Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 5-4
Kansas’92W’95WMinnesota’99L’00L’02W’03W’04W’05L’06L
Show all 9 games
1992Aloha BowlW 23-20
1995Aloha BowlW 51-30
Minnesota
1999Sun BowlL 20-24
2000MicronPC.com BowlL 30-38
2002Music City BowlW 29-14
2003Sun BowlW 31-30
2004Music City BowlW 20-16
2005Music City BowlL 31-34
2006Insight BowlL 41-44
Report card
Above the median offense — 74th percentile.
Minnesota, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
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.
1-1 against his rivals at Kent State.
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.
9-9 against his rivals at Kansas. Winless in 9 tries against Tom Osborne.
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.
6-14 against his rivals at Minnesota. Just 1-7 against Joe Tiller.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
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.
16-24 against his rivals. Just 1-7 against Joe Tiller.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
1,825 run and pass snaps at Minnesota, 2004–2006, 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.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Kent State→
Kansas1988Kansas→
Minnesota1997Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2006 roster arrived on his watch — 29 of 29 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1997-2006) 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: 18 of 77 signees (23%) across his 2002–2006 classes on record (his tenure ran 1997–2006), drawn from 17 states in all. Next: OH (16).
34% of his signees come from MN and its 4 border states (WI 4, ND 2, IA 1, SD 1).
Off this map: 3 signees to the west (CA 3).
- median hometown distance
- 40 mi
- within 100 mi
- 100%
- within 500 mi
- 100%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 0%
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. 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | R3.13 | Matt Spaeth | Tight End |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2006 | R1.21 | Laurence Maroney | Running Back |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2006 | R5.20 | Anthony Montgomery | Defensive Tackle |  Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2006 | R6.29 | Greg Eslinger | Center |  Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2006 | R7.34 | Mark Setterstrom | Offensive Guard |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2005 | R4.08 | Marion Barber | Running Back |  Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
| 2004 | R5.30 | Thomas Tapeh | Running Back |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2003 | R5.17 | Mike Lehan | Defensive Back |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | R4.25 | Ron Johnson | Wide Receiver |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2002 | R6.06 | Matt Anderle | Offensive Tackle |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2002 | R7.18 | Greg White | Defensive End |  Houston Texans | Estimated |
| 2001 | R1.24 | Willie Middlebrooks | Defensive Back |  Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2001 | R4.08 | Karon Riley | Defensive End |  Chicago Bears | Estimated |
| 2001 | R4.18 | Ben Hamilton | Center | Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2001 | R6.36 | Adam Haayer | Offensive Tackle |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2000 | R4.24 | Tyrone Carter | Defensive Back |  Minnesota Vikings | Estimated |
| 2000 | R6.05 | Thomas Hamner | Running Back | Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 1998 | R6.26 | Lamanzer Williams | Defensive End |  Jacksonville Jaguars | Estimated |
| 1998 | R7.26 | Ryan Thelwell | Wide Receiver |  San Francisco 49ers | 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.
Builder meaningfully raised a program that wasn't one · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
6th-best Minnesota tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Jim Wacker (1992–1996) · succeeded by Tim Brewster (2007–2010).
| Season | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 3-9 | 5-6 | 8-4 | 6-6 | 4-7 | 8-5 | 10-3 | 7-5 | 7-5 | 6-7 | |
| Postseason | — | — | L bowl | L bowl | — | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 83 | 82 | 78 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 15 | 15 | 3 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 26.3 | 26.2 | 41.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 28.6 | 24.8 | 32.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 44.0 | 39.5 | 41.0 | |
7th-best Kansas tenure of 21 by the numbers.
Followed Bob Valesente (1986–1987) · succeeded by Terry Allen (1997–2001).
| Season | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||
| Record | 1-10 | 4-7 | 3-7-1 | 6-5 | 8-4 | 5-7 | 6-5 | 10-2 | 4-7 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | — | W bowl | — | — | W bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
9 NFL Draft picks: Chris Perez (1992), Dana Stubblefield (1993), Gilbert Brown (1993), Chris Maumalanga (1994), Gerald McBurrows (1995), Hessley Hempstead (1995), Ronnie Ward (1997), June Henley (1997) + 1 more
Followed Dick Scesniak (1983–1985) · succeeded by Dick Crum (1988–1990).
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
2nd all-time at Kansas
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+19.2 pts at Minnesota · #77 of 1290 · top quarter