I came across this on Friday:
Let’s talk through who are your 5 most likeable and, more importantly, 5 least likeable coaches in SEC history.
I’ll start:
Likeable:
Mark Richt
Coach Oeaux
Les Miles
Sam Pittman
Shane Beamer
Unlikeable:
Corch
The OBS
Lou Holtz
Phat Phil
Nick Saban
Let us know in the comments below.
Tuberville immediately came to mind
The unlikeable list can be long!
Interesting lists, but I would swap Saban and Beamer. I have too much respect for Saban and think Beamer is an ass. Plus, Kirby doesn’t like him so has to stand for something.
One of my all time coaches for the Unlikeable list is Gus Mulzahn and I would add Jimbo Fischer to that list as well.
Likeable? How about Matt Luke?
Those are good. I don’t see Saban as someone I would like to have a beer with, and you could argue that a lot of the problems in college football started with the professionalization of the sport at Alabama when he came back to the college level.
Beat me to it. I’d switch Saban and Beamer as well. Beamer seems douchey to me.
I agree. Matt Luke doesnt get enough love.
With regards to the linked post, so are fire ants and stepping on fresh dog shit.
Coach and the OBC ought to be unanimous unlikeable choices but for some reason there were some GTP posters who liked the OBC.
To me Beamer is the born to privilege guy who is charming when things are going his way but throws temper tantrums when things don’t. I find him unlikeable for that reason.
I do not find Saban likeable as a person. He is good at explaining his football related thoughts, which is a skill a lot of ex-coaches and ex-players with microphones cannot do. I don’t find him dislikeable, either. If we were 9-2 against him at LSU and Alabama then maybe I would find him more likeable.
Ears Tuberville has layers of dislikability. His recent sound bite about “larnin” all he needed about how to act among others by “Mama and Daddy” whooping him
I guess is a confession that his parents taught him to tell his players he will leave them only in a pine box the night before he was announced as Auburn’s new coach, or taught him it was okay to be at a restaurant hosting dinner for high school recruits, receive a cell phone call during the meal from another college offering a job, take the call and accept the job, immediately leave the restaurant without returning to the table and telling his guests he was leaving and why.
Not even Corch would do that.
Just my humble opinion, Corch and Spurrier are cut in stone. The rest of the unlikable list comes and goes.
Coach Dooley has to be likeable; he gave us Coach Erskine Russell….
Coach Mark Richt has to be likeable; he gave us some redemption vs the ol’ ball sack…
Ya gotta’ like donut hole phil, he almost burnt down big urnge kuntry football….
Ya gotta’ like satan, he gave Alabamian’s access to Aflac and indoor plumbing….
likeability of current barner hc is debatable, he did give us the correct/tactical usage of the burner phone….
Coach Wally Butts has to be likeable, nothing wrong with 75-0 vs FU…GO DAWGS!!
LOL, DIW, about Butts! Shows how time heals wounds. Or how the mortality tables take care of the wounded.
In his day Butts had “likebility ” issues at his own school. He was from the school of coaching thought that coaches built character and toughness by beating players until an inch of their life, call a 5 minute break and beat them some more.
Jason Hasty of the Special Collections at the Russell Library did research on the Butts era at Georgia. Hasty’s belief is that a big reason for Georgia football’s decline in the 1950s (there were several reasons but this is one) is that the rosters in 1939 through 1949 were guys who were Great Depression kids. Those players realized that playing college football was a lifeline out of coal mines or cotton fields or soup kitchens and they would literally walk through hell to not screw up that opportunity. In the 1950s he started to get kids who were in school during and after the War. There were jobs for their parents during the War and peacetime brought prosperity and the feeling of optimism. Hasty’s opinion that kids raised in a more prosperous time were not willing to put up with the shit the 1942 guys did. Butts didn’t adapt. It is well known in Georgia football history the key members of the 1959 SEC and Orange Bowl champions quit in preseason camp over how they were treated. Coach “Ears” Wentworth went around talking them into coming back.
There was a guy who used to post on GTP who was on the freshman team in 1960 (or 1959) who posted that Don Soberdash asked him one day if he loved football. The GTP guy told him “Yes.” He said Soberdash replied that he would come to hate it soon if he stayed.
Butts had issues with the Administration and with a lot of donors because of his personal issues. His drinking problem was no secret and neither was his adultery. While lots of coaches heated on their wives Butts didn’t hide it. Supposedly the last straw with the Influential donors was when his mistress flew on the team flight to Miami for the Orange Bowl and not his wife.
I enrolled at UGA in September 1972. Butts was still alive. Being interested in football history I knew Butts was an accomplished coach and at the time was our winningest coach ever and lived within walking distance of the practice fields and stadium but there was zero, none, nada institutional acknowledgement he existed, other than his name being on the GameDay program’s list of former coaches with the same herald as Joel Hunt.
I guess he was not likeable when he was coaching, although there were 140 times Georgia fans liked him a lot.
I did not reference the phone call with Bear Bryant and the Saturday Evening Post matters affecting his likeablity since they occurred after he quit coaching.
Clearly there were people at the University who worked or played there during his time who remained after he quit who resisted honoring him in any way. It took until the late 1980s before Dooley put “Butts” on the new athletic building. By then a lot of decision makers had no idea about how he treated his players or his wife, and therefore were focusing just on his coaching accomplishments.
I yield the rest of my time on GTP to Gaskilldawg…that includes all my late subscription fees…GO DAWGS
Among those who were going to quit in 1959 were Pat Dye and Fran Tarkenton
Absolutely true.
