Big 12 Football Coaching Tiers: Golden boys & hot seats

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The Big 12 just released their all-conference preseason team and will soon release the preseason Big 12 rankings, so in honor of “list season” I figured it was time to take a crack at ranking the football coaches in the new 14-team Big 12, as well as putting them in the tiers they belong to. Tip of the cap to our old friend Alec Busse who recently did this on Big Ten coaches for The Hoosier.

There are four tiers that the coaches will be grouped into, with the “hot seat” tier being self-explanatory. Any coach in this tier has to do something strong in 2023 or he will not be coaching in the Big 12 come 2024. In the “something to prove” category, these are coaches that are likely to have job security beyond this year, but if something disastrous happens it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that they are looking for a new job next year as well.

Then the final two tiers are for the coaches who have multi-year job security and currently have their programs in really good spots. “Just fine” coaches are in no fear of losing their job and have a lot going for them, but have room to grow. The “golden boys” are in a honeymoon phase with their current school and are still ascending at a rapid pace with a growing ceiling. Away we go!

HOT SEAT

14. Neal Brown – West Virginia

It is a one-man show in the hot seat category, so congrats to Neal Brown! He easily could have been fired after a poor 2022 for the Mountaineers, but he got a chance to come back for one more season in Morgantown.

Brown and Chris Klieman are the last two men standing from the 2019 Big 12 rookie class of coaches (Les Miles and Matt Wells), but Brown has only peaked at six wins in a season at West Virginia, with his only winning season being the 2020 COVID year when he went 6-4. Last season the Mountaineers went 5-7 and had to replace JT Daniels at quarterback.

A few other key factors go against Brown’s chances of turning things around like West Virginia having a brand new athletic director in Wren Baker…

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Source link : https://kansasstate.rivals.com/news/big-12-football-coaching-tiers-golden-boys-hot-seats?yptr=yahoo?src=rss

Author : EMAW Online

Publish date : 2023-07-06 09:00:00

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