In 1979, when Bill Walsh departed Stanford to become the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers (where he would win three Super Bowls), Stanford immediately promoted his wide receivers coach, one Rodney Douglas Dowhower, to replace him. Dowhower would win, uh, something less than three Super Bowls in his career.
Dowhower took over a team that had gone 8-4 in 1978, was ranked 13th in the preseason AP poll, and had secured the services of what was thought to be the best high school football player in the country, some guy named John Elway. The Cardinal opened the season in the Superdome and promptly fell out of the Top 25 with a 33-10 loss to Tulane, on their way to a 5-5-1 record (the tie, somehow, came against #1 USC in the Coliseum.