Buzz is to college basketball as ____ is to college football.

Who do you think?

DJ Durkin?

DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.

Comments

Justin Fuente.

VB born, class of '14

/thread

2026 Season Challenge: TBD
Previous Challenges: Star Wars (2019), Marvel (2020), Batman (2021), Wrasslin' (2022)

Peterson

Edit: reasoning
Similarities:
- like Buzz, Peterson win at a high level at a smaller school even after following a very successful coach
- like Buzz, Peterson jumped to a p5 team that wasn't clearly better than his last job
- like Buzz, Peterson won a lot after about three years.
- like Buzz, professional ambitions are not traditional.
- like Buzz, Petersons teams are always fun to watch.

when I first read this thread, this is exactly what I was thinking.

Won at a small place, keep to his core style and structure during a transition to a bigger school, bears fruit and gets to elite status (pending for Buzz at VT)

The Dude Abides

Durkin? Bleh. I'd say Richt or Stoops

My reasoning on Durkin: young guy going from a big program to the bottom feeder in an excellent conference. I don't think he will make UMD elite, but he can probably get them to about .500-.600

Yeah but Buzz was a head coach at the big program where as Dj Durkin was a Defensive Coordinator.

Sam Rogers.

There's no doubt in my mind that Buzz on the gridiron would also be a rolling ball of butcher knives.

A decade on TKP and it's been time well spent.

In what regards? Sideline energy?

If that's the case, honestly... Dabo Swinney.

I have no idea why my username is VT_Warthog.

Arkansas blew a 24-0 lead in the Belk Bowl.

Frank Beamer is to college football as Jim Boeheim is to college basketball.

Don't you put the evil on me Ricky Bobby!!

He said give to me Roscoe

Except Boeheim actually won the big one

I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction:
“I served in the United States Navy"

And has had suspensions and IIRC vacated wins?

The Dude Abides

You do recall correctly. 101 wins vacated

Dabo

Let's Go...

Jim Harbaugh (both great coaches in game, very good recruiters and both get extremely animated on the sidelines)

This was my first thought as well but I think Harbaugh may even be a bit stranger than Buzz. I mean, I'm not sure if Buzz would have a sleepover with recruits, or this...

A part of me wonders if Harbaugh is his own worst enemy. Yes, he's good at getting recruits energized, but man, he comes off looking like a clown when things don't go his way, like how he's looked since that Ohio State game. Should he get into or win in the playoffs, he has the kind of energy that recruits would feed off of, but should things stagnate even a little bit, I feel like his whole aura is something that could crumble fast.

"When I was growing up, Virginia Tech was a school that was kicking ass and taking names, and it's time we get back to that" - James Franklin

This happens every few years with him already though, right? Wore out his welcome at Stanford, then in SF, and in a few years I think he'll wear out his welcome at Michigan, too, even with his alumni status.

Wore out his welcome at Stanford

According to who?

Wasn't this common knowledge? Harbaugh grates on people everywhere he goes.

He grated on baby York because hes a spoiled kid of a billionaire who was handed an NFL team and has a bigger and more undeserved ego than Harbaugh. And despite Harbaughs excellent track record in SF it wasn't enough ass kissing for baby York so he had to get rid of him.

Please show me where the Stanford or San Diego administration had a problem with him.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2555507-why-jim-harbaugh-and-michigan...

This illustrated the rub of Harbaugh: His full-blast, turn-it-up-to-10 intensity is what makes him such a successful coach, but his friends and associates say it also is often what makes him unwilling to find common ground with others, which ultimately was his unraveling in San Francisco.

"When Jim focuses on something, he won't let it go," said a close friend of Harbaugh's. "That can be both good and bad."

Midway through last season, 49ers general manager Trent Baalke called a staffer on another team. At the time, San Francisco's season was falling apart—the Niners would finish 8-8—and Baalke's relationship with Harbaugh had frayed to the extent that the two were known to ride elevators together in silence and not make eye contact.

"I just can't deal with Jim anymore," Baalke told his friend, a veteran front-office employee of an NFL team who relayed the conversation to Bleacher Report. "This guy is a nut. Every day he's bitching at me about something new. It's this, it's that. He's wearing all of us out. He's grinding us down."

"But Trent, you guys have won with Jim," the friend told Baalke. "Can't you just focus on the winning?"

"I'm getting stepped on every day by Jim," Baalke replied. "I can't do this much longer."

...

"There's a trail of players and coaches that have been left behind in Jim's wake,'' said Lamb, the Southern Utah head coach who was an assistant under Harbaugh at the University of San Diego. "If you're not on board with him, he wants you to go away.

