Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, left, and Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson, right, pose with the Orange Bowl trophy at a news conference in Fort Lauderdale, Monday, Jan. 4, 2010.
Posted on 01/06/2010 1:28:36 AM PST by iowamark
This 76th Orange Bowl Classic showcases two of the top 10 teams in the country Tuesday night in large part because Georgia Tech and Iowa are lucky to have what so many other major college football programs do not.
They have stability at the top. They have tranquility there. Each has the comfort of an overriding sense that his team has the right head coach, the right man steering, and that the topic is subject to neither rancorous debate nor yearly doubts.
Tech's Paul Johnson and Iowa's Kirk Ferentz are this season's ACC and Big Ten coaches of the year, respectively. Each has signed a contract extension through at least 2015. Both are successful, scandal-free and satisfied with their current address.
Flashy? Nope. They are just a couple of football lifers in their early 50s, but they are fresh air -- refreshingly still, calm air -- amid so much turbulence in college coaching these days for so many reasons.
Look around. You needn't look far.
Florida State shows its legend the door and prays Jimbo Fisher is the man to fill Bobby Bowden's dadgum shoes.
Florida wonders about Urban Meyer's health and commitment after his resignation-no-leave of absence.
Kansas fires Mark Mangino for verbally and even physically abusing players.
Texas Tech fires Mike Leach for also mistreating a player.
Brian Kelly forsakes Cincinnati for Notre Dame.
Seventeen NCAA big-school teams have undergone coaching changes this winter. How many other schools have internal doubts about their guy? How many other coaches are itching for a better offer?
Coaching stability and tranquility sometimes is something even schools that seem to have it maybe don't.
SHANNON'S STATUS
Do the Miami Hurricanes have it with Randy Shannon? You would certainly say so, based on the fact UM has gone from five wins to seven to nine in Shannon's three seasons. (And one of this year's wins was an impressive 33-17 over eventual ACC champ Georgia Tech, not incidentally.)
Yet one gets the sense Shannon is not universally popular among an impatient and entitled-feeling fan base, and the notion that he is on the clock or vaguely under job pressure might only increase until the university and the coach agree on a contract extension.
No such worries or whispers at Georgia Tech or Iowa, where Johnson and Ferentz have taken different paths to their rock-solid standing.
Johnson has coached the Yellow Jackets only two seasons but has gone 20-6 and been ACC coach of the year both years. This season saw Tech go 11-2 with a final No. 9 BCS ranking, and marked the school's first outright ACC title since 1990.
Johnson is the guy who had fans swooning from the outset. He had made a winner of Navy -- in itself a small miracle -- and didn't disappoint upon arrival in Atlanta.
Ferentz took a while to win over fans. He is an example of why patience so often is rewarded.
``We were 2-18 our first 20 ball games [at Iowa],'' as Ferentz reminded at an OB coaches' press conference Monday. ``I think I read that in the papers a few times.''
He has been 78-37 with the Hawkeyes in the nine seasons since, including this year's 10-2 record, good for a No. 10 BCS rank and his third Big Ten Coach of the Year trophy.
The OB coaches also contrast because Ferentz is a defensive guy, while Johnson is an offensive master whose signature is Tech's vaunted triple option rushing attack.
Both men would like to enhance the battered bowl reputations of their conferences.
ACC teams are 10-16 in bowls the past three seasons. If Iowa loses, Big Ten teams will have a losing record in bowls for the fifth consecutive year.
That might be partly why there has been a lot of dismissing of this Orange Bowl matchup, mostly by people who think that come December and January the only college game that matters is the one for the national championship. That is also the myopia of so many anti-BCS, pro-playoff zealots.
(By the way, if an eight-team playoff were applied to this season, Georgia Tech and Iowa would be the omitted teams closest to making it. Proponents always act as if a playoff would be an argument-ender. As if an eight-team format would not find the team ranked ninth with a beef.)
This game matters, and needs no bracket to justify it. It certainly matters for the two schools here, and I would like to think it does for South Florida at large. The reason is tradition, another of those quaint notions worth nurturing.
The Orange Bowl Classic matters because it is a local institution with few peers. It has culminated every football season since 1934. Doubtless there are some old-timers among us who might even recall the very first game, on New Year's Day 1935, when the Miami Hurricanes lost to Bucknell 26-0.
That game featured the first wire photo transmitted across the country by The Associated Press. Fearing the hot weather here (and apparently the Miami water supply), Bucknell had arranged for 280 gallons of H2O to be transported from Pennsylvania.
The Orange Bowl game even survived the once-unthinkable forsaking of the now-defunct Orange Bowl Stadium for the Dolphins' fancier digs in 1996.
History is what this game was, and is.
There are 34 bowl games now, too many. Around a handful of them matter. This is one of them.
Sixteen of the 75 OBs have produced that season's national champion, from the first in 1953 to just last year, when the Florida Gators beat Oklahoma.
Of course, every Canes fan alive knows Miami's first national championship came in this very game on the night of Jan. 2, 1984: 31-30 over Nebraska. (As well as UM's second title, four years later.)
Players in the OB game have included Tom Landry, Bart Starr, Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Namath, Johnny Rodgers, Lee Roy Selmon, Franco Harris, Billy Sims, Matt Leinart and Tim Tebow.
Coaching legends walking the OB sidelines have included Bobby Dodd, Gen. Robert Neyland, Bear Bryant, Bud Wilkinson, Joe Paterno, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, Woody Hayes, Tom Osborne and Bobby Bowden.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
The latest OB coaches do not know each other well, having met for the first time less than a year ago at a high school in New Jersey while happening to recruit the same player.
The kid, offensive lineman Nolan MacMillan, ended up going to Iowa.
``But I cheated,'' said Ferentz, smiling. ``His dad went to high school with me.''
Reminded of that, Johnson smiled, too, and said, ``I owe him one.''
The payback will come Tuesday night, if oddsmakers have it right. Either way, the right coach wins.
Iowa's Brandon Wegher scrambles from the outstretched arm of Georgia Tech's Julian Burnett during the first half of the Orange Bowl at Landshark Stadium on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2010, in Miami.
I know nothing about Johnson, but I do know Kirk Ferentz is an oustanding coach.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.