Texas A&M's Dennis Franchione and Texas Tech's Mike Leach no doubt can appreciate the hard work and good fortune it took for Weis to earn four Super Bowl rings as an NFL assistant. Neither of them played college football either. Leach, having coached youth baseball from age 15, thought a lot about coaching and kept a file of ideas he liked. But when he was an undergrad at Brigham Young, it never occurred to Leach to stop legendary BYU boss LaVell Edwards on the sidewalk between classes and ask for tips.

The American Football Coaches Association doesn't have the numbers on Division I head coaches who never played the college game. But two years ago, research done by Navy media relations put the number at six: Its own Paul Johnson, plus Leach, Franchione, Kansas' Mark Mangino, David Cutcliffe, then at Mississippi, and Dean Pees, then at Kent State. Pees resigned after the 2003 season to become a New England Patriots assistant. Though Cutcliffe was fired last year at Ole Miss after his first losing season in six years and Pees went 17-51 in six years with a perennial doormat, all six have had success coaching even if they didn't make their mark as players.

Likewise, as he climbed the rungs of the coaching ladder, Johnson said the fact he'd not played college ball never seemed to be a hindrance when the time came to submit an application or a resume.

What a difference a dozen or so years made for Leach. In 1987, Leach landed his first job by cold calling Lyle Setencich, now the Tech defensive coordinator and then the head coach at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.

Maybe it's because Franchione has been a Division I head coach for so long - at New Mexico and Alabama before A&M - he doesn't seem to have given much thought to how the humble beginnings affected his climb up to the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12.

Johnson went to Western Carolina, hoping to walk on in basketball, but his getting hurt closed that door. His dream was to go back home and become head coach at his old high school, Avery County, N.C. Leach coached youth baseball all through high school, then played rugby all four years he was at BYU.

All three, however, developed the itch for coaching early, and then were part of big winners below the Division I level - Leach at Division II Valdosta State, Johnson at Division I-AA Georgia Southern and Franchione at Division II Pittsburg State (Kan.).

"I never really cared about the level as much as just coaching itself,'' said Leach, who made it to Division I in 1997 as an assistant at Kentucky.

Johnson was offered his first Division I job by Hawaii. He'd not met or known then Hawaii coach Bob Wagner, but Georgia Southern had won the I-AA national championship two years in a row (1985-86) with Johnson as offensive coordinator.

Mangino, Kansas' head coach the last four years, bounced back and forth among two high schools and two small colleges during the 1980s. One of the college-level jobs was at Youngstown State where the coach was Jim Tressel, now at Ohio State.

Maybe it's coincidence, but several of the coaches who weren't college players developed reputations for good offensive minds. Running mostly an option game, Johnson has posted a career record at Georgia Southern and Navy of 96-30. He's 24-20 at Navy, but the Midshipmen were 1-20 in the two years before he took over.

The aforementioned Cutcliffe spent 17 seasons (1982-98) on the offensive staff at Tennessee, and was offensive coordinator for six, including the Volunteers' 1998 national championship season. Then he went to Ole Miss and had five winning seasons out of six, including a 10-win year. Along the way he coached both Mannings, Peyton and Eli. Fired by Ole Miss despite a 44-29 record, Cutcliffe quickly hired on as Weis' quarterback coach at Notre Dame, but resigned in June, citing health concerns three months after triple bypass surgery.

This is cache, read story here