Big 12 teams have made some good coaching moves, and some bad ones

In evaluating coaching transitions, answers don’t become clear until years later, and as the Big 12 prepares for its 13th season, the data is in to settle some burning questions from a few years back.

Did Nebraska err in firing Frank Solich?

Did Texas A&M panic by tossing out R.C. Slocum?

Yes and yes.

Not only did the Cornhuskers and Aggies blow those calls, they admitted as much to the fan base by appointing back-to-the-future successors.

Bo Pelini was Solich’s last defensive coordinator.

Mike Sherman twice served under Slocum at A&M.

Hindsight is a handy tool when considering coaching changes because at the time all are justified on some level. And every news conference to introduce the new coach is as full of hope and promise as a political campaign.

But coaching progress is easily measured, and the comings and goings got us wondering about the worst firings in Big 12 history — and the best hirings.

We rank four in each category.

Worst firings

1. Slocum by A&M, 2002. He was four years removed from the Aggies’ Big 12 championship and the program’s second straight division title. He won 72 percent of his games. Successor Dennis Franchione won 53 percent of his games. Beating Texas wasn’t enough for Coach Fran.

2. Frank Solich by Nebraska, 2003. Solich’s impossible task to follow perhaps the greatest five-year run in the game’s history, a 60-3 march that included three national championships, was never fully appreciated. Tom Osborne’s hand-picked successor couldn’t live up to this old boss’s standards — who could? But Solich’s 58-19 record and three first-place division finishes stand up nicely to Bill Callahan’s 27-22 mark and two losing seasons.

3. Chuck Reedy by Baylor, 1996. In the final two years of the Southwest Conference, the Bears went 9-5 in conference games and 14-9 overall with a bowl appearance. Baylor won only one Big 12 game in the inaugural season (4-7 in all games) and Reedy was canned. Three coaches since then are 10-78 in league contests.

4. Dan McCarney by Iowa State, 2006. He struggled early, posting losing records in his first five seasons. But the patience paid off as the Cyclones enjoyed a six-year stretch that included five bowl seasons. When Iowa State slipped to a last-place finish in 2006, new athletic director Jamie Pollard fired the coach with the most victories in school history, replacing him with Texas assistant Gene Chizik. It seems like a good hire, but it followed a bad firing.

Best hirings

1. Bob Stoops at Oklahoma, 1999. The Sooners awoke from the Howard Schnellenberger-John Blake nightmare and won a national championship in Stoops’ second season. With five conference championships, Oklahoma has become the Big 12 standard under Stoops, who arrived from Florida’s staff after spending his formative years at Kansas State.

2. Mack Brown at Texas, 1998. The Longhorns immediately improved after Brown left North Carolina and became the league’s most consistent winner. Vince Young then pushed the program to the top.

3. Mark Mangino at Kansas, 2002. Tough to say whether the program had reached bottom when Mangino arrived from Stoops’ staff because there had been so many low points. But Mangino got the Jayhawks to a bowl game in his second season, and last year’s 11-0 start and Orange Bowl triumph made Kansas the most unlikely big winner in Big 12 history.

4. Gary Pinkel at Missouri, 2001. He’s been around longer than any coach since Dan Devine, and that’s saying something at Mizzou. Some fans wonder if Pinkel, who had spent the previous 10 years at Toledo, was prepared for the challenges of a major conference. Now, the hope is he’s turned Missouri into a destination job.

Honorable mention: Mike Leach at Texas Tech in 2000 and Les Miles at Oklahoma State in 2001.