If you're a football coach from Idaho, it's hard to have too bad a resume.

On Tuesday, the Oakland Raiders of the NFL promoted former University of Idaho coach Tom Cable to head coach after firing Lane Kiffin. In four seasons with the Vandals, Cable's teams went 11-35. Worse, he lost to Boise State four times - 66-24, 45-13, 38-21 and 24-10.

Then after he left Idaho in 2003, Cable proclaimed that the U of I really wasn't a Division I-A-caliber program and that the Vandals ought to quit the Western Athletic Conference and go back to the Big Sky Conference.

You know, in the same league as Idaho State University.

Which was coached by Tom Walsh from 1997-98, to a 6-16 record. In 2006, the Raiders hired Walsh - who was then running a bed-and-breakfast in the eastern Idaho town of Swan Valley - as their offensive coordinator. He'd held the same job earlier, from 1993-94, before the Raiders dismissed him.

In his second tenure with the Raiders, Walsh was demoted in the middle of his first season and fired by team owner Al Davis at the end of the year. After he left, Walsh proclaimed that the skills of wide receiver Randy Moss - whom he had coached in Oakland - were "eroding." The following season, with the New England Patriots, Moss set the NFL single-season record for receiving touchdowns.

Not that Davis should have been surprised, especially. On Monday, the St. Louis Rams fired their head coach - one-time Idaho assistant Scott Linehan - after Linehan benched the team's franchise quarterback, Marc Bulger. St. Louis is paying Bulger $10.25 million this year, and Linehan's 2 1/2-year record was 11-25.

Former U of I coach Dennis Erickson, who won two national championships on the college level (though none at Idaho), was just 40-53 in six seasons in the NFL. Erickson's predecessor in his second tour with the Vandals - Nick Holt - spent 18 hours as the defensive line coach of the St. Louis Rams in 2006 before changing his mind and taking an assistant coaching job at the University of Southern California.

Of the dozen former Idaho, Boise State and Idaho State head coaches and assistant coaches who eventually made it to the NFL, only two - ex-BSU coach Dirk Koetter, now offensive coordinator with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and former Idaho coach Keith Gilbertson, who coaches the Seattle Seahawks offense - have winning records in the pros.

Walsh, by the way, is back running his B&B in Swan Valley. They don't have Cable at his Hansen-Silver Creek Guest ranch, but stay tuned.

Steve Crump can be reach-ed at 735-3223 or scrump@magicvalley.com. Hear him live on KLIX-1310 AM at 8:30 a.m. Friday or on the Web at ww.magicvalley.com/opinion.