FanHouse ByuFootball

Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles is expected to step down this week. His departure is yet another symbol of the passing of one of college football's greatest generations, the great coaches who presided over the game from 1960 or so until the mid to late 1970's. Broyles coached the Razorbacks from 1958 to 1976 helping them win a championship and competing nationally in a great era against powers like Alabama, USC, Notre Dame and Michigan.

Another giant of his time has left us in the mortal sense: Bo Schembechler. Schembechler coached Michigan from 1969 to 1989 becoming the face of the program until his death just before the Michigan/Ohio State game last year.

The only giants of that era still with us are Broyles, former Texas coach Darrell Royal (1957-1976) and former Notre Dame coach Ara Paraseghian (1964-1974).

Among the magnificent but dead is Alabama's Bear Bryant (1958-1982) who retired at the end of the 1982 season and promptly checked out of mortal existence. Ohio State's Woody Hayes (1951-1978) hung around until his death in 1987. Nebraska's Bob Devaney (1962-1972) checked out in 1997 and USC's comedic John McKay (1960-1975) lasted a little longer, passing away in 2001.

All those giants left the coaching ranks long ago, but each stewarded elite programs for a decade or more. To this day most of them remain the standard for which current coaches aspire to at each of their programs. Schembechler's death and Broyles' departure signal the end of their collective direct involvement in the college game.

As that great generation fades further into memory we must now also begin to take stock of the succeeding generation of coaches. I'm talking about guys like Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno, Tom Osborne, John Robinson, Vince Dooley, Don James, Hayden Fry, Pat Dye, Lou Holtz, Lavell Edwards and Barry Switzer here.

They are the ones who were the game's caretakes from the mid to late 1970's until the late 1980's, an era of great transition and upheaval due to parity measures such as scholarship limits, the completion of racial integration and the rapid and dramatic death of plodding, run-heavy conventional offenses such as USC's "Student Body Right/Student Body Left" approach.

We'll save that analysis for another day, another time. Until then it's one final embrace of perhaps college football's "greatest generation" of coaches. Thanks for the memories, fellas.

After their 12-3 loss to TCU on Sept. 16, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach was mad and he wanted everyone to know about it.

Several I-AA teams have gotten after I-A teams. That could certainly happen to us if we're unable to either change the attitudes dramatically of players that have played for us previously or replace them with people that have different attitudes. And I'm willing to replace them with people that may not be as talented at this point as long as they play hard.

Them's fightin' words, but poor coach Leach may not recognize his interesting dilemma.

For years second and third tier programs like Texas Tech have kept their heads above water by relying on gimmicky offensive schemes to steal wins against more established programs. These schemes have worked because they function best not through talent but player commitment. BYU was the model for years in the 1980's and 1990's, winning a national championship and otherwise having a productive offense with some of the worst skill athletes in D-I.

Flash forward to 2006, and Leach is in his seventh year in Lubbock. In that time he has a 51-29 record, stringing together five consecutive seasons of more than 33 points/game. The offensive successes have built upon themselves to where legitimately talented players have suddenly popped up on his roster---names like Joel Filani, Jarrett Hicks, Robert Johnson and Graham Harrell.

What he's gained in talent, he appears to have lost in ability to execute his offensive scheme. Such is the curse of talent.

His threats to bench talented players is a dead giveaway that Texas Tech may just be too talented for its own good. This is a very broad generalization, but talented offensive players often have the rep of being prima donnas, guys who expect the ball in their hands and who may not always work as hard as necessary to make that happen. They may also have their focus directed towards individual goals instead of working towards the success of an offensive system that does them good if they do the little things to keep that engine running. Perhaps that is the case for this year's Red Raiders.