The CardBoard
Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist (/thread-23556.html)

Pages: 1 2

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - Ohiocard - 10-11-2022

(10-11-2022, 01:37 PM)gailtate Wrote:  
(10-11-2022, 01:18 PM)Ohiocard Wrote:  
(10-11-2022, 01:03 PM)msqueri Wrote:  
(10-11-2022, 12:38 PM)PAsportsfan Wrote:  How about a coach from a top 5 program?

Special Teams Coordinator Jay Harbaugh.

Other names on top five programs: Bill O'Brien, Todd Monken, Will Muschamp, Kevin Wilson, Tony Alford, Brian Hartline, Jesse Minter, Sherrone Moore

Getting a few years ahead of the curve, our old non-coach assistant from early Harbaugh days, Coleman Hutzler, is now Saban's special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach. Having apprenticed under Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, Lane Kiffin, and now Saban, he's a guy to have an eye on. Getting ahead of ourselves to consider for Power Five head coach though.

1) Are there some examples of coaches in the past decade, that flamed out elsewhere becoming success at a 2nd HC opportunity?

2) Rank these attributes:

- History of developing players to outperform talent ratings
- National/high academic recruiting track record
- Established ties on the West Coast
- Productive & innovative schemes
- Ability to re-brand a program

Talent on hand "brands" your program in the early going, fortified with the supplemental talent you're capable of attracting.   Denny Green ran "power" primarily because of what Jack Elway left him (Vardell); Walsh I was endowed with the talent to run a spectacular pro-set along with
"long handoffs", Wiggin inherited a generational QB; Harbaugh ran power mainly because of his inheritance (Gerhart, et. al.)

By re-brand I mean more in a marketing sense, not schematically (i.e. PJ Fleck, Dion Sanders, Mel Tucker)

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - msqueri - 10-11-2022

(10-11-2022, 01:18 PM)Ohiocard Wrote:  
(10-11-2022, 01:03 PM)msqueri Wrote:  
(10-11-2022, 12:38 PM)PAsportsfan Wrote:  How about a coach from a top 5 program?

Special Teams Coordinator Jay Harbaugh.

Other names on top five programs: Bill O'Brien, Todd Monken, Will Muschamp, Kevin Wilson, Tony Alford, Brian Hartline, Jesse Minter, Sherrone Moore

Getting a few years ahead of the curve, our old non-coach assistant from early Harbaugh days, Coleman Hutzler, is now Saban's special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach. Having apprenticed under Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, Lane Kiffin, and now Saban, he's a guy to have an eye on. Getting ahead of ourselves to consider for Power Five head coach though.

1) Are there some examples of coaches in the past decade, that flamed out elsewhere becoming success at a 2nd HC opportunity?

2) Rank these attributes:

- History of developing players to outperform talent ratings
- National/high academic recruiting track record
- Established ties on the West Coast
- Productive & innovative schemes
- Ability to re-brand a program

1) I'm most interested in whether the coach has done it at a struggling Power Five program. I didn't find good evidence for that. That's why I'm skeptical of Taggart/Muschamp types for us, but am open to argument. Beyond that, answering your question depends a lot on your definition of "flamed out" and whether you count Group of Five as "success." Do Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Sonny Dykes, Hugh Freeze, and Brady Hoke count?

2) Not how I'd frame the criteria but in the spirit of answering, if ability to re-brand a program encompasses team culture building that's top of my list. Recruiting (which is about effort and salesmanship and I wouldn't get caught up on how national or academic somebody's experience is) and player development (which I'd characterize more based on assistant coach and strength staff hiring/retention/evaluation to make it skill-based/replicable) are both super important though and are 1B and 1C for me. Scheme does not strike me as important per se, unless by "productive and innovative" you really mean proven results on offense/defense. In that case that's pivotal for me. It really comes down to who is a proven good football coach, which is defined first and foremost by wins. The rest can be a distraction in my view. The beauty of a college football coach is that he owns everything, from recruiting to coaching staff composition to strength and conditioning to team culture. Whether a coach gets to wins more via innovative scheme or recruiting or great brand/culture/motivation building interests me less than the results.