...

Harbaugh could be oddly endearing one moment at Stanford—he sometimes carried a glass of whole milk to meetings because he believed it gave him strength—but he also could be a handful. For instance, he constantly bickered with Stanford administrators over admission standards for recruits.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/richard-sherman-on-jim-harbaugh-i-dont...

"I don't have a relationship with him," the cornerback (former Stanford Cardinal, Richard Sherman) said during an appearance on NFL Network. "I don't try to go any route with him. I don't deal with him; he is not my coach. So I deal with what is going on in Seattle and I keep it there."

"When I was growing up, Virginia Tech was a school that was kicking ass and taking names, and it's time we get back to that" - James Franklin

Nice pulls, thanks, Alum. To the previous poster, I can't say I had any specific sources for my claim, just that I thought he was always grating.

Harbaugh took a one win Stanford team and built a platform for them to be successful for a decade
Harbaugh took Kapernick to the Super Bowl and was in it until the last play
Harbaugh took Michigan into a BIG10/National Contender in a few years

The guy wants to be great and drives people to get the most out of them. No one in Michigan will get angry with him there unless he goes 0-3 against OSU to start his coaching career. Then they will burn him in effigy.

The Dude Abides

Harbaugh just seems to be completely in a league of his own. If I'm honest, every coach I dislike falls into one of two categories: (1) I feel that they miss the mark morally, whether it's related to football or off the field (Petrino and the Nards are perfect examples). (2) I'm just generally jealous of their team's success and so I magnify small reasons to dislike them, but I have to admit to myself that if I was a fan of their team, I'd have no problem with them (Saban and Dabo seem to be the most obvious examples). Harbaugh is just SO weird, I can't imagine really being ok with him coaching a team I like. He's just so strange that while I have no real evidence to put him in category (1), I also can't help but believe it's only a matter of time and that whatever scandal puts him there, it has the potential to be the granddaddy of them all.

James Franklin in his Vanderbilt era.

Top conference, energetic coach that can recruit well. Has success at a school that isn't terribly strong typically and will probably get an offer from Kansas or UCLA or somewhere a few years down the road.

Yeah Franklin makes sense. Given Buzz's Texas roots, the big program to be afraid of is Texas...we should all be rooting for Shaka.

Based on the other night we might need to root a little bit harder for Shaka. Interesting to me how after big improvement in year 1 Texas has slowly gotten worse in each of his three seasons there based off of Kenpom

Not sure any of the guys above read as much as Buzz.

Nick Saban (please oh please oh please oh please)

Warning: this post occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)..

Honestly if I had to compare Buzz to a college football coach, I think my pick would be Mark Dantonio of Michigan State. Both Texas guys. Both Defensive minded. Both high energy and animated on the sidelines. Both known to say quirky things to the media or on twitter. Both seem to be program builders. Both having to fight established Blue Bloods. Both serious religious and family men.

Example of some Dantonio quotes:

1) "I find a lot of the things they do amusing. They need to check themselves sometimes. Let's just remember, pride comes before the fall. ... They want to mock us, I'm telling them, it's not over. They want to print that crap all over their locker room, it's not over and it'll never be over here. It's just starting. ... I'm very proud of our football team, and I'm very proud of the way our football team handled themselves after the game as well. You don't have to disrespect people. If they want to make a mockery of it, so be it. Their time will come." (quoted two days after losing his first match-up as a head coach against Michigan, 28-24, on Nov. 3, 2007).[35]
2) "I'll tell you how you sum up the moment. You're going to be able to come back here and see Michigan State up there winning on that plaque outside this Rose Bowl 50 years from now with your grandchildren. That's what you're going to be able to do." (quoted after winning the 2014 Rose Bowl Game).[36]
3) "You will be the ones" (Referring to his 2013 players who 'will be the ones' to take Michigan State to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1988)[37]
4) "We came here with an idea that we were going to have to weather the storm or be the storm." (After a 37-21 victory over Iowa, the Spartans' first win at Kinnick Stadium since 1989.)[38]
5) "We're laying in the weeds. We've beat Michigan the last four years. So where's the threat?"[39]
6) "We're not selling hope here. We're selling results." (Referring to a question about the 2015 recruiting class).[40]

Rob Peterson
VTCC
Charlie/Hotel Company
Class of 1999

Designing sweet parking lots since '08

um, yes. Well. As nice as this is, it doesn't really fit the bill, does it?

Warning: this post occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)..