Gimino: How five teams turned it around '99-2000

Face it, Kansas State is ancient history.

No, not the program. The blueprint for resurrecting the program. Just tear it up. Who among us doesn't remember the self-described Greatest Turnaround in College Football?

Eleven years ago Kansas State -- 165 games below .500 in its history to that point -- hired little-known Iowa offensive coordinator Bill Snyder ... and took off.

Today, it is a Top 10 program that competes for a Bowl Championship Series berth each season.

"It takes a while to turn a program around," K-State president Jon Wefald said. "With Bill Snyder, it took upwards of three years."

Sorry, that's too long by today's standards. The two-year turnaround is becoming typical.

From bad to pretty good to real good.

Take more than that and you're taking much too much time for the anxious boosters, fans and athletic directors.

"Fifteen years ago, who would have thought that Virginia Tech would have been up where they were?" Florida State coach Bobby Bowden said. "Five years ago, who would have thought Oklahoma would be back? The parity thing is going to give everybody a shot, but a lot of presidents are not willing to wait for parity."

Actually, parity has become a parody of itself. Kansas State's most dramatic two-year improvement in the Snyder era was six games when it improved from 1-10 in 1989 to 7-4 in 1991.

Ha, that's nothing.

Two of the biggest turnarounds in the game's history have occurred in the past two seasons.

Hawaii made the biggest one-year turnaround ever, going from 0-12 in 1998 to 9-4 in 1999. South Carolina is fourth all-time on the turnaround list after going from 0-11 in 1999 to 8-4 in 2000.

That only begins the list. Randy Walker took Northwestern from 3-9 in 1998 to Rose Bowl contention in 2000.

Dennis Erickson put the Oregon State Beavers on the map.(Allsport)

Under Dennis Erickson, Oregon State went from 5-6 to 11-1 in two seasons.

Then there was Oklahoma.

In two years, the Sooners went from the worst three-year period in its history (under John Blake) to a national championship under Bob Stoops.

That, more than any of the turnarounds, instigated something we'll call The Bob Stoops Factor: Win now or perish.

The question, of course, is: "How are they doing it?"

The easy -- and overused answer -- is scholarship limitations. The roster limit was trimmed from 95 to 85 in the early 1990s.

It's hard to explain why and how the talent distribution is having such a profound effect now.

More and more it's about smarts and sweat to manipulate a limited roster into a winner.

It has gotten to the point that many rosters are virtually interchangeable. Really.

Scholarship numbers have been dropping since the mid-1970s, when former Big Ten commissioner Wayne Duke was among a handful of administrators who advocated downsizing college football.

"You can't legislate total equality, but you can legislate and achieve some equality, some economy and some sanity," Duke said.

During the downsizing, in a hotel lobby Duke once bumped into Barry Switzer who told him, "You're trying to legislate mediocrity."

That argument has grown tired over the years. Attendance is up. Postseason television ratings are up.

No one cares that limited squad sizes forced Tennessee to start a true freshman, Michael Munoz, at right tackle last year.

It seems as though fans will cheer for 11 freshmen they've never heard of as long as they're wearing State U's colors.

Essentially, the limits have legislated competitiveness.

Once a team is competitive, a great catch here, a coaching move there, a key recruit here, an injury there, a bit of momentum here ... well, you've got the recipe for a big-time turnaround.

That basically is the ticket. There are a handful of things that each program has done -- nearly too obvious to mention, but clear goals and tasks just the same:

• Being well organized,
• Infusing the program with confidence and/or positivity,
• Recruiting well to need and stressing speed,
• Emphasizing strong defense,
• Spreading the field offensively to create matchup advantages (and having a staff that knows how to take advantage of them),
• And getting a key break here or there.

Purdue got to its first Rose Bowl in 34 years despite playing seven true freshmen last season. Five of those freshmen started.

Purdue's Joe Tiller turned his program into a Big Ten power almost overnight by emphasizing speed in recruiting.(Allsport)

Coach Joe Tiller has forced the Big Ten to take notice and adjust recruiting-wise by recruiting speed over brawn. You might hit the Boilers, but they will run past you.

"The scholarship reduction has spread the talent around better," Tiller said. "Due to the sheer numbers, maybe not all of us, but a majority of us have to play some freshmen. Then it becomes a question of how talented these rascals are getting.

"What we're looking for, if you describe it in very elementary terms, is matchup football. If we're trying to match up one of our speed guys versus one of your linebackers, you might consider a guy that isn't quite as big but has the foot speed to run with Purdue receivers."

Matchup football binds all the turnarounds together.

Almost every team in the country runs at least some form of the spread offense to move the ball, and uses the press defense to stop it.

They have to. The spread in the first decade of the 21st century is what the wishbone was to the 1970s. The added advantage is that it's easy to recruit to and is the perfect answer against bigger, brawnier defenses.

"It's an equalizer we have in today's college football," said South Carolina coach Lou Holtz, whose Notre Dame team won the 1988 national championship running the option. "We changed our offense, we spread it out. You can present some problems with teams today with the skill people who can throw and catch." South Carolina turned it around with only one first-team All- SEC player on the team selected by the league coaches.

Oklahoma's undersized Quentin Griffin scored 17 rushing touchdowns in 2000. That's the most at Oklahoma since Billy Sims ran for 22 in 1979.

Northwestern lines up in generally the same offensive formation as Purdue. The difference being Walker wants to spread the defense to create holes for his running backs. Tiller wants to create mismatches with his receivers.

One of the original proponents of the one-back offense, Oregon State coach Dennis Erickson, has a knack for going by land and air from the same formation.

These turnarounds have come not only within the scholarship confines, but because of them.