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - BostonCard - 10-11-2022

One other consideration is what the denominator is for each category. I wouldn’t push you to get a full biography of the non-turnaround artists, but if we knew how many attempted turnaround hires there have been this century, and how many of each type, it would help to get likelihood of success.

BC

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - Ohiocard - 10-11-2022

[/quote]

It really comes down to who is a proven good football coach, which is defined first and foremost by wins. The rest can be a distraction in my view. The beauty of a college football coach is that he owns everything, from recruiting to coaching staff composition to strength and conditioning to team culture. Whether a coach gets to wins more via innovative scheme or recruiting or great brand/culture/motivation building interests me less than the results.
[/quote]

"Can they win?" is an over-simplification of how we should view the job search.

- Lance Leipold & Lane Kiffin turned teams around by stabilizing the program's infrastructure and selling playing time to transfers. Would that translate to Stanford?
- Luke Fickell & Mark Stoops turned Cincinnati & Kentucky into consistent 10 win teams by focusing recruiting on the 150 miles around campus. Would that translate to Stanford?
- Chadwell & Clawson have developed unique & dynamic offenses that have covered up their talent deficiencies. Would that translate to Stanford?
- Matt Campbell is a fantastic talent evaluator who can find hidden gems that other schools miss. Would that translate to Stanford?
- PJ Fleck & Mel Tucker can market to recruits, without being directly tied to what they do on the field. Would that translate to Stanford?

Success is a necessary pre-requisite but not where the evaluation stops. What does the coach do well & how does that translate to Stanford?

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - rogpodge - 10-11-2022

I agree that, in general terms, the hire should have head coaching experience. If that is unrealistic, given our academic constraints and conference uncertainty, and other factors that are used against us in recruiting (game day experience, small fanbase, etc.) we are not able to grab a high level head coach, we should be considering coordinators who have turned units around. Cases in point: Chip Kelly (OC at New Hampshire, hired as an OC at Oregon, took over the next year) and Chris Peterson (similar trajectory). Given how many openings there are going to be, and that all programs probably have the same short list, we may have to take a flyer on someone. 

That's assuming we have a head coach opening (which I don't believe will happen). Any of these coordinators should be willing to take an OC or DC level job, I would think.

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - msqueri - 10-11-2022

(10-11-2022, 02:19 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  One other consideration is what the denominator is for each category. I wouldn’t push you to get a full biography of the non-turnaround artists, but if we knew how many attempted turnaround hires there have been this century, and how many of each type, it would help to get likelihood of success.

BC

Fair enough. In the interest of time/sanity, I did this much less methodically. There are probably category errors/omissions/weird judgment calls but I'm mostly interested in getting the scale/general sense of denominator right here. If I were to have done this in the same detail as the earlier portions I imagine some interesting findings would come out of this showing qualitative differences in the types of hires - I can see just looking at these names, for instance, how many were retread coaches without significant prior success, reaches from the start, etc. For now, though, what I'm interested in is just your question about denominators. I'm listing out the names just so you can see my work but the bottom of this post is the interesting part.

Power Five+ Coaches

Ron Zook (Illinois)
Lovie Smith (Illinois)
Gerry DiNardo (Indiana)
Guy Morriss (Baylor)
Charlie Weis (Kansas)
Les Miles (Kansas)
John Mackovic (Arizona)
Rick Neuheisel (UCLA)
Karl Dorrell (Colorado)
Walt Harris (Stanford)
Tyrone Willingham (Washington)
Woody Widenhofer (Vanderbilt)

Lower Level Coaches

Steve Addazio (Boston College)
Dino Babers (Syracuse)
Mike London (Virginia)
Ron Turner (Illinois)
Bill Cubit (Illinois)
Terry Hoeppner (Indiana)
Bill Lynch (Indiana)
John L. Smith (Michigan State)
Scott Frost (Nebraska)
Randy Walker (Northwestern)
Darrell Hazell (Purdue)
Terry Shea (Rutgers)
Matt Wells (Texas Tech)
Mike MacIntyre (Colorado)
Paul Wulff (Washington State)
Derek Dooley (Tennessee)
Bobby Johnson (Vanderbilt)

