By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

I was asked the other day to name my favorite Duke basketball player of all time, as well as my least favorite. It was easy to name my favorite (Grant Hill) because it’s one of those things I’ve actually spent time thinking about.

It took me a while to think about my least favorite though, since I tend to try and forget them much like I do with the name of my 11th grade English teacher.

So, with that in mind, I figured instead of writing about the best head coach each NFC South team has hired, I’d go with the ones they couldn’t get rid of fast enough.

To start with, Atlanta’s may have been the easiest. Regardless of what criteria you’re looking at- overall record, handling of the team, how the coach represented the team- Bobby Petrino makes it a clean sweep in all categories.

Petrino’s .231 winning percentage is the worst in franchise history, not counting interim coaches, and the way he left the team by leaving a note in every player’s locker is just the sugar free icing on the gluten free cake that was his coaching tenure.

Not only is he the worst coach in Falcons history, he’s worse than any of the other coaches I’m about to mention, making him the worst hire in the division’s history. (And just think, he became even more of an embarrassment at his subsequent stops.)

Choosing Carolina’s coach was almost just as easy, but for entirely different reasons. Before the Panthers brought in new head coach Matt Rhule, there had only been four coaches in their short history.

Of those four, two made it to a Super Bowl (John Fox, Ron Rivera) and another (Dom Capers) was coach of the year in 1996 and helped the franchise get off to a strong start.

The only coach left is George Seifert, who couldn’t repeat the same type of success in Charlotte that he had achieved in San Francisco. He is also the only coach of the four to have never led the team to a winning season or a playoff appearance.

New Orleans is where the task got a little more difficult because they’ve always had decent coaches since I started following football, beginning with Jim Mora.

There are a few coaches back in the 70’s who didn’t do well, record wise, but I can’t really speak to what they did beyond that. Therefore, I’m going with Mike Ditka as the franchise worst.

As great as Ditka was for Chicago, he was equally as bad for the Saints. He won six games in each of his first two seasons and only three in his third and final one. Plus, there was that year he traded all their draft picks, including their first round pick the following year, to draft Ricky Williams.

Tampa Bay’s coaches are similar to New Orleans, it would’ve been easier to go with an earlier coach based on records. But, like with the Saints, I decided to go with a more recent coach, Greg Schiano.

The current Rutgers head coach will be remembered in Tampa more for having his team rush the quarterback on a kneel down play than anything they accomplished on the field. His tenure was the perfect example of round peg, square hole.

Not all coaching hires can be winners, but these are a few that fan bases would like to forget, all together.