2009 BN Pac-10 Awards: Coach of the Year
by Ryan Rosenblatt on Dec 17, 2009 1:04 PM PST
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PrintThe 2009 Pac-10 regular season has come to a close and as we all know, between the end of the regular season and beginning of the bowl season is the all-important awards season. So in that spirit, I present to you, the 2009 BruinsNation Pac-10 Awards. Throughout this week, we will present to you our Pac-10 awards, as voted on by the frontpagers and a select few members of the community, totaling ten votes. Monday was the Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year, with Tuesday bringing us the Defensive Player of the Year and yesterday giving us Freshman of the Year, while Game of the Year will follow tomorrow. First place votes were worth five points, second place votes worth three and third place votes worth one.
Winner: Jim Harbaugh, Stanford- It was by only the slimmest of margins, but Jim Harbaugh came away with the BruinsNation Pac-10 Coach of the Year award thanks to an 8-4 record following a string of very poor seasons on The Farm. Harbaugh came to Stanford in 2007 and won four games in his first season after taking over a program that went 1-11 the previous season. in his second year, the Cardinal improved by a game, getting to 5-7 and this year, it was a three game jump as Harbaugh's tireless work on the recruiting trail began to pay off.
Thanks to a run heavy attack led by Toby Gerhart, Harbaugh's Cardinal finished 6-3 in the Pac-10, tied for second in the conference. All of this came with a redshirt freshman at quarterback who Harbaugh, a former quarterback, mentored and developed into a guy who threw 13 touchdowns to only four interceptions.
Harbaugh's program never got more attention than they did when Gerhart arrived in New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist and when the Cardinal took down USC at the Coliseum for the second time in as many tried. He also caught some heat when he went for two late in the game to get to 50 points, although that move could have pushed him over the top and earned him Coach of the Year with our voters.
That win helped the Cardinal to the 2009 Sun Bowl, where they will be featured on CBS versus a marquee program, Oklahoma. These are heights the Stanford program has not seen since their Rose Bowl appearance in 2000. Not only has the Stanford program won their year, but they turned the ball over the second-fewest times in the Pac-10 and committed the second-fewest penalties, showing a disciplined and well-coached team.
Harbaugh edged out Oregon's Chip Kelly by a single point and it is worth mentioning the fantastic job that Kelly did with the Ducks this season. It would have been too easy for the first-year coach to let his program fall apart following the LaGarrette Blount debacle in the opener, but Kelly held the team together and they won the Pac-10, while also bringing Blount back into the fold in the correct manner. Arizona's Mike Stoops and Oregon St.'s Mike Riley finished close to each other, but well back of Harbaugh and Kelly.
Total Votes: 1) Jim Harbaugh, Stanford (4-2-2=28), 2) Chip Kelly, Oregon (3-3-3=27), 3) Mike Stoops, Arizona (2-1-2=15), 4) Mike Riley, Oregon St. (1-2-2=13), 5) Rick Neuheisel, UCLA (0-1-1=4)
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Good, solid list
Every spot is well deserved. Notice how the top 3 all exposed SUC as a joke. Good times.
CRN did what he needed to do in terms of noticeably improving our team, but I don’t think he warrants a second-place vote just yet.
If I had to put a sixth coach with maybe 3 points, it would be Sarky up in Washington. Bringing a 0-12 team to 5-7 is respectable, even though I personally don’t like the ex-toejam.
No
Washington didn’t have Locker last year after he got hurt, so you can’t compare.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
Losing Locker was a large reason for 0-12
With Locker playing a full season, ’08 Washington is not an 0-12 team. They would not have been a winning team, but 2-4 wins would not have been out of the question.
That said, 0-12 has a certain psychological significance that Sark was able to overcome, as well as arresting the downward momentum that had been carrying the UW program for the last few years. They were the first team to expose $c (and Corp), and gave LSU a run for their money early in the season. Not quite top-3 worthy, but respectable. I would have put him 5th or 6th among coaching performances, had the ballot extended that far.
formerly bruinhoo
Nice video
although the play by play guy was unbearable.
Hey, Petey, what’s the deal? You didn’t like the half a hundred Stanford posted on you? Always compete, right?
Very tough call on this one. Harbaugh obviously did a great job except for the train wreck against Bezerkley. Kelly did an outstanding job when the team looked like it was totally off the rails against Boise State in the first game.
1 vote difference is only fitting
for those two coaches and programs. They both had great seasons and the fact that it was so close reflects that. There is a lot to be said for Kelly keeping the team together, getting the team to fire on cylinders and continuing to push the pedal down after that.
For Harbaugh, it was the great work with his young quarterback and offense. Not much else needs to be said about Gerhardt, his season and heisman candidacy. It was the culmination of culture change at that program.
Minority view
I stand by Coach Neuheisel. He is the biggest victim of recruitng malpractice in the PAC 10. To finagle his way into a bowl game with a medicore team after Coach Dorrall’s complete failure to competently recruit is a miracle. No coach in the PAC 10 had less to work with in terms of a 5 year recruiting cycle than Coach Neuheisel. Even Stanford, with limitations on who they can take, had more recruting success in the 5 years prior to this year than UCLA.
But congrats to Coach Harbaugh. A Bruins Nation ruling that your are the best is an integrity driven allocade.
One last point coach—we’ll see you October 16, 2010 on our front lawn—enjoy your Columbus Day.
Anything about this list jump out at you?
Something that I noted to Ryan when I submitted my ballot, and thought was interesting about this season in the Pac-10 was the performance of what I’ll term the ‘name brand’ coaches of the conference. Notice who is missing from the Coach of the Year discussion.
The two highest profile coaches in the conference right now (Pete Carroll and Jeff Tedford), and the coach with the longest history of running programs (Dennis Erickson) turned in (with the exception of WSU) the worst coaching performances.
I think anyone here can figure out the case for Carroll.
Cal has equal or greater talent than any other Pac-10 team but SC, and at initial glance did not have a bad season (8-4, while beating Stanford in “The Big Game”). Cal’s losses, however: 3-42 @ Oregon; 3-30 at home to a mediocre USC team, 14-31 at home to OSU, and 10-45 @ Washington to end the regular season. Losing @ Autzen Stadium in of itself is not ‘bad’, and the loss to Oregon State had the disturbing injury to Javid Best for the team to deal with, but in the end, Cal had a number of games in which the team simply failed to show up. This being a situation which has turned into a trend for Tedford’s teams at Cal.
I don’t know much about the circumstances at ASU, but to say that 4-8, and a 9th place conference finish is unacceptable for both Coach Erickson and the ASU program. The lack of a competent QB has been thrown about as a reason for the Sun Devil’s lack of offensive ability, which in the end has to fall onto Erickson’s recruiting. To be fair to the team, ASU was competitive in several of their losses, losing by 5 points or less to Auburn, Arizona, Cal and USC.
formerly bruinhoo
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