Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 6-6
’84W’85W’87L’89L’90W’91W’92L’95L’97L’98W’00W’02L
Show all 12 games
1984Independence BowlW 23-7
1985Bluebonnet BowlW 24-16
1987Freedom BowlL 28-33
1989Liberty BowlL 29-42
1990Liberty BowlW 23-11
1991Liberty BowlW 38-151992Liberty BowlL 0-13
1995Copper BowlL 41-55
1997Las Vegas BowlL 13-41
1998Oahu BowlW 45-25
2000Silicon Valley ClassicW 37-34
2002San Francisco BowlL 13-20Report card
Top-quarter offense — 75th percentile.
Air Force, 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
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.
35-11 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Paul Johnson.
Signature games
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.
1,310 run and pass snaps at Air Force, 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
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2006 roster arrived on his watch — 31 of 31 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1984-2006) 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: 7 of 30 signees (23%) across his 2002–2006 classes on record (his tenure ran 1984–2006), drawn from 12 states in all. Next: CA (3).
27% of his signees come from TX and its 4 border states (OK 1).
- median hometown distance
- 3,718 mi
- within 100 mi
- 0%
- within 500 mi
- 0%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 100%
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 (a floor — see the note below). None can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here.
At least 3 — the draft class following his 1987, 1995 seasons are missing from this table entirely; and his 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 seasons predate the modern 7-round draft, so this table’s pre-1994 pick counts are a floor, not a full count, for those seasons.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | R7.42 | Bryce Fisher | Defensive End |  Buffalo Bills | Estimated |
| 1997 | R6.15 | Daniel Palmer | Offensive Tackle |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 1995 | R7.10 | Steve Russ | Linebacker |  Denver Broncos | 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
1st-best Air Force tenure of 6 by the numbers.
Followed Ken Hatfield (1979–1983) · succeeded by Troy Calhoun (2007–now).
| Season | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Record | 8-4 | 12-1 | 6-5 | 9-4 | 5-7 | 8-4-1 | 7-5 | 10-3 | 7-5 | 4-8 | 8-4 | 8-5 | 6-5 | 10-3 | 12-1 | 6-5 | 9-3 | 6-6 | 8-5 | 7-5 | 5-6 | 4-7 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | — | L bowl | — | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | — | L bowl | — | — | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 78 | 58 | 65 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 27 | 72 | 2 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 17.6 | 22.4 | 17.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 16.7 | 12.3 | 18.7 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 30.8 | 34.3 | |
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.
3rd-most wins by a Western Athletic coach
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+15.6 pts at Air Force · #110 of 1290 · top quarter