Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 0-1
1989Freedom BowlL 7-34Stats
Big games
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
12-4 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Tom Amstutz.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
91 run and pass snaps at Western Michigan, 2004–2004, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points. Play-by-play starts in 2004, so his earlier seasons there aren’t in it.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Building the roster
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2004 roster arrived on his watch — 29 of 29 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1997-2004) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 12 of 52 signees (23%) across his 2002–2004 classes on record (his tenure ran 1997–2004), drawn from 11 states in all. Next: MI (12).
23% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states.
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. None can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here. 1 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | R1.27 | Jason Babin | Linebacker |  Houston Texans | Estimated |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
6th-best Western Michigan tenure of 10 by the numbers.
Followed Al Molde (1987–1996) · succeeded by Bill Cubit (2005–2012).
| Season | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 8-3 | 7-4 | 7-5 | 9-3 | 5-6 | 4-8 | 5-7 | 1-10 | |
| Postseason | — | — | L bowl | L bowl | — | — | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 70 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 29 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 42.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 52.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
Followed Galen Hall (1985–1989) · succeeded by Steve Spurrier (1990–2001).
3 NFL Draft picks: Emmitt Smith (1990), Stacey Simmons (1990), Cedric Smith (1990)
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+3.6 pts at Western Michigan · #460 of 1290 · middle half