FanHouse Coaching

If you've been around the hockey blogosphere at all during the past couple weeks, you've surely heard about the hottest rumor this side of St. Petersburg, Florida -- Barry Melrose coaching the Tampa Bay Lightning. We've heard about it for a while now and today the Lightning finally confirmed it. After 13 years at ESPN and as many years away from coaching, he's coming back. The Mulleted One is going to return to an NHL bench.

At this point, no one is really sure what to make of it. Some think it's insane. The game has passed Melrose by, they say. He wasn't that good of a coach to begin with, they add. Fair points.

There are also those out there in internet land making counterpoints. The game hasn't passed him by, they retort. He's been watching hockey all the time for all these years. Give it time, like a fine wine, they continue.

Both are fair arguments. Both make good points. But, like any prospect you draft, Melrose is either going to pan out he is not. Someone is going to be right and someone is going to be wrong. Sadly for those of us out there with A.D.D. we're not going to get a solution to it soon. It's going to take some time.

To be respected as a coach, Melrose is going to have to prove a couple of things. First off, he's going to have to show that he can manage a locker room and that the game hasn't passed him by. We all know how much attention he pays to the game. Now it's time for him to show us if he's been taking notes. We're also going to see how good he can make a bad situation. The Lightning are great up front but they were the worst team in the league for a reason -- they tied the Thrashers for the most goals against in the NHL last year with 266. Melrose will have to teach this team defense or at least get the Bolts new ownership group to bring some in. This team needs defense like a gold digger needs their spouse's salary. They won't survive without it.

For now, it's all up for debate. Only time will tell how good/bad of a move this is for Tampa Bay. One thing is for sure, though. This is the most controversial move of the summer. That is, until the Islanders promote their stick boy to VP or Kevin Lowe does, well, anything.

One of Marc Crawford's failings as a coach with the Canucks last season was the Hollywood treatment he gave his star players. While Todd Bertuzzi cruised and loafed through the whole season with nary a slap on the wrist, the role players would be in the doghouse if they so much as looked at Crawford funny.

What makes Alain Vigneault such a good coach and nice change from Crawford is the fact that he is treating his players far more equitably and expects the same hard work from each and EVERY player on the team.

One of the accusations made against Crawford, who now coaches the Kings, was that players were treated differently. No matter how ineffective Todd Bertuzzi or Naslund played, they remained on the top line.

Things are very different under Vigneault, 45, who was named the 16th coach in Canuck history last June following one season with the Manitoba Moose, Vancouver's AHL farm team.

Naslund, who has struggled most of the season, has been moved from the first, to the third and onto the second line.

Accountability and honesty are just two of the traits Vigneault has brought to the Canucks after replacing the fired Marc Crawford. The team's success has Vigneault being touted as a coach-of-the-year candidate.

Obviously, the players are pleased to see the change and know that nobody gets a free pass.

Last Wednesday, Congress allocated some time to addressing the "lack of minority head coaches in college and NFL" issue. It's a serious and worthy issue, but I think for a while now its biggest advocates have been going about things inefficiently.

The basic assumption for some may be that the combination of "old boys networks" and just plain discrimination are the biggest obstables getting in the way of legitimate opportunities for minority head coaches. Although it's insane to argue in the face of that, I will say it may not be the major stumbling block preventing more hirings.

I think the real issue is a lack of minority coordinators.

Coaching is a funny business. Besides the informal buddy-buddy networks that do create opportunities for those within them, one other feature is fairly dominant: the Order of Operations. In school many years ago we all probably learned how to solve certain mathematic equations through the word PEMDAS. That is, Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract.

Just as there's a natural order to basic math functions, there is a general order to ascending the coaching ladder. Although college and the NFL blend, young coaches must generally climb successive similar rungs to become head coaches.

In college, one's first position is often as a graduate assistant. The GA's are the lowest on the totem pole, often assisting position coaches and whatever else the head coach asks of them. After serving as GA's, they may jump to another GA spot at another school or be hired as an assistant/positition coach. Several years should follow at multiple schools assisting with various positions, learning lots of new ideas and ways to do things and networking with coaches from more than one school of thought.

