Don't get me started on Carl Franks. Let's just start marching forward--right now. And that's what Duke's finally doing too, having made a bold, mid-season decision to fire the man who represented what's been wrong with Duke football for too many years, whether it was his fault or not.
After letting the status quo stay put for an atrocious team one too many times, Athletic Director Joe Alleva manned up Sunday and sounded ready to lead the program's march forward in a big-time way, with a big-time coach. Good. He says he's got his list of candidates in a nationwide search that starts now. Also good. But he's not going to rush like he did in 1998 when he hired Franks on a whim in a week. Good again. Alleva's going to make sure he gets his guy, "the best coach I can," someone probably more primetime than Ted Roof. And those are all good, too.
But so many of Alleva's realistic options--speculative options for the time being--are big-name guys who have only had middling success: Former Ohio State head coach John Cooper, who was not-so-politely shown the door two years ago and hasn't shown up since; former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Tom Coughlin, who belly-flopped his team right into the NFL cellar; current Tulane head coach Chris Scelfo, who hasn't even hit the .500 mark in the Big Easy; and recently-fired Washington head coach Rick Neuheisel, whose illegal gambling on basketball makes him about as tactful as Sigma Chi. The list is going to go on and on. Not so good.
But Norm Chow? Good. Real good.
He's just an offensive coordinator. He's 57. He's got no head coaching experience, and right now he's 3,000 miles away at USC. But chow down on this: He is the man.
Chow's got a track record that would make Franks drool all over his mustache and would make you forget about any fear of bringing in another offensive assistant from a top-flight school. A former guard at Utah, he began his 33 years of experience as a high school coach in his native Hawaii, then coached at BYU for 27 years and started to build his reputation as the best quarterback tutor in college football. Steve Young, Jim McMahon, Ty Detmer. All Chow's pupils, all his projects.
And in the past two seasons, he's proved why he's not just another middling old geezer who should finally get a look for some head coaching job somewhere. He went to N.C. State in 2000 and just built another star QB in Philip Rivers. Then he headed back west to USC, where he took Carson Palmer from hyped-up letdown to Heisman Trophy winner, lickety-split. For that he won the award for assistant coach of the year--the man.
I know Alleva knows Chow's the man, because they're on the same page. Alleva wants to march, and Chow's a marcher, damnit, a marcher who actually wants to come here.
What's that? What'd I say? Maybe the nation's best coordinator and one of the hottest names out there wants to come here? The guy who's personally nurtured six of the top-12 most efficient passers and made the blueprints for 11 of the top-30 passing yardage offenses in NCAA history wants to come here? To Duke?
Well, sort of.
"It's a very enjoyable place to live, but I have not heard one word," Chow told The Los Angeles Times Sunday night. "It's always flattering when your name's tossed around. But reality sets in, and we're trying to beat Washington [this week]."
Ahh, but the reality is in the fine print, friends. When he turned down the head coaching job at Kentucky last Christmas Eve, Chow pulled the "reality" spin for the papers too, but he was adamant about staying in California, telling The Times something more serious. "Professionally, just to go to a program to be a head coach and then two years later get fired, what good is that?"
But Joe Alleva wants to march with his new guy for a long time, just like Utah did with Urban Meyer, who they chose over Chow last season even though the man really wanted to go back to his alma matter. Well now if he sort of wants to come back to the state of North Carolina, Alleva has to jump. He's got a number-crunching, offense-drawing, well-decorated father figure waiting just 3,000 miles away. Now all he's got to do is get Chow and just keep on marching.
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