Ranking the 25 Best College Football Coaching Hires Since 2000

https://herosports.com/college-football/ranking-best-coaches-hires-saban-dabo-ahah



Key figures.



24. KEN NIUMATALOLO Navy (2007)

21. KYLE WHITTINGHAM Utah (2005)

20. BRONCO MENDENHALL BYU (2005)

Curious that they list Bronco Mendenhall above Kyle Whittingham. Especially since Utah bested BYU 7-3 including the final 5 match-ups during Mendenhall's coaching tenure.

Because they've seen what he can do without recruiting restrictions at Virginia.

The story mentions nothing about Virginia. ;)

ESPN ranked Bronco as the better coach while Bronco was at BYU ...

If your only metric is Broncos record vs whittingham, bronco is obviously not a great coach. But these analysts, unlike you, probably dont judge coaches based on one game a year.



Bronco was/is a great coach. BYU would be better off with him still coaching here. Nothing will change my mind.

BroncoBot wrote:

If your only metric is Broncos record vs whittingham, bronco is obviously not a great coach. But these analysts, unlike you, probably dont judge coaches based on one game a year.



Bronco was/is a great coach. BYU would be better off with him still coaching here. Nothing will change my mind.

Wow...taking some shots without need there cowboy. I never said Bronco is "not a great coach". I just observed it was interesting to see them rank Bronco ahead of Whittingham--especially given the head-to-head dominance given reasons that appear focused on Bronco's time in Provo. All without any detail on how they arrived at the relative rankings in their article. Your admitted closed mind, quick insults, and belligerent defense of your opinion is not very convincing.



It would have been better to take a look at overall stats--and these ended up being closer than I would have guessed.



In Mendenhall's BYU time (2005-2015), BYU went 99-43 (.700), appeared in 11 bowl games, had 5 seasons with 10 or more wins with 11 wins being the high (3 times).



During those same years under Whittingham, Utah went 94-46 (.671), appeared in 9 bowl games, with 4 seasons with 10 or more wins including 1 perfect 13-0 season.



Of course the article doesn't give an isolated window of time to compare everyone against. And using the winning percentage and bowl appearances as the criteria WOULD give Bronco the nod slightly. But it is not unreasonable to me to argue that Whittingham's high was higher and head to head dominating and was instrumental to get Utah into a P5 conference. I guess it just depends on the focus of the criteria.

Like I said above, Bronco did what he did at a school that has MAJOR recruiting restrictions (self imposed of course but there none the less) that utah just doesn't have. The reason I mentioned Virginia is because we are seeing the kind of job he can do now without those restrictions. The article may or may not have looked at Virginia but I am sure that looking at what he did with the talent he had was a major factor in their decision to put him ahead of kwhitt.