You may have heard of the great Amos Alonzo Stagg. The legendary football coach of Springfield College, the University of Chicago and the College of the Pacific compiled a 314-199-35 record over his 57 years as a head football coach. Stagg did not end his remarkable coaching career until the age of 95!
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The reason I bring up Stagg is because another of his coaching records is about to fall. His record of 199 losses is about to be broken, possibly as soon as this weekend when Tennessee Tech and head coach Watson Brown take on FCS number 10 Northern Iowa.
Brown’s Rice Owls got manhandled by Texas A&M on October 27, 1984 by the score of 38-14. That was the moment when his coaching record dipped below .500 for the first time at 18-19-1. It has never been back.
How does a coach lose 199 games while only winning 128 and still have a job, you might ask? Watson Brown has always been a fan of the underdog, his younger brother Mack says. Yes, that Mack Brown. The one who coached the Texas Longhorns to the 2005 National Championship, and the one who turned down the head coaching job at Oklahoma in 1994 because Watson was the offensive coordinator and Mack still thought he had a chance at the vacancy.
Watson has served as a head football coach at Austin Peay, Cincinnati, Rice, Vanderbilt, UAB, and Tennessee Tech. And of his 128 victories, some of those really stand out. He beat defending National Champion Penn State while at Cincinnati in 1983. He was the coach who brought UAB up to the FBS level, and beat Nick Saban’s LSU Tigers in 2000.
Now in 2014, he stands on the cusp of 200 losses. Most coaches never get a chance to lose that many games. Not in this day and age in college football. But Watson Brown has carved out his own little slice of history. Though most will consider it bad history.
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