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Someone mentioned Cavan as a bad coach in another thread. I checked out his coaching history......

WHY was he hired? Went down hill at Valdosa starting with 9 wins and then five years of 5/6 win seasons. Moved to East Tennessee and posted the following win totals: 5, 5, 6, 4, 10.

One good year in eleven and that year wasn't even a conference championship.

What is the story?

Good question.

couch 'em wrote:Someone mentioned Cavan as a bad coach in another thread. I checked out his coaching history......

WHY was he hired? Went down hill at Valdosa starting with 9 wins and then five years of 5/6 win seasons. Moved to East Tennessee and posted the following win totals: 5, 5, 6, 4, 10.

One good year in eleven and that year wasn't even a conference championship.

What is the story?

This is SMU, or as the real programs say- Amateur hour

He recruited Herschel Walker to GA.

Gene Chizik had a worse resume and got hired by Auburn, and he won a NC for them. Maybe we were trailblazers.

Nah, Cavan was probably the cheapest.

Check out this part on wiki:

Assistant coaches who have worked under Cavan and have gone on to become head coaches include: David Dean, Darrell Dickey, and Derek Dooley

Cavan loves the Double Ds!

Who doesn't???

Did Cavan make even $500k per year?, I dunno.

I do know that if you include 2014's 1-11 record on tiki's resume, which I feel is not unreasonable, Mike Cavan's W/L % is almost the same as tiki's, right at 40%.

I posted this once, but without looking it up, I strongly suspect Cavan's W/L record against teams with winning records is better than tiki's and that his 5 worse losses were much more competitive than tiki's.

Of course, to be fair, tiki had many obstacles in place that Mike didn't such as small offices & bad lighting.

Many of the people that were interview did not want the job - that was at least part of it.
I think it was Tom O'Brien who Copeland really wanted - and knew from his days in Virginia. He ended up going to BC, then NC State.
I don't think many coaches felt like SMU was a place they could succeed at - and most were right.

SoCal_Pony wrote:I posted this once, but without looking it up, I strongly suspect Cavan's W/L record against teams with winning records is better than tiki's and that his 5 worse losses were much more competitive than tiki's.

Take your pick:
L 46-16 to Navy in '97
L 44-17 to Arkansas in '98
L 32-10 to CSU in '98
L 26-0 to Arkansas in '99
L 53-19 to Tulane in '99
L 41-0 to NCSU in '00
L 35-10 to SJSU in '00
L 43-14 to Rice in '00
L 62-7 to TCU in '00
L 36-6 to LTU in '01
L 38-10 to TCU in '01
L 35-14 to Nevada in '01
L 38-13 to Fresno State in '01

ponyswim wrote:Many of the people that were interview did not want the job - that was at least part of it. ... I don't think many coaches felt like SMU was a place they could succeed at - and most were right.

Exactly. The fact SMU wasn't paying much at the time dissuaded all but the foolhardy.

The '97 loss to 0-10 TCU was way worse than any of those. Killed our program and launched theirs.

Yep

CA Mustang, you made we work.

Cavan 6-23 vs teams with winning records, tiki 6-32, ADVANTAGE CAVAN

Cavan 5 worse beat downs 43-228, tiki's 30-243, ADVANTAGE CAVAN

Also, if chicken heart had stayed the entire 2014, his numbers above would have been even worse.

At least cavan didn't intentionally set out to destroy us.

And if Cavan had all the resources surf prince tiki had....