The only true statement concerning corch….”I’ve met some pricks in my time, but you , my friend, are a fucking cactus”….
Corch sits firmly at top of my coaching shit list, the psychopathic mutant. He’s the top 1% of the top 1%, you might say. Fulmer’s entrenched at #2 (pun intended). He’s a witless goon whose idea of humor never evolved past snapping someone on the ass with a wet towel. It gets more difficult after that. There are a lot of unlikable coaches but none I feel anywhere near the same level of disgust toward. Maybe Tuberville comes in next. His mendacious hypocricy is worse than most (though not Meyer’s). I never found Lou Holtz’s schtick endearing either. He always seemed like a petty tyrant to me. Spurrier’s a dick but he’s an equal opportunity dick. I can’t hate him just because he did such a great job needling Fulmer and the rest of the hillbillies. James Franklin is highly unlikable but I don’t feel like tossing a shoe at the TV whenever I see him (unlike Meyer).
Good guys are fewer and farther between. Richt is definitely a good guy. Pittman seems like one too. I like Kirby – most of his players seem to love him – and I think I’d respect him if I was a fan of another program. But maybe I’m seeing things through red & black lenses. Anyway, beyond them, I don’t know.
On a modern note, Ryan Day and James Franklin are both assholes.
Non-Current college coaches:
Likable: Mark Richt, Ed Orgeron, ,Les Miles, Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne.
Unlikable: Urban Meyer, Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, Paul Johnson, Pete Carroll (I never liked the way he cheated and then left the program in shambles and never suffered himself).
Current college coaches:
Likeable: Fran Brown, Dan Lanning, Marcus Freeman, Sam Pittman, Clark Lea.
Unlikeable: Josh Heupel, Bret Bielema, Brian Kelly, Hugh Freeze, Lincoln Riley.
Forgot about James Franklin. I would replace either Brian Kelly or Lincoln Riley with Franklin.
I have almost the same ideas. The exceptions are that as annoying as Spurdog was he was also funny and told it like he saw it which I respect. That doesn’t make him likeable, but it takes him out of unlikable status for me. The other exception is that if you don’t have Paul “Fish Fry” Johnson on your unlikable list, you ain’t thinking right. 🙂
My list was SEC coaches only. Gish Fry is right there with Corch, the OBS and Phat Phil in a broader discussion.
Unlikeable Fish Fry- Coach Paul Johnson
Ms. Debby with the slap down. (I did keep it to SEC personally)
Likeable I would add Kirby.
I’d put the Laner on both lists. If you were out on the town and you’re old friend Joey Freshwater walked into the bar, you’d think both “this will not end well” and “boys, we’re about have a TIME”.
Surprisingly likable: Paul Johnson. Dude was fun as hell to talk to and bet on golf. Very dry wit, pointed, much like I like it.
Likable, Richt, Donnan, Goff, all fun people to be around. Know for a fact that Erk was a great person and would be the most likable of any DGD list.
Wouldn’t mind playing a foursome with: Spurrier, Saban, Smart, and Frank Beamer. Could add Lou Holtz here, he’s a great motivational speaker but would love his honest to God opinion on other people. Maybe a few drinks would loosen him up, but the four above would talk volumes that could be published for a best selling book.
Wished I could’ve met: Mike Leach. Damn the guy was funny.
Unlikable: Zook, Meyer, Tuberville, Chizik, or any asshole from Auburn outside of Dooley. Malzahan was the worst. Would also pay good money to kick James Franklin in the balls, if he has any anymore. Same with Lincoln Riley, what a turd.
On the fence: Joey Freshwater and the Stoops brothers. Kiffin seems like a somewhat likable guy but also an asshole. The Stoops brothers because I just want to see how much they’re alike.
Oh and to unlikeable add Pruitt. For how he was at UGA and at UT.
Well,
My list of Unlikeable was pretty easy:
1) Corch is definitely tops………just an overall arrogant prick who was/is a total sleazeball
2) Phat Phil was/is a close second. His smug attitude, calling out cheaters when he was the worst and the scuz knifed his coach Majors in the back to get the UT job.
3) Mahlzan was a smug shit and said “We beat the Dawg Shit out of them”only to send Auburn into a losing streak that still exists today. He was also the master of knifing coaches in the back to climb the ladder.
4) Harbaugh………I don’t know who that guy is.. We didn’t spy or cheat……… and on and on
5) Mullen and Day was a tie……two losers who think their shit doesn’t stink and they are better than anyone coaching.
Likeable was harder.
1) Coach Richt – how could you not like this guy. Just a good Christian guy who loved his players and coaches(See bonuses paid). One thing he did personally for me. My wife did the football 101 for women. They allowed us to leave memorabilia stuff for signing to send to us later. We never got it back, so I wrote Coach. The reply was an assistant stole it all. I wrote back to Coach Richt that he should make it right and examine his conscience. We got a ton of signed stuff back including a game helmet with an apology from him personally.
2) Coach Erk – Nuff said
3) Coach Neuheisel- This is probably more based on his post coaching days, but his insight on the state of the game with his legal background, his love for the game and general light heart are amazing. Add that he stopped the whole TV crew exiting the game to stop and speak with my wife AND give her a hug. What a guy.
4) Coach Leach. Read “Swing Your Sword” and listen to any of his pressers and you can’t help but love him. He was on Sirius Radio and was so funny in Key West. RIP Mike the Pirate.
5) Tie OBC Spurrier . his honesty and brilliance I always admired and liked. Also easy to like a guy who your school ruined his playing career. Aw shucks Bowden……….Man I just liked that guy.
Honorable Mention: Pittman, Beamer, Dabo