Eventually, talented assistants will rise to the top and become offensive and defensive coordinators. This is a key point in a coaching career, because becoming an OC or DC is a lot like having that college degree, it gets you places. One also must manage an entire side of the ball, develop an offense or defense, develop game plans, create an agenda for the position coaches to follow and report to and work with the head coach. It's a lot of responsibility and one of those "sink or swim" jobs that can either elevate or destroy a career.

From a coordinator's position is where many coaches will launch their head coaching careers. There's almost no way around it except for a handful of coaches who somehow "pass go" without having been a coordinator (Mississippi's Ed Orgeron, for example).

A lack of minority head coaches indicates, at least in my mind, a lack in number or quality minority offensive and defensive coordinators. This should be the real push for those looking to see the necessary increase in minority head coaches. Lawsuits and embarrassment can only go so far when it's only reasonable that if there aren't many minority coordinators there won't be many head coaching opportunities.

Now, I don't have the hard data on how many minority coaches are coordinators in college and the NFL, but it makes sense that if talented minority coaches can saturate those ranks, head coaching opportunities will only continue to increase. Maybe I'm wrong and the proportion of minority coordinators is substantial enough that there should be more head coaches, but the coordinator issue remains important just the same.

That's the rumor, at least.

Army coach Bobby Ross has resigned and will make the announcement at a 3 p.m. news conference, the Times Herald-Record reports. Ross will leave the program after three years and a 9-25 record. He is expected to be replaced by offensive line coach Stan Brock.

Seeing as how these fact-checked newspapers sometimes get things wrong, we're calling this a rumor until we hear otherwise but since it's in print, we're here to let you know about it.

Ross came in with high hopes, having been a successful coach both in NFL and college stops. However, coaching at the low-talent, more rigidly academic service academy proved difficult. It didn't help that Ross went just 1-5 against rivals Navy and the Air Force.

Perhaps he should have been more innovative on offense, following the lead of both Navy and Air Force? It sure works for other low-talent upstars like Boise State and Houston. The whole disciplined approach thing is good, but you gotta find ways to move the ball and score when you don't have the horses.

If there were any speculation Bob Stoops was on the move, the Oklahoma coach showed his commitment to the future of the University of Oklahoma. For at least this year, the speculation can come to an end.

On Tuesday, Coach Bob Stoops issued a statement to not only Sooner Nation but the football world.

"To end speculation here in the heart of recruiting, I want to make it clear that I am not interested in any other coaching positions at this time," he said. "I am too excited about our future at Oklahoma and the program we're continuing to build."

Cal football's scheming and stoic emperor has played a hand, agreeing to a contract extension to be with the Bears until 2013. Nick Saban, Todd Graham and many before them have taught us how meaningless these deals are. But you know what? The ties that bind may be weak but the principle speaks volumes: Tedford's happy at Cal.

In three successive postseasons rumors of imminent departure for better jobs elsewhere have agitated against the Tedford regime like surly Pacific waves crashing against the craggy northern California shoreline. And yet he remains. After five full seasons he has rebuilt the adrift program.

The Bears have never quite met the hype given to them, but if that's all you can say about them you're missing the real story. Tedford's model is as much about scheme and X's and O's as simply fielding a competitive squad through significant turnover. The Bear roster is littered with junior college rentals and three-and-done blue chippers. That's not the easy way to put together a team. It means managing egos and ambitions and rapidly integrating guys into a complex system before they're gone. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In that time the Bears have gone from a one win team to a pair of ten win seasons in the last three years. All of this against the backdrop of playing in the tumultuous Pac-10 with monolithic USC in one of its great runs staring at you annually. All of this against the backdrop of having to recruit a great many rough academic cases into one of America's finest public institutions. All of this against the backdrop of an athletic department in desperate need of funds to renovate a stadium built on a fault line. If Tedford were to leave, Cal's athletic department would be in the most vulnerable of positions.

Pressure? He's got it.

Winning? It's what he does.

Is Cal what everyone thought they'd be? No. But so long as the winning continues they'll have a shot given the right personnel and good fortune. That's the Tedford story.