The Baylor Bears stand at 0-2 in their first season under Matt Rhule, and the near future doesn’t look good. Unless things improve dramatically (they still could!), Baylor has an excellent chance of starting 0-8 before facing off against Kansas in a loser goes home match on November 4th.
Going winless until November may sound unbearable, but Baylor’s history is full of much worse. Most of you know about Kevin Steele by now, but even he doesn’t represent the lowest point of Baylor football. In fact, he doesn’t even make the top two, and he is nowhere near number one.
For your viewing horror, here are the worst multi-year coaches ranked by win percentage.
These guys did just fine
Morley Jennings (1926-1940) — .577
Grant Teaff (1972-1992) — .548
Ralph Glaze (1910-1912) — .545
Sam Boyd (1956-8) — .500
Enoch Mills (1908-9) — .500
You know, if a school’s worst multi-season coaches includes five guys who finished .500 or better in its bottom eleven, how bad could your history really be? Jennings and Teaff account for 34 years of Baylor football coaching, an enormous stretch of time. Can you imagine any coach today staying on at his position for another 10+ years? That two coaches could stay at one position for that long and win more than half their games is commendable.
The So-sos
John Bridgers (1958-1968) — .481
Frank Kimbrough (1941-2, 1945-6) — .402
Guy Morriss (2003-7) — .310
No one’s saying these guys were great, but things we’re as bad as could be imagined under the leadership of these three coaches. Frank Kimbrough stands out as deserving some attention for a truly odd career. Kimbrough went 3-6 and 6-4 in his first two seasons at Baylor before taking off for a different position. That different position? It was with the North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters. Yes, that is a real football program that played real football games. Here’s an excerpt from the school’s Wikipedia page:
The North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters represented the U.S. Navy pre-flight school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the college football seasons of 1942, 1943 and 1944 during World War II. The North Carolina Pre-Flight School was established on February 1, 1942, by the Secretary of the Navy and opened that April. The football team was later organized and competed against other military teams in addition to major college teams of the period. During their three years in existence, the Cloudbusters compiled an overall record of sixteen wins, eight losses and three ties (16–8–3).
