RIP Stan Parrish, former QB coach and OC
https://twitter.com/chengelis/status/1510973951362617344?s=21&t=nvVsp9TiTvuc3N3I1cq7MA
QB coach for the 97 team, then became OC after DeBord took the CMU gig. Among other things, he was the last pre-Snyder coach at Kansas State and took over for Hoke at Ball State (a certain former BSU alum seems to believe this was a Kevin Steele situation), and then was the interim at EMU before Creighton was hired.
RIP Stan
RIP.
I have one personal Stan Parrish story. I wanted to try out for the football team as a kicker (a bit of a long backstory) and Stan Parrish met with me at Schembechler Hall one day to talk it over and said there is no chance for me to try-out as a kicker. I was bummed because I would have been up against Craig Baker and he sucked.
What reason did he give you? I would think they would have taken a look at any potential kickers on campus in a situation like that. I'm assuming you had high school experience?
Baker only kicked for part of one year and wasn't overly impressive. 15-22 with a long of 42. He also missed a few PATs. Feely ended up taking the job from him and was pretty good.
Fair question because I did not have previous football kicking experience. But I was a very serious international soccer player. With that, I did send in a tape of me kicking field goals. I had a big booking left foot (>50 yards are not a problem), and my accuracy was decent, but not Big10 ready at that point. I thought if I send in the tape and at least try out I could work on the accuracy as part of coaching. I'm not sure if Stan looked at my tape, but he took my meeting. He said we have too many people trying-out for Michigan.
I think you were just too early. The fad of converting foreign soccer/Australian Rules players into PK hadn't taken off yet. Team was super conservative back then and probably didn't want to risk anyone without football experience.
Even now it seems to be more often they are used as punters not PK.
Then again, the punter in 1997, Vinson, was a walk-on who had never punted in a game so.....
Vinson Pictured Himself On Team -- Inexperienced Kicker Walked On At Michigan | The Seattle Times
You are probably correct. I left the meeting a little dejected, but I thought I put my best foot forward (pun intended!). What really irked me though was that Craig Baker sucked ass that following year. I could have totally beaten him out. Feely, on the other hand...
These days you would just create a tik-tok of yourself booming a 55 yarder, label it #LetMeWalkOnCoachHarbaugh and you'd be signed up in 5 minutes. :)
I absolutely hate social media. So what you are saying is that I have to encounter what I hate to do what I love? My heart is conflicted!!
Social media is the downfall of humankind. The human brain isn’t equipped to handle unending unearned dopamine hits. Everyone is vapid and depressed. The metaverse will happen and half of humanity will evolve into C.H.U.D. or worse.
If you are referring to Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, then I agree.
And nice reference 👍
You were a few years too early... RR had open tryouts for kicker.
If you never played college athletics then the clock is still ticking.....probably would skip this year for a tryout though....just sayin.
Go Blue!!!!
That's what I thought too. I can make a FG from 35 yards every time. I was in grad school so what the heck?!
But for D1, apparently there is a rule that you have to begin your max 5 years of eligibility within a year of graduating HS. Apparently, NCAA gives you a gap year and that's it.
RIP Coach Parrish, and thanks for all your efforts on behalf of this great university and its people
Stan played a key coaching role in our '97 championship run. His head coaching record was another matter though. Ooof.
Some tough places to coach, but he literally had a stretch of 35 straight games as a Head Coach where he won zero games. That hurts to even read, much less experience.
Eastern Michigan (coached then by Ron English, another ex-UM assistant of course) was the team where he broke the skid.
What's weird about his coaching record is that his first two jobs at Wabash and Marshall went very well, going 55-13-2.
Kansas State was a complete disaster, and his stint at Ball State was pretty bad as well, especially since he inherited what looked like to be a decently solid program from Hoke.
I've seen this career arc in the records of more than a few collegiate head coaches: good success at lower-level programs, then utter failure after ascending to the next level of competition.
As I re-read my post, I feel compelled to say I was not knocking Parrish in any way.
The structural factors in favor of (or against) a program matter so so much.
Marshall: small program but everyone down in that part of West Virginia supports the program fervently. Parrish benefits from that structural reality.
1980s era K-State: the 2nd best school in an already small state, they care more about hoops than football, and UNL and OU are the literal Death Stars of the conference that post 77-3 victories every year in their sleep. A virtually impossible structural reality for Parrish.
One must choose their next gig carefully (shoot, I'm realizing that post-haste myself now, not a football job of course).
1980s era K-State: the 2nd best school in an already small state, they care more about hoops than football, and UNL and OU are the literal Death Stars of the conference that post 77-3 victories every year in their sleep. A virtually impossible structural reality for Parrish.
All of which means the job Bill Snyder did at K-State is one of the most remarkable coaching achievements in the last half-century of college football.
Yes Snyder did.
Here's an interesting video - KSU won only one game in 1989 (Snyder's first year), they beat North Texas on a literal last-second touchdown pass. Some interesting bullet points:
- North Texas was a D-1AA team at this time. They weren't even a good D-1AA team, they finished tied for last place in the Southland.
- North Texas is the more talented football team in the video. They are harassing KSU's QB nearly every play.
- The win (understandably) led to the fans tearing down the goal posts. Broke a 31-game winless streak for KSU, including home losses earlier in the same year to Northern Iowa and Northern Illinois.
- KSU didn't win the rest of the way in 1989, but they were much more competitive than usual (3 Big 8 losses by only 1-2 scores). Then in 1990 they won 5 games and they started taking off.
If not for that win in 1989, they likely finish 0-11 again. Does Snyder still find success in Manhattan? Probably - but I'm not sure its assured. Sometimes, you just need that ONE stimulus to get things going. Snyder got the win/stimulus, Parrish never did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZVj5Rubah0
Dumb stat is that supposedly only 30% of people make it to the next level in any profession. You make it 4 levels up and you’re in the top 1%. Your progression has as much or more to do with the situation you put yourself in than it does with you. Tom Brady is the GOAT. No one works harder to be in the right spot than him. Had he gone to the Lions rather than the BUCs he would be dead or retired. Look for good situations.
That stat sounds about right.
Put yourself in a bad situation (sigh, I'm feeling that now), it's not good.
If you include his DIII record, his overall record isn’t too bad
Rest In peace, and thank you.
A big name in Michigan lore. RIP, Stan Parrish...
What is a Kevin Steele situation?
So Kevin Steele essentially stabbed Gus Mahlzan in the back to try and line up booster support to make him Auburn’s HC at the end of the 2020 season, per essentially all of the reporting on the matter.
According to reporting from a prominent Ball State football alumnus at the time (rhymes with Dayson Fitlock), Parrish went to the Ball State higher ups to essentially portray himself as the real brains of the operation, which led to them lowballing Hoke during extension negotiations, leading to him to taking the SDSU job. I was living in Indiana at the time and the BSU athletic department was a tire fire (this was post Robby Thompson) and losing their top coach after an undefeated regular reason was thought to be really strange.
I do recall that total compensation from SDSU was ~2x that of BSU. Was BSU really capable of matching that?
i also remember the BSU president was heavily involved and that she was pretty tone deaf.
Probably couldn’t match, but they probably could have been in the ballpark. It just sort of seemed strange that a guy who probably would have been in line for a P5 job (certainly had more cause to get one than a Tim Beckman or Darrell Hazell) in short order.
I agree it was strange.
I really remember the college president being an integral part of the process. And that she was widely disliked.
Due in part to the mess I took a strong financial position on Tulsa - their OC was Gus Malzahn - in the bowl game. Won 45-13 after closing at -1.5 if I recall.