25 Worst College Football Coaching Hires of the 21st Century | The Boneyard

25 Worst College Football Coaching Hires of the 21st Century

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Posted on cbssports.com by John Talty earlier today. Paul Pasqualoni is the only UConn head coaching hire who makes the list, and only as a "Just missed the Top 25 cut."

Sorry, but Coach Red Pants and Edsall 2 should have made at least that "Just missed" list as well. I guess Diaco gets saved by the fact his first team made it to the St. Petersburg Bowl (and of course lost) in 2015. However, they should have added big extra points for his nonsensical words; horrible, disingenuous leadership and the ignominy brought on by the ConFLict and trophy he created with UCF that practically everyone, including UCF themselves, mocked. All of you football fans on here (yes, I am more casual than most of you on here, but I still follow along... I just rarely post on this board) know exactly what I mean. He was the biggest reason we started to be a laughingstock in college football.

Then Edsall finished the job. How he doesn't make this list I have no clue. We were literally one of the worst teams in all of FBS throughout his 2nd tenure, leading to an abysmal 6-32 record, 2-22 in conference (AAC). He easily belongs in the Top 20, if not Top 10.

Thank God for the respectability that Jim Mora has brought back to our football program. It can not be overstated how much he has meant since his arrival in 2021. I am looking forward to see if he is able to build upon last year's run at the end of the year and that awesome, convincing bowl victory vs. UNC at Fenway.
 
Randy 2 and Diaco were worse coaches, but the Pasqualoni hire was worse. It hurt the program more than those two did
This. Pasqualoni was quite obviously the wrong hire, even at the time. Diaco was (on paper) - the perfect hire, but there was no way to anticipate the crazy. Both of them at least were professionals. Coach P couldn’t have been more pedestrian. Diaco was a bit of a dumpster fire, but neither of them hold a candle to the putrid effort RE gave on his return stint. How he avoids mention completely when he could have easily been in the top 5 eludes me. It was nearly a complete abdication of responsibility.
 
Randy 2 and Diaco were worse coaches, but the Pasqualoni hire was worse. It hurt the program more than those two did
In Hindsight…I would say RE2 was the worst of the 3. He left the program in horrific shape. What Mora has done is a a borderline miracle.

PP actually recruited decent and left Diaco some players to work with. Enough to make a bowl. But he couldn’t build off of it..and his ineptitude did him in.

I say RE2 is the worst…then Diaco…then PP.
 
Diaco was not remotely ready for that position. A good executive doesn’t make that hire.
On paper, Diaco looked pretty good. He was the DC for a team that played in the natty. He was a Broyles award winner. He was respected by a HC who was (at the time), highly respected in his own right. That’s a great pedigree.
 
This. Pasqualoni was quite obviously the wrong hire, even at the time. Diaco was (on paper) - the perfect hire, but there was no way to anticipate the crazy.
I remember talking to an avid ND fan after the Diaco hire…and he said..”i don’t know how that dude is going to do as a head coach..he is a little crazy”. I know on paper Diaco looked like a good hire…but there was definitely evidence that hiring him was a risk.
 
In Hindsight…I would say RE2 was the worst of the 3. He left the program in horrific shape. What Mora has done is a a borderline miracle.

PP actually recruited decent and left Diaco some players to work with. Enough to make a bowl. But he couldn’t build off of it..and his ineptitude did him in.

I say RE2 is the worst…then Diaco…then PP.
The reason I think the PP hire was worse is that we were in a better position at the time of his hiring and there were a lot more realistic, solid candidates we could have hired than when it got to Diaco and Edsall redux. We should have been heavily investing in football at that time and instead we went with a retread during our most vulnerable time as an athletic department
 
The reason I think the PP hire was worse is that we were in a better position at the time of his hiring and there were a lot more realistic, solid candidates we could have hired than when it got to Diaco and Edsall redux. We should have been heavily investing in football at that time and instead we went with a retread during our most vulnerable time as an athletic department
That makes sense….I just feel that when he left the program, UConn was still in decent shape. Diaco and RE2 left a disaster.
 
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Pasqualoni did the worst job. He had good talent left to him... (8 draft picks in his 3 years (plus a pair of UDFA); while Edsall V1 had 15 in his 11. He also brought in 2 guys who were drafted the year after he left (and one more draft pick). Pasqualoni had the talent needed to keep things rolling and only his poor performance coaching the talent led to back-to-back 5-7s and a level of disfunction the final year that forced his termination (I remain convinced that had UConn not reached the Fiesta Bowl and Edsall leaves a week earlier, the Huskies land Addazzio (rather than his going to Temple) and likely keeps things on the tracks).

