He took over Notre Dame from Charlie Weis, who had run them into the ground, and got to the playoffs. He went undefeated with Cincinnati, they lost to Tebow and Florida in the bowl game, but he was already at ND. Took over a horrible CMU team that Mike DeBord with Butch Jones as OC had run in to the ground and made them conference champs. Even went to the SEC Championship game his first year at LSU. Oh, and he won national championships at a lower level.
Plain and simply put, it takes an idiot to claim he isn’t a “real coach.” Now you can argue that he isn’t an elite coach, but there aren’t 10 guys in college football with a better resume.