Seattle Times: So how have first-year head coaches fared?

By Bob Condotta

The last few times I've thrown the blog open for Q-and-A's, I've gotten varying versions of questions wondering how first-year coaches have fared through the years in the Pac-10. So in an attempt to answer all of your queries on that topic, I decided I'd first list every new coach in Pac-10 history (dating to 1978, when the conference expanded to 10 teams) followed by some analysis. So here we go, with each school's coaches listed by the year they took over, their record that first season, and in parantheses, the coach and record of the previous season:

(edit)

CAL

1979 Roger Theder 6-5 (Mike White 7-4)

1982 Joe Kapp 7-4 (Theder 2-9)

1987 Bruce Snyder 3-6-2 (Kapp 2-9)

1992 Keith Gilbertson 4-7 (Snyder 10-2)

1996 Steve Mariucci 6-6 (Gilbertson 3-8)

1997 Tom Holmoe 3-8 (Mariucci 6-6)

2002 Jeff Tedford 7-5 (Holmoe 1-10)

Tedford's 2002 season at Cal is obviously the greatest turnaround, and the one UW fans can cling to for hope of a massive rebound this season. Unfortunately, the reality is that there are probably as many similarities in UW's current state to Cal's in 2002 as there are to all kinds of other teams on this list that needed a few years to finally get turned around. I've pointed out before that two big differences are that the Cal team in 2002 played an easier schedule and had a more experienced team (including a senior QB in Kyle Boller) than UW will have this season. That's not trying to pour cold water on optimism, just trying to be realistic.

Link.