In June of 2005, Sports Illustrated‘s Stewart Mandel listed Chuck Amato as the nation’s most over-rated coach. (Link)
In June of 2006, Sports Illustrated‘s Stewart Mandel demoted Chuck Amato and called him the nation’s worst coach.(Link)
This week, Mandel made some revisions to his 2006 list. In a move that Jeff obviously supported in this great entry before the season even began, Mandel now calls UNC-CH’s John Bunting the worst college football coach in America. Calls for Bunting’s job have grown louder and louder in recent weeks.
You can read Mandel’s article by clicking here. The following is the set-up of the piece:
Did you happen to watch last Thursday’s Florida State-N.C. State game? Right after the game, Dr. Jerry Punch asked Chuck Amato — the guy I dubbed No. 1 worst coach over the summer — whether the win would “quiet some of the critics who have been writing all this stuff about you.” Amato, in one of the great responses of all time, said with a straight face, “What critics? … I have no idea what you’re talking about,” and ran off the field. Also, at halftime of that game, Lou Holtz reached a new low in studio analysis when he referred to former Georgia quarterback D.J. Shockley as “J.D. Stokley.” Both events help explain a dream I had when I went to bed that night.
In it, I was in a classroom with the N.C. State football team. I was sitting on the far-left side in one of those awful “chair desks” that you have to squeeze yourself into. An unidentified woman at the front of the room (I don’t think she was a teacher) asked if anyone had “anything to say to Coach Amato,” who was sitting on the opposite side of the room. I turned to him and started politely explaining how the list was compiled, and why he shouldn’t take it personally — only I couldn’t make myself heard over Holtz, who was sitting in one of the rows between us gabbing with the person in front of him. That’s the last thing I remember.
So to clear my conscience, I think I had better revisit — and, in some cases, revise — the list.
