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10. Conference USA

The one and only: Mike Price, UTEP. He never should have been fired at Alabama. The Miners won six games the previous three seasons before Price's arrival. They won eight last year.

Rising star: Art Briles, Houston. A protege of Mike Leach, Briles has a fantastic knowledge of the passing game. It's only a matter of time before some BCS school steals him away.

Better get it done: Phil Bennett, SMU. How much bad football can SMU boosters take? See a win anywhere on the schedule? Yeah, me neither.

Coach, school Rating (1-5)
Mike Price, UTEP 5
Jeff Bower, Southern Miss 4
Art Briles, Houston 4
George O'Leary, Central Florida 4
Watson Brown, UAB 3
Ken Hatfield, Rice 3
Steve Kragthorpe, Tulsa 3
Chris Scelfo, Tulane 3
Tommy West, Memphis 3
Skip Holtz, East Carolina 2
Mark Snyder, Marshall 2
Phil Bennett, SMU 1
Average 3.08

Bennett should be on the hot seat - 6 wins in 3 years is not that impressive for a coach that makes significantly more than the coach he replaced.

The AD countered the reality of the hot seat by extending Bennett's contract. Go figure.

Hopefully when his contract was extended, the buy-out clause was removed/

Its the AD stupid...the AD!!

Maybe Copeland extended Bennett's contract because he was told that if Bennett was unsuccessful and was fired, he would be too. In an effort to give Bennett extra power on the recruiting trail he extends Bennett's contract hoping that he will land some stud recruits and turn the program around finally. Just a thought.

PonySnob wrote:Hopefully when his contract was extended, the buy-out clause was removed/

Stallion should know, or at least heard a rumor on this????

shades of Kevin Steal at BU and AD Tom Stanton.

oakley wrote:shades of Kevin Steal at BU and AD Tom Stanton.

As, I think my good friend Dooby tried to point out several times, this is exactly what Baylor did. Steele did get extended...and did get canned. We are not talking guaranteed money; SMU didn't marry the guy. At the end of the day, I firmly believe that the extension will not alter the length of Bennett's tenure at SMU.

SMU Football Blog wrote:

oakley wrote:shades of Kevin Steal at BU and AD Tom Stanton.

As, I think my good friend Dooby tried to point out several times, this is exactly what Baylor did. Steele did get extended...and did get canned. We are not talking guaranteed money; SMU didn't marry the guy. At the end of the day, I firmly believe that the extension will not alter the length of Bennett's tenure at SMU.

The problem is with the lack of committment to being competitive, who could the school get to come here and be a coach? In the end, it might be easier to abandon the dream of playing D1 football and drop to1-AA, Div 2 or Div 3 and just focus on basketball and soccer.