If the balance of the recent posts on SFN are any indication, football seems to be evolving more into the mainstream consciousness right now. This makes the timing perfect for the N&O’s quick assessment of what happened to Chuck Amato and John Bunting’s former football staffs at State and Carolina, respectively. Great stuff here.
I find it particularly interesting to see how the “free market” ultimately shakes out against previous presumptions and some over-zealous posturing by fans regarding coaches’s credentials.
I remember one of the cries of the Mike O’Cain supporters in the mid to late 1990s was that MOC (supposedly) had one of the “best assistant coaching staffs in all of football”…not to mention that Robbie Caldwell was the “the best offensive line coach in America”. I never comprehended how Notre Dame, Alabama, Penn State, USC, UCLA, Florida, FSU, LSU, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan and other traditional powerhouse programs never seemed to understand how awesome these coaches (supposedly) were. Instead, most of these “top” coaches seemed to land at places like Memphis, Western Carolina, Vanderbilt and The Citadel. How does that jibe?
For this year’s examples…is it any surprise to anyone that Marc Trestman is yet to land a job within football? If you need ANY indication of how bad things had gotten for Chuck Amato then you need look no further than Trestman. Not only had Amato’s reputation with assistant coaches become SO TOXIC that he couldn’t land any of this top choices for Offensive Coordinator in 2005…but he had to give Trestman a friggin guaranteed contract to make the leap! One of the only good calls that Trestman made while he was at State.
Additionally:
* It is not surprising that both Dick Portee and Greg Williams have retired from coaching. As much as both of these men have meant to NC State football for longer than any of us care to remember…at some point you have to wonder if we were really getting the best there was to offer
* From the outside, Pat Meyer always seemed to be a “Cult of Chuck” guy. It is looking more that way now since Meyer is yet to land a job. State’s offensive line certainly didn’t improve its play much in the change from Mike Barry to Meyer.
* A lot of people close to the program seemed to be very impressed with Curt Cignetti…and maybe they were on to something. Cignetti ultimately landed a spot on Nick Saban’s new staff at Alabama. A great move by any measure.
* From the outside, perhaps the most surprising (non) development of the old staff is that wide receivers coach, Dwayne Dixon is yet to find a new job. Dixon didn’t seem to struggle with popularity amongst players or with recruiting. IIRC, he was at Florida for a pretty solid stint of time before making the move to the ACC. But, it always seemed a little odd that Dixon ‘chose’ to leave Gainsville, Florida for NC State. Was there more to the situation than we knew?
