Stewart Mandel caused plenty of stir — even some approval — here last year when he named then-football-coach Chuck Amato the worst college football coach in the country.
Well, for those keeping score, his latest such rankings appeared on the Internet on Wednesday, as well as his top 10 coaches.
State’s first-year coach Tom O’Brien didn’t make the five worst coaches list or 10 best coaches list, but plenty of his ACC colleagues drew attention.
Virginia coach Al Groh took over Amato’s title as the nation’s worst – a much less flashy king to wear the crown – while Clemson coach Tommy Bowden came in a close third.
Lucky for Tom O’Brien, he gets to face both at home in his first season. With a smidgeon more in-game coaching ability than his predecessor, O’Brien might actually win those games.
Fellow ACC coach Chan Gailey, the head man at Georgia Tech, finished just off the list as the first coach who fell short of being among Mandel’s five worst.
O’Brien won’t get a crack at Gailey this season unless their teams meet in the ACC championship game. That may not be a bad thing for O’Brien, though, as State has only beaten the Yellow Jackets twice since 1994.
In the best coaches department, Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer was listed as Mandel’s sixth-best coach, while Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe rode his 2006 ACC championship to a ranking of No. 7.
O’Brien won’t go against Beamer’s Hokies this season, but Grobe’s Demon Deacons are a division rival in the ACC Atlantic. Wake Forest has also won three of its last four games against State, a trend O’Brien needs to start reversing if he hopes to have much success with the Pack.
But, of course, his track record against the aforementioned schools won’t have nearly as much to do with how he is judged by fans as what his record is against that school a half-hour down the road.
As long as he can beat Carolina consistently, O’Brien at least stands a chance to stay off the worst coaches’ list and keep fans happy. But establishing a perennial winner that can keep people excited will require much more. It will take a week-to-week focus that could never could be sustained under Amato.
Everyone at State and in the media is ready to see what O’Brien can do and is properly waiting to decide on how good of a hire he was. I’ve been out of the country for much of the summer, but from what I’ve heard, there’s been plenty of positive coverage for him.
Someone recently mentioned this to me as a very good sign, but every coach looks good when they haven’t coached a game for their school yet. It’s when a few losses start mounting and the pressure rises that we’ll see what O’Brien is made of.
State fans, after tenuous coaching changes in the school’s two biggest sports, have to hope O’Brien won’t soon land on Mandel’s worst coaches list. But for now, they’re just glad to not have last year’s “worst coach.”