It has enabled a program like Northwestern to make a couple of separate surges -- Gary Barnett's Rose Bowl miracle, and then once the bloom fell off that Rose, Walker moved in and nearly matched it in his second season.

A brutal set of sprint drills during his first camp in August 1999 sent a quarter of the team to the sidelines. Walker might not call it the time-tested method of "weeding out" by a new coach, but it worked.

"We subjected them to a lot of things they thought initially were impossible," Walker said. "I don't apologize for it; I do it by design." Once he had their bodies, it was easy for Walker to mold their minds. Three days after an embarrassing loss to TCU last season, Walker lugged a weathered, worn 2-by-4 to practice.

"Guys," Walker said, "we could lay a 2-by-4 on the ground and every guy could walk across it. On game day they raise it about 100 feet. Who wants to walk across that?" Four days later, Northwestern won in overtime at Wisconsin.

"So much of this game is mental, confidence," Wildcat defensive end Dwayne Missouri said during the season. "Now we can look at that (conditioning) test and say as hard as it sounded a year ago, we can do it."

Holtz was another manual laborer. The 2000 Gamecocks weren't significantly different than the 1999 group that lost every game. Holtz, the 64-year-old true believer, thought he saw a glimmer of hope during the worst season of his career.

"We lost a lot of games, but we never lost the team," Holtz said, building for the future.

"We constantly picked up converts that first year and were trying to put people in place. Even though I had a lot of distractions, and it was a very depressing year, personally, you just stay the course." And sometimes everything just breaks right.

Trailing Mississippi State late in the game at Columbia on Sept. 23, the Gamecocks pulled off one of the boldest finishes in their history. Backup quarterback Erik Kimrey, subbing for a briefly injured Phil Petty, hit Jermale Kelly with a 25-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-10 to beat the Bulldogs.

It was Kimrey's only attempt of the game.

After going oh-for in 1999, South Carolina started 4-0 for the first time since 1988. Less than three months later, Holtz was winning the program's second bowl game in its history, 24-7 over Ohio State. The seven-game turnaround was the biggest in SEC history.

"If you saw them play the 0-11 year you would have said, 'No way,'" Bowden said. "It's pure will. He's got it as good as anybody." South Carolina makes it a record six programs that Holtz has gotten to bowl games, all within two years of taking over.

Like all great turnarounds, there was a great staff behind it. It's no secret that Holtz's son Skip, the Gamecocks' offensive coordinator, is expected to take over at South Carolina when his dad steps down. Charlie Strong was an assistant (1991-95) under Steve Spurrier when he turned it around at Florida and was at Notre Dame under both Holtz and Bob Davie (1995-98).

"I'm not as hands-on as I was years ago," Holtz said. "I coach not for the money. I enjoy the players. I enjoy being in the locker room afterward." Especially after games in the 2000 season, compared to 1999.

Like South Carolina, Oregon State was driven to win by pure embarrassment. That, and the law of averages. The Beavers couldn't continue to be this bad this long in the age of quick turnarounds.

The fact that it was 29 years between winning seasons for the Beavers made the turnaround all that more dramatic. Dennis Erickson arrived in 1999 after winning national championships at Miami and then wading through a tepid four-year NFL experience.

In Corvallis, he seemed to find pure bliss. His 1999 Beavers finished 7-5 and went to their first bowl in 35 years. And then last season, they won 11 games and a share of the Pac-10 championship.

Notre Dame seemed to be shocked that little ol' Oregon State was running over, past and around the Irish en route to a 41-9 Fiesta Bowl victory.

Hey, the speed was all there for the Irish to scout on game film. But videotape cannot replicate the experience of getting smoked by Chad Johnson or run over by Ken Simonton.

At every turn, Erickson didn't fail to acknowledge the stocked cupboard Mike Riley had left him before leaving for the San Diego Chargers.

Simonton was the first player in conference history to rush for 1,000 yards in each of his first three seasons. There were at least nine other starters on the spring depth chart who were brought in by Riley.

Combine that with Erickson's deft junior college recruiting (and even a few key holdovers from Jerry Pettibone's recruiting efforts) and it was an overnight turnaround that took 30 years.

"I've always been a huge fan of junior college players whether you need nine or one," Erickson said, "because they're usually more mature and junior college coaching is extremely good."

Recruiting in the JCs is not as much of a high-risk venture it was in previous years. NCAA academic restrictions send more quality players to junior colleges than in the past, and now players must get a two-year associate degree before gaining major-college athletic eligibility.

So, more often, after two years, the major programs get back an improved academic and athletic player. And the high quality of JC play in states like Kansas, California, Texas and Mississippi grooms players for the next level.

The investment by Division I programs in the improvement of those players? Usually nothing, except a re-recruitment.

Oklahoma turned its whole program around by signing a left-handed, slow-footed slinger from Snow Junior College in Utah who played only the first halves of games because of a rotating QB system. All Josh Heupel did was finish second in Heisman voting and help the Sooners win the national championship.

In Oklahoma's case, there was latent excellence, which had gone to sleep under John Blake, who had recruited well but was unable to meld it into a complete program.

Enter Stoops, who first infused a sense of organization, and then plugged the right guys into the right spots.

Andre Woolfolk moved from defense to offense, and wound up as a third-team all-league receiver. And defensive back J.T. Thatcher had been a running back, punt returner and part-time defender before 2000 ... when Stoops put him where he belonged, and he intercepted eight passes and was named first-team All- American.

For Stoops, the challenge is to win another national championship and keep it going.

For the others -- Oregon State, South Carolina, Northwestern and the like -- it's about keeping it going, too.

To another bowl game. A league championship. A consistent expectation of success, much like Kansas State has attained.

It's a little like ascending Everest the second time.

"For a true turnaround you have to look at more than one year," Holtz said. "To me, it's can we do it two years, three years? Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

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