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Seeing Ramon and all his greatness in the QB thread got me to wondering about Rossley.

He was fired in the days before the message board and I never really quite understood it. Why was he let go?

He seemed very dedicated to SMU, he ran an exciting offense that seemed to help keep the team competive, he nearly beat UCLA in the Rose Bowl, tied the Aggies one year, and should have beaten them in College Station the next year, Even though they were highly ranked. I remember SMU upsetting Utah on a nationally televised game on ESPN....

Thing is, seems like he was heading in the right direction, I remember when Cavan came and we tried to become a boring running team, it felt like a step back and we had no real success and then we all know what happened with Bennett.

Why did Tom get the boot?

Because he won about 24% of his Games and was 0-6 against Rice. That will get 100% of Coaches fired 100% of the time.

Rossley has a great offensive mind but due to multiple Pye problems and no D we couldn't win.

Rossley is now th QB coach at A&M. He was the O-coordinator under new coach Sherman at Green Bay.

While 0-6 against Rice is inexcusable, I still think letting him go after a 5-6 season was a shame, given what he had to deal with. I spoke to several people in the college coaching profession around that time who were dumbfounded at his firing. They admired him greatly. The consensus opinion was, "Hell, 5-6 is a great record at that place..."

Nacho wrote:Rossley has a great offensive mind but due to multiple Pye problems and no D we couldn't win.

Rossley is now th QB coach at A&M. He was the O-coordinator under new coach Sherman at Green Bay.

you're right. It's somewhat surprising that we had no D...wasn't that when Schumman was DC, or was he after? If he wasn't, who was Rossley's DC? On the other hand, we had Luke Johnson (or maybe that was Cavan)? Who recruited Bordano and Swann? Who recruited Mitchell and Garrett?

1. Schumann was a Cavan Assistant
2. The 5-6 record came against the WAC not the SWC
3. In the 3 prior years of the end of the SWC., Rossley was

1-10
1-9-1
2-7-2

4-26-3

KnuckleStang wrote:I spoke to several people in the college coaching profession around that time who were dumbfounded at his firing. They admired him greatly. The consensus opinion was, "Hell, 5-6 is a great record at that place..."

Well, glad to see that I wasn't the only one that felt that way. I remember talking with my dad in disbelief about SMU letting him go after what I considered a nice season with all that SMU was having to go through, and was mad he was not being given the chance to keep going forward. Especially since he was connected to SMU and seemed to genuinely love the school, unlike Cavan, Bennett, or even Jones.

Stallion is funny. He is against scapegoating a coach, because it's all about recruiting, unless you're talking about Rossley, who was 0-6 against Rice, but also tied #7 A&M, scared the hell out of them the next yr at Kyle, and also COMPETITIVE losses to ranked UCLA, UNC and Oklahoma, two of which were on the road. I am not trying to brag about losses, but these things were all unimaginable in the last 7 yrs or so (witness Okie St, Aggies, TT). And Rossley had much worse rules to deal with than anybody after him.

how do you go from NFL O-Coordinator to a College QB coach?

You have Stallion as your agent!

RednBlue11 wrote:how do you go from NFL O-Coordinator to a College QB coach?

I thought he had some health concerns and needed to take some time away (a quasi retirement?) while with the Packers. That, or he was on McCarthy's predecessor's staff and they changed out coordinators.

Insane_Pony_Posse wrote:Big Jim Copeland arrived and wanted his own hand
picked man. Cavan blew it the next season by benching
Donte @ TCU and cost SMU their first bowl game (post DP)
with Rossley's players. Tom Rossley was/is a very nice man
and he will always love SMU since he coached here, his son
played here and his other son married an SMU cheerleader.
Long live one Tom Rossley!

Yup, firing Rossley was very Copeland

I am always amazed at how Stallion never gives Rossley credit for anything but defended Cavan always. "you can't blame the coach. You can't blame the coach. You can't blame the coach....unless it is Rossley."

Rossley did go 5-6 while in the SWC in 1992. You will also find Stallion loves to bring up 0-6 agaisnt Rice and he also loves to talk about Cavan's one win over Arkansas as one of the highlights at SMU post-DP. But that is just odd because Stallion never brings up Rossley's .500 (3-3) record against the same Arkansas team. Rossley also had a .500 record against TCU.

End of the day, Rossley was let go because Copeland wanted his own guy.

Great picture Dooby. Looks like Kathy Bates lost some weight.