Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-4
1995Rose BowlL 32-41
1996Florida Citrus BowlL 28-48
Colorado
1999Insight.com BowlW 62-28
2001Fiesta BowlL 16-38
2002Alamo BowlL 28-31
2004Houston BowlW 33-28
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.
4-3 against his rivals at Northwestern. Winless in 5 tries against John Cooper.
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.
7-7 against his rivals at Colorado. Just 1-5 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.
11-10 against his rivals. Just 1-5 against Mack Brown.
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.
893 run and pass snaps at Colorado, 2004–2005, 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
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Northwestern→
Colorado1999Players 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 2005 roster arrived on his watch — 38 of 38 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1999-2005) 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: 11 of 43 signees (26%) across his 2000–2005 classes on record (his tenure ran 1999–2005), drawn from 12 states in all. Next: CO (9).
26% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states.
- median hometown distance
- 6,203 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. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | R2.14 | Joe Klopfenstein | Tight End |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2006 | R5.14 | Jeremy Bloom | Wide Receiver |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2006 | R5.33 | Quinn Sypniewski | Tight End |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2006 | R6.11 | Lawrence Vickers | Running Back |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2004 | R5.25 | D.J. Hackett | Wide Receiver |  Seattle Seahawks | Estimated |
| 2004 | R6.31 | Sean Tufts | Linebacker |  Carolina Panthers | Estimated |
| 2003 | R1.32 | Tyler Brayton | Defensive End |  Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| 2003 | R3.26 | Donald Strickland | Defensive Back |  Indianapolis Colts | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | R3.29 | Chris Brown | Running Back |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2003 | R7.05 | Justin Bates | Offensive Guard |  Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
| 2003 | R7.22 | Brandon Drumm | Running Back |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 2003 | R7.35 | Wayne Lucier | Center |  New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2002 | R1.21 | Daniel Graham | Tight End |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2002 | R2.05 | Andre Gurode | Offensive Guard | Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
| 2002 | R2.26 | Michael Lewis | Defensive Back | Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2002 | R5.04 | Justin Bannan | Defensive Tackle |  Buffalo Bills | Estimated |
| 2002 | R7.48 | Victor Rogers | Offensive Tackle |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 2000 | R3.22 | Ben Kelly | Defensive Back |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2000 | R6.37 | Damen Wheeler | Defensive Back |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2000 | R6.40 | Brad Bedell | Offensive Guard |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2000 | R7.19 | Rashidi Barnes | Defensive Back | Cleveland Browns | 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 · Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse
3rd-best Colorado tenure of 20 by the numbers.
Followed Rick Neuheisel (1995–1998) · succeeded by Dan Hawkins (2006–2010).
| Season | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||
| Record | 7-5 | 3-8 | 10-3 | 9-5 | 5-7 | 8-5 | 7-5 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | — | L bowl | L bowl | — | W bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | 28 | 3 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | 67 | 43 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 34.4 | 44.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 37.1 | 36.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | 18.2 | 13.5 | |
8th-best Northwestern tenure of 13 by the numbers.
Followed Francis Peay (1986–1991) · succeeded by Randy Walker (1999–2005).
| Season | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||
| Record | 3-8 | 2-9 | 3-7-1 | 10-2 | 9-3 | 5-7 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | L bowl | L 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 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
12 NFL Draft picks: Steve Shine (1994), Lee Gissendaner (1994), Matt O'Dwyer (1995), Michael Senters (1995), Darnell Autry (1997), Tim Scharf (1997), Hudhaifa Ismaeli (1997), Casey Dailey (1998) + 4 more
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+19.6 pts at Northwestern · #75 of 1290 · top quarter