Todd Graham
- Thread starter kougkurt
- Start date
Wow. From November 2017:
"Arizona State football will have a new head coach, announcing Sunday that Todd Graham has been let go, following his sixth season with the Sun Devils.
In a statement, ASU said it “expects to compete on the field for Pac-12 titles, be competitively consistent and qualify to participate in major bowl games on a regular basis. In evaluating Todd's body of work over a four-year period, it became clear that a change is necessary.”
He’d been in hot-seat territory all year, but many people figured a 7-5 season with a win over a top-20 Washington and a fresh win over arch rival Arizona would’ve been enough to keep his job.
Better have a good plan after firing a coach with a final 46-31 record at a middle-tier Pac-12 school."
He was out of work for two years. Shocking that he took a step down from a Power 5 Conference. Maybe he tried to land somewhere....and maybe Paradise is his best fit?
Facility wise and talent wise, that's a huge step down. What a humble experience.
"Arizona State football will have a new head coach, announcing Sunday that Todd Graham has been let go, following his sixth season with the Sun Devils.
In a statement, ASU said it “expects to compete on the field for Pac-12 titles, be competitively consistent and qualify to participate in major bowl games on a regular basis. In evaluating Todd's body of work over a four-year period, it became clear that a change is necessary.”
He’d been in hot-seat territory all year, but many people figured a 7-5 season with a win over a top-20 Washington and a fresh win over arch rival Arizona would’ve been enough to keep his job.
Better have a good plan after firing a coach with a final 46-31 record at a middle-tier Pac-12 school."
He was out of work for two years. Shocking that he took a step down from a Power 5 Conference. Maybe he tried to land somewhere....and maybe Paradise is his best fit?
Facility wise and talent wise, that's a huge step down. What a humble experience.
Really interesting. He has some name recognition and has had at least some degree of success wherever he's been. He's a pretty good coach given what I expect Hawaii to be paying. That said: (i) the current players are in for a massive culture shock between Rolo and Graham, likely leading to a lot of departures and growing pains; and (ii) he'll be looking for ways out the door as soon as possible, even more than the typical coach dealing with Hawaii's challenges.
One thing in Hawaii's favor, and it's an important point, is that this is a last chance to resurrect your career opportunity for Graham. If he doesn't get it done, he'll likely never get another chance at being a P5/G5 head coach again.
I hated him at ASU but I guess I believe in some form of redemption. I am rooting for him at UH.
I also wish him and Hawaii well but Graham is going to need a lot of luck and skill in order to be successful. Hard place to recruit, little local interest and a lack of facilities. Rolo has cleaned out their coaching staff. Not that Graham would have retained them but it does not help. Now Rolo is going after some of their better recruiting targets. A good record last year so some decent players will still be there to participate in the coming schedule. Further down the line is a question. I do not see a lot of light at the end of that tunnel.
A good coach in a terrible situation is going to have it pretty rough. A school like Kansas shows how hard it is to effect change. Turner Gill was not a great coach by any measure, but he was a little better than 0.500 overall at other schools. At KU? He had a very Wulffian 21% win percentage. Same thing with Charlie Weis. Not a great coach, but a decent coach who got buried by KU's disastrous situation. We may never know if David Beaty is a good coach because he made the mistake of going to KU. The result? 6-42. A record so bad that even Paul Wulff gets to smile.
Long story short.......I will be surprised to see Graham win games there. As mentioned by kayak15, Rolovich is going to steal most of the better guys that Hawaii might have otherwise gotten. The only good thing is that Rolovich is at least leaving Graham with guys who should feel that they can win games.
I wish him absolutely no luck at all ... he got hosed to an extent at ASU, but before that, he pretty much had one foot out the door no matter where he went. I'm sure he would have been gunning for a job like Texas A&M if he had sustained success at ASU and some jobs were open. I am a little disappointed from a WSU perspective that UH was able to bring in a "name" of sorts, especially on defense, as HC with that paltry budget. He might be able to hang onto some recruits from Hawaii that we could use at WSU, or at least be harder to recruit against than a complete stiff would. It will be more interesting to follow Hawaii with him on board, certainly, and he's about a 180 from Rolovich in almost every way you could imagine. A screamer focused on defense replacing a player's coach who seemingly wasn't exactly focused on defense.
