Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 3-3
2000Insight.com BowlW 37-29
2001Independence BowlL 13-14
2002Humanitarian BowlL 16-34
2004Independence BowlW 17-13
2005Houston BowlL 24-27
North Texas
2013Heart of Dallas BowlW 36-14
Report card
Offense carries it: 43rd percentile offense, bottom-quarter defense at 19th.
North Texas, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Defense
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.
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
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.
6-6 against his rivals at Iowa State. Winless in 5 tries against Mack Brown.
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.
Just 1-2 against David Bailiff.
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.
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.
6-6 against his rivals. Winless in 5 tries against Mack Brown.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under Canales.
3,320 run and pass snaps at North Texas, 2011–2015, 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.
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
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2015 roster arrived on his watch — 123 of 123 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2011-2015) 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.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his North Texas rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2011–2015).
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 83 of 108 signees (77%) across his 2011–2015 tenure, drawn from 14 states in all. Next: OK (6).
86% of his signees come from TX and its 4 border states (OK 6, LA 4).
Off this map: 5 signees to the east (GA 2, FL, others), 3 to the north (IA 2, MN) and 2 to the west (AZ, CA).
- median hometown distance
- 123 mi
- within 100 mi
- 47%
- within 500 mi
- 90%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 4%
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.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
13th-best North Texas tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Todd Dodge (2007–2010) · succeeded by Seth Littrell (2016–2022).
| Season | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 5-7 | 4-8 | 9-4 | 4-8 | 0-5 | |
| Postseason | — | — | W bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | — | — | — | Mike Canales | Mike Canales | |
| DC | — | — | — | John Skladany | Chris Cosh | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 15 | 6 | 44 | 14 | 1 | |
| Defense | 36 | 34 | 65 | 39 | 12 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 35.5 | 28.8 | 34.0 | 36.0 | 40.2 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 39.1 | 28.7 | 22.2 | 29.8 | 37.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 31.4 | 19.0 | 20.0 | 10.3 | 32.5 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
7th-best Iowa State tenure of 19 by the numbers.
Followed Jim Walden (1987–1994) · succeeded by Gene Chizik (2007–2008).
| Season | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||
| Record | 3-8 | 2-9 | 1-10 | 3-8 | 4-7 | 9-3 | 7-5 | 7-7 | 2-10 | 7-5 | 7-5 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | — | — | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | — | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 21 | 33 | 59 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 94 | 28 | 1 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 35.4 | 37.3 | 39.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 29.6 | 32.8 | 23.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 45.2 | 22.5 | 43.3 | |
11 NFL Draft picks: Troy Davis (1997), Tim Kohn (1997), Oliver Ross (1998), Reggie Hayward (2001), Sage Rosenfels (2001), James Reed (2001), Mike Banks (2002), Seneca Wallace (2003) + 3 more
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 Iowa State
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+5.6 pts at Iowa State · #364 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.