a whipping it still hasn’t lived down.
3. Jeff Tedford, 2002 California: Tedford probably walked into an ideal situation: a program with tradition, fans starved for success, a cupboard with some capable players aboard. Still, it should take some time to change the culture of a program coming off consecutive seasons of 1-10, 3-8 and 0-11.
Tedford did it instantaneously. In the first game of his first year at Cal, Tedford’s Bears blasted Baylor 70-22. They were 3-0 for the first time since 1996, and in the end, 7-5 ‑ Cal’s first winning season since 1993. And best of all, the Bears won the Big Game and ended Stanford’s seven-year stranglehold on the series. Cal football hasn’t looked back since Tedford arrived and immediately injected life into a dead program.
4. Mike Price, 2001 Washington State: On the opening day of preseason camp, Price sat with a group of local media and seemed ready for the inevitable question: Is your job on the line this season? Most coaches would sidestep the question either with double speak or a glare, but Price, refreshingly, was honest and agreed that his rump was on the hot seat.
It wasn’t like Price had the gun fully loaded heading into 2001, either. WSU returned a whopping two all-Pac 10 second teamers (Milton Wynn, Billy Newman) and a handful of league honorable mentions. To make matters worse, others in the Northwest had it going, as Washington, Oregon State and Oregon shared the 2000 Pac-10 title.
But led by a gutsy junior quarterback in Jason Gesser and a dominating offensive line, the Cougars exploded out of the blocks, winning their first seven games. WSU went on to a 10-2 season, a win in the Sun Bowl and start of a three-year run where the Cougars won a combined 30 games.
5. Mike Bellotti, 2007 Oregon: The Ducks’ program hit bottom – at least from Oregon’s perspective – at the end of 2006 when it lost four consecutive games and was completely embarrassed by Brigham Young in the Vegas Bowl. So Bellotti, intrigued by what BYU had accomplished with its offense, reworked his offense during the offseason and unleashed something new on the Pac-10 in 2007.
In the end, maybe it was just a one-man show. But that one-man show was spectacular in quarterback Dennis Dixon, who led the Ducks to an 8-1 record, including a thorough dismantling of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Oregon was in the national title discussion, and Dixon a frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy.
Then it all came apart against Arizona State when Dixon sustained what at the time appeared to be a minor knee injury. Dixon’s knee completely unraveled the following game against Arizona, and so did all of the Ducks’ dreams.
This is where Bellotti really showed his mettle as a coach. Oregon finished the season with a three-game losing streak and no Dixon. Everyone outside of the Ducks’ locker room figured Oregon was in for a long afternoon in the Sun Bowl against upstart South Florida. But Bellotti had the Ducks ready, and three hours later it was Oregon that walked away with a stunning 56-21 win over the Bulls.
6. Tyrone Willingham, 1999 Stanford: Hard to believe there was a time when Willingham’s way actually worked, but it did in 1999. Coming off a 3-8 season in 1998, Willingham headed into the season emboldened by the dreaded vote of confidence by Stanford AD Ted Leland ‑ which had as much value as a $3 bill after the Cardinal kicked off the 1999 season with a 69-17 loss to Texas. Stanford lost to its favorite footwipe, San Jose State, not long after that, and later in the season Washington quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo set a Pac-10 record by passing for 300 yards and running for 200 in a win over the Cardinal.
This was not a great Stanford team. But somehow the Cardinal found a way to win on those other eight Saturdays in 1999. Willingham deserves credit for getting his team to believe in itself when most teams would have gone in the tank after that frightful beating in Texas.
A few others of note: Dennis Erickson (2000 Oregon State; a fabulous once-in-a-lifetime season for OSU that ended in a Fiesta Bowl romp); Karl Dorrell (2005 UCLA; the Bruins were 10-2 and might have made this list except for horribly lopsided losses to USC and Arizona); Rick Neuheisel (1999, Washington; the Huskies started out 0-2, but upset nationally-ranked Colorado, and if not for a shocking overtime loss at UCLA, would have played in the Rose Bowl instead of Stanford.)
Nick Daschel covers the Pacific-10 Conference for Buster Sports, and can be reached at ndaschel@bustersports.com
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