Phil Bennett-Hot Sports Opinions

[Stallion]

both Cavan and Bennett had some quality parting shots at SMU

[NickSMU17]

prob deserved in both occasions...doesnt mean you have to say it...

[Bergermeister]

Rusty Burns.

[Garret]

I don't think that any of the post-DP coaches before JJ had the juice to get the changes made on recruit admissions at SMU. Future SMU coaches will benefit from the battles that JJ/Orsini fought.

I don't think that any of the post-DP coaches before JJ had the donors paying 100% of his salary. From that perspective, JJ could be the least expensive coach to SMU.

I think that JJ's biggest recruiting strength is in identifying and recruiting assistant coaches. JJ convinced Klemm to go to SMU to help out for free for a year until a spot opened up the following year. Reinebold went to Hawaii to coach basically for free (GA) until a spot opened up. Mason seems like a good hire, etc.

Hawaii could have gotten to Klemm first (he had been attending classes at the school!) and I've been talking on a Hawaii board about how I wish that Hawaii would hire Klemm since his first year at SMU before he started getting all this attention. Klemm is a recruiting god now...and remember, JJ recruited him to SMU to help out for free and see that he wanted to coach.

[NickSMU17]

Lets hope he remembers that and appreciates another raise this offseason...

[03Mustang]

Bennett is a loser that preferred to whine and scream over trying to find actual solutions.

He's now also a hypocrite - I can't find the actual article, but I remembered him saying something about not playing TCU anymore if they left C-USA back when I was in school...here's a posting with the article in it

http://ncaabbs.com/showthread.php?tid=92567

[rich59]

The interesting thing about Phil Bennett is that he was in contention for the job at TCU when Patterson was hired. Think what would have happened if he had been at TCU and SMU had hired someone else. As I remember Skip Holst was interviewed by SMU.

I knew that Bennett would never get it done after the first game with Navy. SMU had almost everyone back from the best defense in the WAC and Navy had won no games the year before. The game was at Ford and Navy had a brand new coach, Johnson. Bennett was supposedly a defensive genius and Navy went through us like our defense had never seen the option. Navy won one game that year.

The truth is that the SMU program went backwards under Bennett. Cavan was better in all respects. The other truth is that hiring a coach is kind of a crap shoot. There are almost no sure things. The way things look now, Patterson was the key at TCU, not Franchione. And Peterson was the key at Boise, not Hawkins.

[Stallion]

you guys blaming prior Coaches for failing to get changes to the admission standards are CLASSICALLY MISINFORMED. And excuse me but I thought that the search committee went to June Jones and promised him that athletic admission standards were already going to be changed to (paraphasing Turner on the date Jones was hired) "so SMU was on an even playing field with all our competitors". So really why does June Jones get credit for anything more than fine-tuning. It was part of the job description SMU realized it had to offer to be competitive. The evidence shows they were letting large numbers of Category C recruits get in within weeks of Jones' arrival. Typical June Jones worship

[RGV Pony]

you guys blaming prior Coaches for failing to get changes to the admission standards are CLASSICALLY MISINFORMED. And excuse me but I thought that the search committee went to June Jones and promised him that athletic admission standards were already going to be changed to (paraphasing Turner) "so SMU was on an even playing field with all our competitors". So really why does June Jones get credit for anything more than fine-tuning. The evidence shows they were letting large numbers of Category C recruits get in within weeks of Jones' arrival. Typical June Jones worship

maybe because they read your quote on ponyfans that said anyone who knew anything about June Jones and how he does things would know that he has ZERO interest in coming to SMU. So give yourself a pat on the back for that one.

[SMUer]

With June Jones at the helm, I've haven't even felt 1/100th of the embarrassment or the disappointment I felt watching Phil Bennett's teams. Seriously, good luck and good riddance. He has become a self-induced albatross around our neck for this board.

