The college football subreddit is a haven for all kinds of thoroughly ridiculous stuff, but the part of it that I like the most is definitely how its user base is adept at mining football data for some pretty interesting information.
To that end, Redditor bakerman2017 is making a series of lists detailing the worst coaches since 1936 for each team in each conference, in terms of overall win percentage (he chose 1936 because that's generally acknowledged to be the start of the AP era of ranking teams). Here is the one that he did for the Big Ten, and you can find the rest of his lists here.
| School | Coach | Years Active | Record | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OHIO STATE | WESLEY FESLER | 1947-50 | 21-13-3 | .608 |
| MICHIGAN | RICH RODRIGUEZ | 2008-10 | 15-22 | .405 |
| PENN STATE | JAMES FRANKLIN | 2014-PRESENT | 14-12 | .538 |
| MICHIGAN STATE | FRANK WATERS | 1980-82 | 10-23 | .303 |
| MINNESOTA | JIM WACKER | 1992-96 | 16-39 | .291 |
| NEBRASKA | BERNIE MASTERSON | 1946-47 | 5-13 | .278 |
| WISCONSIN | JOHN COATTA | 1967-69 | 3-26-1 | .117 |
| ILLINOIS | JAMES VALEK | 1967-70 | 8-32 | .200 |
| IOWA | FRANK LAUTERBUR | 1971-73 | 4-28-1 | .136 |
| PURDUE | DARRELL HAZELL | 2013-PRESENT | 6-30 | .167 |
| NORTHWESTERN | RICK VENTURI | 1978-80 | 1-31-1 | .045 |
| INDIANA | GERRY DINARDO | 2002-04 | 8-27 | .229 |
| RUTGERS | TERRY SHEA | 1996-2000 | 11-44 | .200 |
| MARYLAND | ROBERT WARD | 1967-68 | 2-17 | .105 |
A few notes on the B1G:
- Only multi-year coaches were considered. Luke Fickell breathes a sigh of relief.
- Two current B1G coaches are on this list. You can probably guess one. Maybe not the other.
- Seven Big Ten teams have had head coaches with winning percentages of .200 or less. That's... uh, bad.
- Northwestern's Rick Venturi was able to survive 33 games despite a winning percentage of .045, winning exactly one game.
This isn't a perfect indicator of conference health, but it's interesting the level of mediocrity that many schools in the B1G have been willing to accept.
