Southern Miss has apparently ousted head coach Jeff Bower after 17 seasons and a 119-81-1 record. Apparently, 14 consecutive winning seasons (7-5 this year, which is as good as Croom at MSU and better than Ole Miss), 9 bowl games in the last 10 years, and a trip to the Conference USA title game five times since 1996 isn’t enough for somebody. Hell, they’ve even got a bowl game this year.
USM has it hard; they’re perceived as a second tier program in the south because, at least in part, they’re not in the SEC. Consequently, many of the marquee high school players get picked up by the major programs in Oxford and Starkville and Baton Rouge. Even so, Bower — an alum — has had success there; it’s also a sure bet he’d stay forever due to his roots in the community.
From the Clarion-Ledger:
Bower was forced to resign during a meeting with USM athletic director Richard Giannini. Bower stormed out of the USM athletic department offices and went to his house. He could not be reached for comment.
[…]
The Golden Eagles (7-5) clinched a 14th consecutive winning season with a 16-10 victory over Arkansas State Saturday and received an invitation to the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham. It will be the school’s ninth bowl trip in the last 10 years.
Although USM has the fifth-longest current streak of consecutive winning seasons among Division I-A teams, many USM fans have been critical of the program in the last several years.
Picked by league coaches as the preseason favorite to win Conference USA, the Golden Eagles finished fourth in the C-USA East with a 5-3 record. That included a home losses to previously winless Rice and to Memphis in a game that USM led by 12 with five minutes to play.
USM won four Conference USA championships under Bower, the last in 2003. The Golden Eagles won the C-USA East Division last year, but lost to Houston in the C-USA championship game. He was named the league’s coach of the decade in 2004 and was a three-time coach of the year (1997, ’99, ’03).
We predict a shitty season for the Golden Eagles next year, and for years to come. Folks are, predictably, annoyed.
(More bits: only 4 teams have longer streaks of winning seasons: Florida State (31), Michigan (23), Florida (20) and Virginia Tech (15) (cite). Bower’s tenure at USM is behind only 3 other coaches: Paterno, obviously, at 42 years; Bowden’s been at FSU for 32; and Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer is at 21.)
(Even better: a recent news bit at CoachBower.com notes preseason ticket sales were at an all time high before the 2007 kickoff, and cited the ongoing success of Bower’s Eagles as the proximate reason. (Thanks, Frank.))