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Who was the last successful college coach?
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You already stated it, Jimmy Johnson. Unless you want to count Barry Switzer - although I would give a great deal of the credit to Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson for Switzer's NFL success. It is rare for college head coaches to find success in the NFL. As someone stated earlier, it's not really about football intelligence, but more about management style and people skills.
I have been trying to think of college coaches who had success in the NFL, and my list is painfully short and certainly open for debate. John MacKay coached very successfully at USC before taking over the expansion Buccaneers. After an 0-26 start, he had that team in the NFC championship game in their 4th season.
Other than Mackay, I can only think of failures - Lou Holtz, Butch Davis, Pete Carroll, John Robinson, Rich Brooks to name a few.
Petrino was in a bad situation from the start, the Falcons are a bad football team with a history of underperformance, so it was going to take a few years at least to get that thing pointed in the right direction.