Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 6-5
’90L’97W’98L’99W’00W’02L’03L’04W’05W’06W’07L
Show all 11 games
1990All-American BowlL 27-31
1997Liberty BowlW 41-7
1998Humanitarian BowlL 35-42
1999Liberty BowlW 23-17
2000Mobile Alabama BowlW 28-21
2002Houston BowlL 23-33
2003Liberty BowlL 0-17
2004New Orleans BowlW 31-10
2005New Orleans BowlW 31-19
2006GMAC BowlW 28-7
2007PapaJohns.com BowlL 21-31
Report card
Above the median offense — 53rd percentile.
Southern Miss, 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.
1-1 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Phillip Fulmer.
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.
1,790 run and pass snaps at Southern Miss, 2004–2007, 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 2007 roster arrived on his watch — 30 of 30 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1990-2007) 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: 51 of 121 signees (42%) across his 2002–2007 classes on record (his tenure ran 1990–2007), drawn from 13 states in all. Next: LA (20).
74% of his signees come from MS and its 4 border states (LA 20, AL 18, TN 1).
Off this map: 7 signees to the west (CA 2, TX 2, others) and 1 to the north (OH).
- median hometown distance
- 168 mi
- within 100 mi
- 30%
- within 500 mi
- 80%
- 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 (a floor — see the note below). He brought in 1 of them himself. 27 more can’t be traced to who brought them in (no roster record). 1 went in the first round.
At least 28 — the draft class following his 1995 season is missing from this table entirely; and his 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | R6.33 | Robert Henderson | Defensive End |  New York Giants | |
| 2005 | R5.24 | Michael Boley | Linebacker |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 2005 | R7.24 | Jeremy Parquet | Offensive Tackle |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2004 | R5.23 | Rod Davis | Linebacker |  Minnesota Vikings | Estimated |
| 2004 | R6.18 | Greg Brooks | Defensive Back |  Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| 2004 | R6.21 | Etric Pruitt | Defensive Back | Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 2003 | R6.12 | Jeremy Bridges | Offensive Tackle |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2002 | R6.37 | Chad Williams | Defensive Back |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | R7.21 | Jeff Kelly | Quarterback |  Seattle Seahawks | Estimated |
| 2001 | R4.19 | Cedric Scott | Defensive End | New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2001 | R5.21 | Raymond Walls | Defensive Back |  Indianapolis Colts | Estimated |
| 2001 | R6.08 | Daleroy Stewart | Defensive Tackle |  Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
| 2001 | R7.40 | John Nix | Defensive Tackle | Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
| 2000 | R2.05 | Todd Pinkston | Wide Receiver | Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2000 | R3.30 | T.J. Slaughter | Linebacker |  Jacksonville Jaguars | Estimated |
| 2000 | R6.20 | Adalius Thomas | Defensive End | Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2000 | R6.34 | Sherrod Gideon | Wide Receiver |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 1998 | R2.14 | Patrick Surtain | Defensive Back |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 1998 | R5.02 | Terry Hardy | Tight End |  Arizona Cardinals | Estimated |
| 1998 | R6.23 | Harold Shaw | Running Back |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 1998 | R6.32 | Jamaal Alexander | Defensive Back |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 1994 | R4.04 | Perry Carter | Defensive Back | Arizona Cardinals | Estimated |
| 1992 | R1.19 | Tony Smith | Running Back |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 1992 | R5.16 | Derrick Hoskins | Defensive Back |  Los Angeles Raiders | Estimated |
| 1992 | R5.24 | Tim Roberts | Defensive Tackle |  Houston Oilers | Estimated |
| 1991 | R2.06 | Brett Favre | Quarterback | Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 1991 | R6.02 | Michael Jackson | Wide Receiver |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 1991 | R7.28 | Simmie Carter | Defensive Back |  New York Giants | 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.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
1st-best Southern Miss tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Curley Hallman (1988–1989) · succeeded by Larry Fedora (2008–2011).
| Season | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||||||||
| Record | 0-1 | 4-7 | 7-4 | 2-8-1 | 6-5 | 6-5 | 8-3 | 9-3 | 7-5 | 9-3 | 8-4 | 6-5 | 7-6 | 9-4 | 7-5 | 7-5 | 9-5 | 7-6 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | — | — | — | — | — | — | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | — | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 67 | 48 | 69 | 72 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 64 | 14 | 68 | 71 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 34.2 | 44.2 | 39.2 | 41.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 28.6 | 35.1 | 33.0 | 39.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 23.1 | 17.1 | 21.4 | 20.7 | |
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-most wins by a Conference USA coach
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+10.6 pts at Southern Miss · #201 of 1290 · top quarter