Without a doubt one of the best young coaches on the market is Buffalo's Turner Gill. Last year his name was getting tossed around for some coaching vacancies but it was this season that you expected to see Gill make the jump from mid-major to big time program. However, it has not panned out as people would have thought and Gill is returning to Buffalo.Turner Gill spent his playing years lighting it up as a QB for the University of Nebraska in the early 1980s. He lead them to a 28-2 record as a starter and was a Heisman finalist. After a short stint in the CFL Gill returned to Nebraska as a graduate assistant and then took over as QB coach from 1992-2003 and then became the receivers coach in 2004. While at Nebraska he was apart of three national championships and coached Tommy Frazier and Eric Crouch.
Gill took over in Buffalo in late 2005 and took his team to only two wins in their first season. He improved to 5-7 in his next season but it was this past year, his third year, that Gill broke out with an 8-5 record that included a MAC championship.
In just three short season Gill transformed the worst program in division I-A football into a championship program. Unfortunately for Gill we will indeed find out how far he can take this Buffalo team. After interviewing at Syracuse and Auburn he was passed on for coaches with less experience.
Charles Barkley chalked it up to racism and it does beg the question as to why Gill is returning to Buffalo. It just does not add up. He has been successful at every level, as a player, as an assistant coach and as a head coach. He is a constant winner and has the ability to be the face of a program and a school. He is a young and very successful black coach and that is not something you come by very often. In fact Gill is one of three black head coaches in I-A football. That would give him a huge recruiting edge in a sport where the majority of athletes are not white. It is hard to come up with an argument against Gill; he has done nothing but win football games.
I can't tell you why he is still in Buffalo but at some point a major program is going to step up and take a chance on Turner Gill and they going to reap the benefits of a great football coach.
1 comment:
It's hard for me to believe that race is the limiting factor in Gill's case. Maybe people are worried that he "only" has experience coaching a mid-major program. But as you said, he was a winner as both a player and a coach while at Nebraska. So why isn't he coach of a major team? Maybe he interviews poorly...
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