I ran across this Athlon's list (everybody loves lists) where they rank the coaching hires from 2010. I won't try to quote the whole list here, but Texas Tech's head coach Tommy Tuberville is ranked as the 14th best hire from the coaches that were hired in 2010. Perhaps this is my own ignorance about some of these other coaching candidates, but I thought that this was entirely too low, but then again, maybe I've being too kind to Tuberville. Briefly, here's the top 15 on the list:
1. Charlie Strong, Louisville
2. Jimbo Fisher, Florida St.
3. Brian Kelly, Notre Dame
4. Willie Taggart, Western Kentucky
5. Skip Holtz, S. Florida
6. Derek Dooley, Tennessee
7. Mike London, Virginia
8. Lane Kiffin, USC
9. Sonny Dykes, Louisiana Tech
10. Todd Berry, Louisiana-Monroe
11. Joker Phillips, Kentucky
12. Ruffin McNeill, East Carolina
13. Doc Holliday, Marshall
14. Tommy Tuberville, Texas Tech
15. Butch Jones, Cincinnati
And just for clarification, there's a brief snippet talking about each coach and here's what they said about Tuberville:
14. Tommy Tuberville, Texas Tech Red Raiders - The Red Raiders did some good things — three wins over bowl teams in the regular season — but they won two fewer Big 12 games and took several steps backward on defense. They gave up 52 points in a 14-point loss at Iowa State, and 45 points to both Texas A&M?and Oklahoma.
All of that is true, the defense did take a step back and did win two fewer Big 12 games last year and hopefully the defense situation will be partly remedied this year.
For me, the bigger question is whether or not you think that Tuberville was the 14th best hire last year? And maybe another way to think about this is if you were having a coach-draft using the 2010 coaching hires as candidates, where would you draft Tuberville? For me, I think this is my order: Jimbo Fisher; Brian Kelly; Charlie Strong; and Tuberville. Granted, this is all difficult to rank and I have no idea what criteria the folks at Athlon used to determine this ranking, but I think Tuberville's done a better job than they're giving him credit.