[rich59]

Coaching is a profession which seems to me to be one of the more difficult to excel at. Often a coach can be a success at one place or as an assistant coach be really good and be a failure at another place or as a head coach. Sometimes the most successful coaches don't seem to be very nice or even honest people. There is little doubt that two ingredients are needed for a head coach to be successful-good players and good assistants. Sometimes even having those does not work and sometimes just being a good fit for the job is necessary. The guy at Ole Miss is about to get fired and he was quite successful at Arkansas. Go figure!

I have been around, as a player and later as a fan and sometimes as a good friend and sometimes as an employee of many coaches.

My high school coach won a state championship in basketball and two in football and was one of the legendary Texas High School coaches. He was a forbidding looking man and everyone was afraid of him. Not a screamer but coached with the look. He could make you feel two feet high. Never gave a pep talk. He was a technician offensively and we were ahead of everyone else in that phase of the game. I have a close friend who played for a guy who was also legendary and won many state championships. He was a screamer, worked his players until they dropped, had about five plays from the single wing and threw the ball about twice a game. He was a mean SOB.

In college I happened to be around when Texas Tech had probably their best record and team. Dewitt Weaver was the head coach but probably his secret weapon was Wade Walker, offensive line coach. The players loved him and he could really coach the split T. He even took time to help and inspire marginal players, like me. He left Tech to take the head coaching job at Miss. State and later got fired. TT was not as good after he left.

Ed Price at TU was a very fine man and well liked. He would go out of his way to help an "all you others." He was fired and Royal was hired. I have heard he was not always a very nice man.

A coach with one of the best coaching records in Texas College football, I was quite familiar with. He took a small school in the NAIA and made a national power of them. One year he won 18 games including one of the national championships he won. He was not very likeable and IMO kind of sneaky. He did hire some good assistants. One went on to have a good coaching career, including at SMU and one quit coaching and became CEO of a big energy company.

Hayden Fry IMO is the classic example of a coach who always seemed to hire good assistants. I knew him rather well and some of his assistants extremely well. In spite of hiring good assistants and having some success in recruiting, Hayden never really got it going at SMU. I believe that when Fry had so much success at Iowa, it was at least partly because there was harmony on the staff and he let those good assistants coach.

A coach at SMU who was a great coach and a wonderful man was Red Barr. His swimmers seemed to really like him. He was innovative and cared a great deal about all people. I worked for him and learned a lot. He had his swimmers weight lifting long before football players started doing it.

A coach who was a great IMO assistant coach was Dave Smith. I knew him as a player and as a close friend. For some reason, he was not successful at SMU, perhaps because of a weak staff. He may have been just too nice a person to to be a head coach at that level.

Ron Meyer gave the impression of being a high roller but he was really a genuine person. He certainly got the job done at SMU and that may have been the best fit for him, rather than the NFL.

Bobby Collins was truly a genuine person and a Red Barr type IMO. Most of his staff was the same way. One thing that made an impression on me was that one could sit at a big table after golf with Bobby and his staff and it was hard to tell who was the head man. He was certainly not an egotist.

Phil Bennett was IMO, a nice fellow and always very pleasant to me for no good reason as I was not a big contributor at that time. I heard he was a micro manager perhaps because his staff may have been weak. Jim Copeland went out of his way to be cordial to me and was a geniunely nice person.

The point of all this is that most men in coaching are nice people and really care about their fellow man. Perhaps the best head coaches need to be a little ruthless and have a mean streak. Some are screamers and some are not. I believe that Patterson is the former. The fact is, though, that just because an assistant coach is very good, there is no guarantee he will be good as a head coach at a certain place. On the other hand, a good staff or a certain great assistant can make a head coach look good. Patterson and Peterson are probably examples of that.

One thing is for sure, a football team, no matter how good the talent, will not be consistently successful unless the coaching staff is overall very good at their job.

[ponyboy]

In order words, both recruiting and coaching matter. And coaching is not just X's and O's, but motivation and culture change management -- as well as a keen eye to a particular prospect's fit to scheme. Stallion refuses to acknowledge these very basic facts. It's not just about recruiting!

CLASSICAL OVERSIMPLIFICATION

[Nacho]

i hate it when mom and dad fight.

[Bergermeister]

Typical June Jones worship

Anything wrong with that?

[Dutch]

not in my book.