Had Pasqualoni not squandered the talent and UConn coming off of a run of five straight bowls, including (at least) two conference title shares and a BCS appearance, it may well have been harder to bypass UConn for Louisville on the final life raft to the ACC (if not harder to displace UConn for Pitt).

Diaco looked like a good hire on paper and he was going to land a head-coaching job in that cycle. He was the reigning Broyles Award winner for top assistant. He struggled to bring in talent and in many phases of running the program.
 
This. Pasqualoni was quite obviously the wrong hire, even at the time. Diaco was (on paper) - the perfect hire, but there was no way to anticipate the crazy. Both of them at least were professionals. Coach P couldn’t have been more pedestrian. Diaco was a bit of a dumpster fire, but neither of them hold a candle to the putrid effort RE gave on his return stint. How he avoids mention completely when he could have easily been in the top 5 eludes me. It was nearly a complete abdication of responsibility.
Diaco was (on paper) - the perfect hire, but there was no way to anticipate the crazy - he had exhibited crazy well before he came here. The signs were there - that is why no established program at the time would hire him.
 
I thought Diaco was going to be a good hire until the I watched the team. Totally disorganized on the sidelines.

Edsall 2 was a mess. Some his fault some not in my opinion. The move to the New Big East was problematic for football. It was viewed by most as a huge down grade and on top of that came COVID. In the first year of independence. I know there was criticism of him for cancelling the season but seriously we didn’t have much of an option. We had a bunch of games cancelled on us. We weren’t in a conference and most leagues only played conference games. Remember, the B10 and ACC both cancelled their seasons then later decided to play league games only. Then Connecticut had fairly stringent testing rules for travel to and from the state which made it hard for teams to come here that were later relaxed but made it tough to schedule. If it hadn’t been Year 1 as an independent we might have figured something out. But it was impossible to figure out a plan. U Mass played I think 3 games, all on the road and all scheduled on the fly. At least one was as a replacement for a team that was infected and couldn’t play. It got scheduled on Wednesday for Saturday. Their season was a joke.
 

Posted on cbssports.com by John Talty earlier today. Paul Pasqualoni is the only UConn head coaching hire who makes the list, and only as a "Just missed the Top 25 cut."

Sorry, but Coach Red Pants and Edsall 2 should have made at least that "Just missed" list as well. I guess Diaco gets saved by the fact his first team made it to the St. Petersburg Bowl (and of course lost) in 2015. However, they should have added big extra points for his nonsensical words; horrible, disingenuous leadership and the ignominy brought on by the ConFLict and trophy he created with UCF that practically everyone, including UCF themselves, mocked. All of you football fans on here (yes, I am more casual than most of you on here, but I still follow along... I just rarely post on this board) know exactly what I mean. He was the biggest reason we started to be a laughingstock in college football.

Then Edsall finished the job. How he doesn't make this list I have no clue. We were literally one of the worst teams in all of FBS throughout his 2nd tenure, leading to an abysmal 6-32 record, 2-22 in conference (AAC). He easily belongs in the Top 20, if not Top 10.

Thank God for the respectability that Jim Mora has brought back to our football program. It can not be overstated how much he has meant since his arrival in 2021. I am looking forward to see if he is able to build upon last year's run at the end of the year and that awesome, convincing bowl victory vs. UNC at Fenway.

I'm totally cool with the media forgetting that we existed in that era.
 
The Pasqualoni Hire was the equivalent of wearing pajamas in public. It was Hathaway giving up. And he didn't know the definition of adversity.

Diaco was Warde trying to finally win a press conference.

Edsall was there because some alums said they would pay for Diaco's buyout.
 
The Pasqualoni Hire was the equivalent of wearing pajamas in public. It was Hathaway giving up. And he didn't know the definition of adversity.

Diaco was Warde trying to finally win a press conference.

Edsall was there because some alums said they would pay for Diaco's buyout.
UConn Football!
 
PP was the worst hire. He took over the program at its peak, underachieved, and then drove us into the ground. We should have been very desirable but settled for a guy who hasn’t been a head coach in years, and had already seemed to be having the game pass him by last time he was a coach. And we hired him for reasons such as he’s a Connecticut guy, the high school coaches love him, and we dont think he’ll leave us for another job.

While diaco was on paper a good hire as far as being a young energetic up and comer, I do push back on the idea that there was no way to anticipate the crazy. We had concerns about him before he coached a game just from preseason press conferences, those concerns should have come up in an in depth interview process. He had been passed over for a few jobs before, there’s a reason for that.

Edsall was atrocious but my understanding is financially our hands were tied. And given moras immediate success it appears his long term rebuild was at least starting to show some positives. Not in any way suggesting he would have been successful if we gave him more time or that what he did was the right decision though
 

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