Coordinators

Carl Franks (Duke)
Ted Roof (Duke)
Kevin Wilson (Indiana)
Matt Canada (Maryland)
Dan McCarney (Iowa State)
Paul Rhoads (Iowa State)
David Beaty (Kansas)
Ron Prince (Kansas State)
Tom Holmoe (Cal)
Mel Tucker (Colorado)
Matt Luke (Ole Miss)
Sylvester Croom (Mississippi State)
Jeremy Pruitt (Tennessee)

Position Coaches

Cam Cameron (Indiana)
Kevin Steele (Baylor)
Jon Embree (Colorado)
Guy Morriss (Kentucky)
Ed Orgeron (Ole Miss)
Robbie Caldwell (Vanderbilt)

Too early to say

Mike Norvell (Florida State)
Scott Satterfield (Louisville)
Mack Brown (North Carolina)
Tom Allen (Indiana)
Mike Locksley (Maryland)
Greg Schiano (Rutgers the second time around)
Jedd Fisch (Arizona)
Justin Wilcox (Cal)
Jonathan Smith (Oregon State)
Sam Pittman (Arkansas)
Shane Beamer (South Carolina)
Josh Heupel (Tennessee)
Clark Lea (Vanderbilt)

Too hard to classify

Brady Hoke (Michigan)
Tyrone Willingham (Notre Dame)
Charlie Weis (Notre Dame)
Jerry Kill (Minnesota)
Dirk Koetter (Arizona State)
Hugh Freeze (Ole Miss)
Will Muschamp (South Carolina)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12 Power Five+ coaches makes 22 turnaround artists vs. 12 turnaround flops, giving Power Five+ coaches a roughly (will say roughly for all categories owing to the subjectivity/judgment calls/possibility of error in these posts) 65 percent chance of success.

17 lower level coaches makes 13 turnaround artists vs. 17 turnaround flops, giving lower level coaches a roughly 43 percent chance of success.

13 coordinators makes 15 turnaround artists vs. 13 turnaround flops, giving coordinators a roughly 54 percent chance of success.

6 position coaches makes 2 turnaround artists vs. 6 turnaround flops, giving position coaches a roughly 25 percent chance of success.

Taken altogether, my quick/fallible accounting renders 52 turnaround artists vs. 48 turnaround flops, which I'll summarize as close enough to 50/50 that it's fair to say a rebuilding Power Five team has about a coin flip's chance with any given hire. This is pretty consistent with Stanford's experience it seems. Ralston, Elway, Green, Willingham, Harris, Harbaugh isn't literally one good and one bad but it generally tracks the tossup nature of this.

Given the chances with the proven Power Five guys being higher, I really would recommend trying to see what's feasible among the guys I mentioned in that category. Clawson seems really popular among Stanford fans across the message boards I've posted my research on and that really does make a lot of sense.

RE: Picking a good Power Five turnaround artist - BostonCard - 10-11-2022

Appreciate the analysis, that is very useful. I will admit the numbers are higher than I would have expected, given that your criteria for “turnaround artist” is fairly robust (ie, having to get to 8 wins multiple times).  I think, with all the caveats you give, that your rule of thumb sounds pretty good (50/50 chance), and that P5 coaches are the best bet, and worth a call (I’m thinking someone like Chryst, unless there was a reason beyond one bad season for his firing), and if not G5 colleges.

Dereck Mason didn’t count because he wasn’t there to turn anything around (Franklin had been pretty successful)?

I don’t think it’s too early to say on Wilcox, but I guess given that he has one 8 win season in four chances (excluding 2020), you can reasonably wait a little longer.  Still, he is under .500 overall and under .400 in the PAC-12.  Since Wilcox was hired in 2017, David Shaw actually has more wins (30 to 29) (though that will undoubtably change in as few as two weeks) and substantially more PAC-12 wins (22 vs 16).  Given that this includes three truly miserable years for Shaw, I think that says something about Wilcox.

BC