"Have you taken a look at that pile of crap out there? If you can't play here, where can you play?”
Charlie Weis should've been fired on the spot. Technically, he should've never been hired, but since Kansas already passed on Gus Malzahn for Weis, that mistake already sailed. Jayhawks' athletics director Sheahon Zenger didn't fire Weis on the spot and instead watched Weis pour kerosene on the pile of crap and set ablaze to the entire football program.
Where does Weis rank among the worst Big 12 head-coaching hires of the last 25 years?
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9. Charlie Strong – Texas
Charlie Strong was never the right fit at Texas. He was a great coach with a loaded résumé who could have won in Austin but never overcame a lack of full institutional support and on-field issues.
Strong won 16 total games over three seasons, never finished above fourth in the conference and lost to a miserable Kansas team.
MORE: Best Big 12 Hires
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8. Kevin Steele – Baylor
Long before Kevin Steele became a highly respected defensive assistant at some of the country's premier programs, he was hired to rebuild a Baylor program reeling after a brief period of 1980's stability.
A former Nebraska and Tennessee assistant who spent four seasons as Carolina Panthers' linebackers coach before arriving in Waco, Steele didn't win a Big 12 game until his fourth season (1-31 overall) and made several boneheaded in-game calls, including the infamous UNLV fumble in 1999.
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7. Turner Gill – Kansas
"It was done," a source told CBS Sports of a deal between Kansas and then-Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh in 2009. Instead, athletics director Lew Perkins didn't close the deal and hired Turner Gill.
Kansas hired the anti-Mark Mangino. They hired the mild-mannered reverend-like figure to make rules, look the part and not suck on the field. Instead of hiring the right guy to continue building a once-miserable program, they hired a guy they thought could look like the right guy.
Gill made a ton of rules, looked overwhelmed early into his first season and sucked a lot on the field.
MORE: Les Miles 'Seven Months' Comment is Important
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6. Bill Callahan – Nebraska
In 2004, Nebraska fired Frank Solich and hired Bill Callahan. They fired Tom Osborne's longtime disciple who went 58-19 in six seasons to hire a guy who hadn't coached college football in a decade.
"Billy's as good a fit for Nebraska that I can ever imagine," former Huskers' assistant coach Charlie McBride said at the time. Callahan lost 22 games over four seasons, including the infamous 76-point debacle vs. Kansas in 2007, and was fired.
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5. Ron Prince – Kansas State
“The most important thing for Kansas State was to find the right fit. And though that could be defined in a lot of different ways, we believe that included someone who had familiarity with Kansas State football, the state of Kansas and the unique culture and tradition of the university."
That was Kansas State athletics director Tim Weiser in December 2005 after the Wildcats hired Virginia offensive coordinator Ron Prince to replace Bill Snyder. Basically, they hired Prince because he grew up in nearby Junction City. He had five years of FBS experience, had never coached anywhere near Kansas except for one volunteer season at Dodge City Community College, and was an atrocious successor to a football legend.
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4. Howard Schnellenberger – Oklahoma
"Together, we can make a great history of a new Sooner era," Howard Schnellenberger said when hired as Oklahoma head coach in late 1994. "I envision books being written about it and movies being made of it."
I'm still waiting on the books and movies. Who will play Schnellenberger in the comedic tragedy about one of the dumbest hires in college football history? The 61-year-old arrived in Norman after an up-and-down 10-year run at Louisville and went 5-5-1 in one season (in the then-Big 8) as Sooners' head coach.
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3. John Blake – Oklahoma
Oklahoma tried to hire a Barry Switzer guy to bring back the Barry Switzer glory days. It didn't work.
John Blake played and coached under Switzer at Oklahoma and was Switzer's defensive line coach with the Dallas Cowboys for three seasons before taking the Sooners' job in 1996. Blake deserves some credit for recruiting several players for the Sooners' 2000 title team but was a terrible hire who limped through the worst three-year stretch in program history.
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2. Charlie Weis – Kansas
Two years after failing to close the deal with Harbaugh, Kansas picked Charlie Weis over Gus Malzahn.
Weis gave a bizarre, rambling introductory press conference, and it was clear he was the wrong man to fix Kansas football. The garbage comments and in-game decisions were only a sidebar to roster management mistakes that my newborn could've avoided.
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1. Art Briles – Baylor
Art Briles is on this list for very different reasons than the other coaches. A victim-blaming sycophant who played dumb while brushing aside sexual assaults, Briles sacrificed lives to win games at Baylor.
