Briles brought renewed interest to the program with actual fannies in the seats. He also brought in Kolb for a jump start on his offense.
Dimel did recruit decent but was a failure as a head coach,
There was talk at the time that UH might drop football when coach Yeoman recommended Briles.
I am not a big fan of Briles but he did a heck of a job before bolting and leaving us high and dry.
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That is oddly salty. I mean I’m all about being on the Dana must improve across the board bandwagon. But this is an odd going out of ones way to be salty.
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I thought Dana D actually recruited some talent here, when our facilities were worse than many local high Schools. He also was fun to hang with. Shared a few beers with him in the parking lot and in the Hoff H Association room. He and Tom Penders were GREAT guys and I loved talking with them. I spent an entire UH baseball game talking about the Baltimore Orioles and American League baseball of the late 1960"s. Tom loved baseball and was very knowledgeable of the era. As for Dana D it just hasn’t seemed to work for him as a HC on gameday, for whatever reason.
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Yeah, Tom Penders is a great guy. He and Susie were always such Class acts. And I have always said that without him coming in when he did, there would be no telling how low we would have sunk. We had no facilities, and he kept us competitive with smoke and mirrors. He doesn’t get enough credit…
And at UCONN, he was just as much of an all star in baseball as he was in basketball…
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More disgruntledness from WVa.
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True statement.
I will also say that before the Army game, I had put our 2019 team at best 4-8 and was thinking we would be 3-9. When Holgerson was hired, I was hoping for better but I was not really surprised by the results.
I also don’t fault Holgerson or King. If King would have continued to play, we might have won one or two games more, but realistically just as likely not. At the same time, I did enjoy seeing a team that played hard did not quit and got better through the year. We just seemed to not have enough bodies and ran out of gas in the 2nd half.
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Dimel recruited well. I remember when Nealy transferred out I was bummed.
Roshawn Pope, Matt Mattox, Willie Gaston, Will Gulley, Jackie Battle, Anthony Evans, Roy Swan, Stanford Routt and the one and only Nick Eddy are some of the dimel guys that laid the foundation for Briles.
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Wow, kind of nostalgic reading some of those names.
Remember after that first Briles season we stepped back his second year. We went 3-8 with an ugly 7-10 lose to rice to open the year. We scored at the very end or would have ben shut out in Reliant Stadium by RICE. We played a couple top ten teams and were killed:
OU 63-13 and Louisville 65 - 27.Our three wins were Army ( 2-9), Tulane (5-6) and East Carolina (2-9). Yes year 2 was UGLY. We went 6 - 6 his third year. Remember that year ended with Kansas kicking our arse in the Fort Worth Bowl. After that I believe is when Maggard forced Art to change his S&C program. We finally won the conference in year 4 and played South Carolina in the Liberty Bowl.
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Bitterness in the article but nothing factually incorrect
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2 hijacks in the same thread that has to be a record even for this board.
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I would absolutely, 100% agree with this.
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Didn’t Eddy start the last game of the season, his senior year?
I’m pretty sure Nick Eddy didn’t make it to his senior year.
He had too much fun in the spring of his junior year.
He looked really good in spring ball, as I remember. And I think that was the last time we saw him play.
And Eddy is kind of representative of a lot of Dimel’s recruiting. Many didn’t make it in, and many others didn’t stick around very long. Chad McCuller? The frosh DL who went off in the Hawaii Bowl (and I’m drawing a blank on his name). Bryant Brown? Can’t remember them all now.
When Dimel arrived he had 1 QB for the spring. Then Bubba Teague quit. Scrambling around they found Kelly Robertson and Nick Eddy.
Peveto tried to pry Dustin Long from the Aggies but no luck. The following year brought Barrick Nealy
Plenty of guys that played who Dimel recruited had an NFL career. Lot of risk taking in those days with what little Helton left behind
For a cold beer I’ll tell you the Donnie Avery recruiting story
Be careful with the revisionist history
A dyk , Dustin Long left A&M for SHSU for his Senior year and was Southland Conf player of year and lead BearKats all the way to FCS semi-finals playoffs in 03 or 04.
Eddy and Nealy were both lost prior to Briles’ first season.
So no one was forecasting 8 wins at that point.
Fortunately, he convinced Kevin Kolb to change his commitment from Okie State to UH, thus ensuring that UH had a QB that could take us to 7 wins.
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1-4 and 70-14