Even With A Major Omission, This List Explains So Much

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA - MARCH 26: Head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers speaks on the phone at the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport on March 26, 2026 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Mitchell Scaglione/LSU/University Images via Getty Images This Substack article from Craig Meyer lists his 13 worst coaching hires from the last 26 years , or if you prefer, this century. Five of them were ACC hires: 13 – Matt Doherty, UNC 12 – James Johnson, Virginia Tech 8 – Jeff Bzdelik, Wake Forest 3 – Kevin Stallings, Pitt 2 – Kenny Payne, Louisville It’s a useful chart, and when you think about it, even with one major absence, if you take a small bit of license, about a third of of the ACC takes up about a third of the chart.

We’ll return to the absence soon, but listing bad hires this way really underscores our theory that bad coaching hires really hurt the ACC over the last couple of decades. How bad is is that Doherty is the best of the worst? He’s important, though: he’s the prime example of how bad things can get when you stay within your tradition and comfort level.

People knew, though. When UNC asked an unidentified former teammate about hiring Doherty, the guy said, “big mistake! Big mistake!

” Johnson was probably a lazy hire. Also available in 2012: Richard Pitino, John Groce, Frank Martin, and Wagner’s Dan Hurley. Bzdelik inspired the most awesome fan rebellion we’ve ever seen.