Coz and Brew

Looks like Timmy Brewster has hired Kevin Cosgrove to be his new defensive coordinator. Interesting choice, especially making him co-coordinator with former UW secondary coach Ron Lee. A veteran-newcomer pairing, similar to our Hankwitz-Doeren pairing of a couple years back.

Also interesting because his last stint as a coordinator, with Bill Callahan at Nebraska, was an unmitigated disaster. The way the Cornhuskers were giving up points that last year under Coz, the finals looked like basketball scores, not football. From what I can gather, Gopher fans aren't too excited about the hire, either.

But Coz did a nice job at UW, although his departure and Bret Bielema's arrival was a necessary jumpstart to the defense. Coz is also an ace St. Louis recruiter, which might hurt us there, just as we were starting to re-restablish ourselves there with the likes of Montee Ball.

My guess is he lasts no more than two years in Minneapolis.

Good for Lee, nice to see a minority getting a chance to make a name for himself as a coordinator and audition for head jobs.

Badger coaching tree, part 2

Thanks to ajs for commenting on these guys who should definitely be mentioned as prominent parts of the Badger coaching tree. I feel like I was trying too hard to look for long-ago guys and missed these more recent ones.

-Dan McCarney, Barry's old defensive coordinator, had a fairly successful stint as the head at Iowa State. Mac's now the assistant head coach/defensive line coach at South Florida, which we all know had a Cinderella season of sorts.

-John Palermo, now Miami's defensive line coach. It's cool to read his bio and see all the All-Americans he produced while at Wisconsin.

UPDATE - Polzin comment: Just to clarify, Palermo left Miami after the 2006 season and spent last season as the defensive coordinator at Tennessee Tech under Watson Brown (Mack's brother). Palermo has since announced his retirement.

-Ron Lee, our secondary coach for a couple years, moved on to coach cornerbacks at Michigan in 2006, now coaching Minnesota's defensive backs.

-Bernie Wyatt - ajs says he took another job at Iowa after leaving UW in 1996, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of that, and we all know that Google is infallible. Jimmy, you worked with him on your All-Alvarez team, right? What did he do after UW?

UPDATE - Polzin comment: I believe Wyatt was a ``consultant'' at Iowa.

-Todd Orlando, who played linebacker at UW and was a member of the '93 Rose Bowl team, is the defensive coordinator at Connecticut, which had a great season. Dave Heller's JS blog says Orlando is a candidate to be Pittsburgh's new defensive coordinator.

Anyone else?

UPDATE - I somehow forgot Kevin Cosgrove, also shown the door at Nebraska along with Bill Callahan. Doesn't look like he's found a new job yet. Interesting tidbit I found with a story that mentions the new Huskers staff: they had eight de-commits following Cally's departure. Shows you the value of getting your new coach in place at the right time.