Texas coach Mack Brown watched his team drop out of college football’s Top 25 rankings last season because of mounting losses during a 5-7 campaign. But Brown has his team back in the Top 10 of at least one poll today – albeit an unwanted lofty perch.
Brown ranks No. 7 in today’s listing of college football coaches under the most heat on the website CoachesHotSeat.com. Brown is the highest-ranked Big 12 coach on the website’s list and checked in one spot behind Ohio State’s Jim Tressel, who is suspended for the first five games of the 2011 season (and possibly more) for failing to disclose information in a timely manner relating to NCAA violations at the school.
The top five coaches on the list, like Brown, experienced disappointing on-field performances by their teams in the 2010 season: Washington State’s Paul Wulff, New Mexico’s Mike Lockley, Ole Miss’ Houston Nutt, UCLA’s Rick Neuheisel and Georgia’s Mark Richt.
Clearly, the poll is not scientific. But it makes for interesting reading.
How does Brown rank in relation to other Big 12 coaches? The second-hottest seat in the Big 12, according to the website, belongs to Kansas coach Turner Gill, a Fort Worth Arlington Heights graduate (No. 19) who posted a 3-9 mark in his initial season with the Jayhawks in 2010.
No one else from the Big 12 cracks the “hot seat” section, which applies to the Top 25 in the website’s rankings. Rankings for the five football coaches from last year’s South Division who led their teams to bowl games include Baylor’s Art Briles (No. 64), Texas A&M’s Mike Sherman (No. 72), Texas Tech’s Tommy Tuberville (No. 100), Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy (No. 114) and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops (No. 115).
Among the 120 major-college football coaches listed, the coolest seat in the country belongs to TCU’s Gary Patterson, whose team went 13-0 and won the Rose Bowl last season. Patterson checked in at No. 120, one spot below Auburn’s Gene Chizik, whose team won the BCS national championship game in January.
For the full list, visit www.CoachesHotSeat.com.
_ Jimmy Burch
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