Adams: Plenty of kid coaches have tasted success

New Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin is only 33 years old. So he’s obviously too young to be a head coach.

So was …

-- Vince Dooley, who became the head football coach at Georgia when he was a kid of 32.

He was in his late 40s before he had his first losing season. He won 201 games, six SEC titles and a national championship.

-- Bear Bryant, who won his first game as the University of Maryland head coach when he was 31. He won 322 more games, six national titles and never had a losing season in 25 years at Alabama.

-- Paul Dietzel, who became LSU’s head coach when he was 31. Three years later, he won a national championship.

He won two SEC championships before he was 38.

-- Gene Stallings, who was 29 when he became the head coach at Texas A&M. He won the Southwest Conference championship when he was 32. He later won a national title at Alabama, where he won 10 or more games five times in seven years.

-- Urban Meyer, who was 37 when he became the head coach at Bowling Green. He won a national championship at Florida five years later. In eight years as a head coach, he has never won fewer than eight games in a season.

-- Shug Jordan, who was 23 when he became the head basketball coach at Auburn. Eighteen years later, he became Auburn’s head football coach. In between, he won the purple heart and bronze star in World War II. And in 1957, his unbeaten Auburn team won the national championship.

-- Johnny Vaught, who won his first of six SEC championships at Ole Miss when he was 38.

-- Frank Broyles, who became the head coach at the University of Missouri when he was 33. A year later, he took the head-coaching job at Arkansas, where he won seven Southwest Conference championships.

-- Adolph Rupp, who became Kentucky’s head basketball coach when he was 29. He won 876 games and four national titles.

-- Billy Donovan, who became the head basketball coach at Marshall when he was 29 and the head coach at Florida two years later. He won his first national title before he turned 41.

UT also has had its share of kiddy coaches, none of whom would be accused of running the program into the ground.

Ray Mears was hired as UT’s head basketball coach when he was 36, six years after he took his first college head-coaching job. All he did at UT was win 71.3 percent of his games and coin the term “Big Orange Country.”

Pat Summitt was 22 when she became the Lady Vols head basketball coach. Eight national championships later, it’s not too early to say that has worked out OK.

But that’s basketball. UT football is a different animal, right?

General Neyland was 34 when he became the head football coach at UT. He didn’t lose his third game until he was 43. And when they named the stadium after him, it wasn’t because he paid for the advertising.

Neyland also is remembered for his seven maxims, which summarized what he thought it took to win a football game.

Maybe an eighth is now appropriate: Don’t worry about how young your head coach is.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knoxnews.com.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
Want to use this article? Click here for options!