Yesterday was a federal holiday and a gorgeous day in DC so my choice for self-care was to spend quality time on my patio researching Power Five football coaching hires. What follows are a series of posts drawing on that research. I hope that this becomes relevant for Stanford football soon and, in the meantime, spurs discussion. At least for me it's more pleasant to think about attractive futures than to beat all the dead horses in the Stanford football stable.
I did a previous analysis of the pedigrees of the most successful Power Five coaches of the last three years to see if it supported my long-held belief that the best way to hire a good head coach is to hire somebody who is already a good proven head coach. That analysis suggested that the primary path to a good coach, at least recently and especially for Power Five programs below the football factory level, is to get a proven Group of Five (specifically Group of Five rather than FCS) coach. A few of the names I proposed should be on Muir's watch list continue to reinforce their case, like Jamey Chadwell, Kalani Sitake, and Jeff Traylor. Among other Group of Five guys, Curt Cignetti continues to do really special things that are getting more and more attention now that James Madison has moved up to FBS, Gus Malzahn is making a case to make it back to Power Five, Brent Brennan is making a name for himself, and of course there's Luke Fickell. IMHO all of these guys should at least be on a long list for any opening. Brennan's local and Pac-12 ties makes him an especially obvious one to be on our list.
I wanted to expand/complicate the earlier analysis and look specifically at the pedigrees of coaches who have done what we're hoping will happen post-Shaw: take a very mediocre or worse program and get them to 8+ win seasons. To do this, I thought I'd look at Power Five coaches this century who fit this bill. The next several posts identify those successful turnover artists, lump them into general categories, and provide details on their pedigrees as well as age when they took the job. The coaches are listed in reverse chronological order of their date of hire to approximate relevance to modern college football. In total, there are 52 hires (several coaches mentioned twice because their turnaround artist skills proved replicable....I'm sure you can guess at least one of those!) in the data set: 22 proven Power Five+ head coaches (+ to account for a couple who did NFL before college), 15 coordinators (8 offense, 7 defense), 13 proven lower level head coaches (11 of which came from Group of Five, one of which had a Group of Five-equivalent job long prior but was coming from a Power Five assistant job, and only one of whom did not come from major college football at all....I KNOW you can guess this guy, same guy as before); and 2 position coaches (again an easy one for us to guess!). Across the whole data set, the median age of a Power Five turnaround artist at time of hire is 48.
Much more to dig into below, let's get to it.....
The largest category by what seems like a significant amount are proven Power Five coaches (and certainly the overall category of proven head coaches is the overwhelming route for successful hires). Here is that first category:
Proven Power Five+ Coaches
Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss): Spectacularly successful Florida Atlantic head coach but more known for being the head coach of the Oakland Raiders, USC, and Tennessee; has also been offensive coordinator at Alabama and USC [Miscellaneous: Ole Miss was in a mire of sanctions and mediocrity but he now has them as an apparent powerhouse] - 45
Chip Kelly (UCLA): Former San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Oregon head coach; previously Oregon and New Hampshire offensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: I'm grudgingly making a slight assumption UCLA ends up with an 8+ win season this year, which would be two in a row and qualify for my definition of a turnaround] - 54
Bronco Mendenhall (Virginia): Very successful BYU head coach; previous defensive coordinator at BYU, New Mexico, and Oregon State, along with defensive position coaching jobs [Miscellaneous: currently available] - 50
Jim Harbaugh (Michigan): Spectacularly successful tenures at San Francisco 49ers, Stanford, and University of San Diego; previously NFL QB coach and player [Miscellaneous: as with Kelly it's debatable whether I should even include Harbaugh for this gig as, despite immediately prior mediocrity Michigan is hardly a mediocre program. I did not include Brady Hoke despite two good years because the case for Michigan's mediocrity was even more tenuous pre-Hoke and Hoke's trajectory was bad.] - 51
Todd Graham (Arizona State): Moved laterally from Pitt after a mediocre season; previously spectacularly successful head coach of Tulsa and also head coach of Rice; earlier he had defensive coordinator and position coaching jobs at Tulsa and West Virginia [Miscellaneous: the coaches in this list had trajectories of all sorts and Graham's is one where turnaround came immediately and tremendously and then he sputtered, so clearly not a good/sustainable trajectory, but 28 wins in three years and top two in the Pac-12 South four times in six years is a turnaround artist despite his eventual failings] - 47
Mike Leach (Washington State): Came back from a two year timeout for bad behavior after his spectacular tenure at Texas Tech; prior to Texas Tech was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oklahoma and Kentucky [Miscellaneous: One of many offensive minds on these lists who cut his teeth as an offensive line coach] - 51
Jim L. Mora (UCLA): Technically not a Power Five head coach but an NFL head coach from the Atlanta Falcons and Seattle Seahawks; previously San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: ditto as with Graham in terms of excellent early results that tapered off] - 50
Brian Kelly (Notre Dame): Spectacularly successful tenures at Cincinnati (I realize Cincinnati isn't Power Five now, but Big East was fairly major back then), Central Michigan, and Grand Valley State [Miscellaneous: His predecessors, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis, were edge cases for this exercise. They arguably inherited mediocre programs and both had good seasons but Notre Dame is Notre Dame and their trajectories were bad so I don't think they're what we're talking about here. Arguably Kelly isn't either because it's Notre Dame, but he fits the criteria better.] - 48
Bill Snyder (Kansas State, the second time around): GOAT Hall of Fame coach coming off of a 3+ year retirement for an excellent second act; long ago he was Iowa's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach [Miscellaneous: hey, maybe Shaw can leave for a while and then clean up after his replacement's failure; Snyder left too healthy of a program for me to count Chris Klieman as a turnaround artist, but he's clearly been an excellent coach and if I included him he would have been in the proven lower level coach category] - 69
David Cutcliffe (Duke): Successful tenure at Ole Miss and fired after his only losing season for refusing to fire assistants; most recently Tennessee offensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: long-time Tennessee assistant alongside and then under Phil Fulmer] - 53
I did a previous analysis of the pedigrees of the most successful Power Five coaches of the last three years to see if it supported my long-held belief that the best way to hire a good head coach is to hire somebody who is already a good proven head coach. That analysis suggested that the primary path to a good coach, at least recently and especially for Power Five programs below the football factory level, is to get a proven Group of Five (specifically Group of Five rather than FCS) coach. A few of the names I proposed should be on Muir's watch list continue to reinforce their case, like Jamey Chadwell, Kalani Sitake, and Jeff Traylor. Among other Group of Five guys, Curt Cignetti continues to do really special things that are getting more and more attention now that James Madison has moved up to FBS, Gus Malzahn is making a case to make it back to Power Five, Brent Brennan is making a name for himself, and of course there's Luke Fickell. IMHO all of these guys should at least be on a long list for any opening. Brennan's local and Pac-12 ties makes him an especially obvious one to be on our list.
I wanted to expand/complicate the earlier analysis and look specifically at the pedigrees of coaches who have done what we're hoping will happen post-Shaw: take a very mediocre or worse program and get them to 8+ win seasons. To do this, I thought I'd look at Power Five coaches this century who fit this bill. The next several posts identify those successful turnover artists, lump them into general categories, and provide details on their pedigrees as well as age when they took the job. The coaches are listed in reverse chronological order of their date of hire to approximate relevance to modern college football. In total, there are 52 hires (several coaches mentioned twice because their turnaround artist skills proved replicable....I'm sure you can guess at least one of those!) in the data set: 22 proven Power Five+ head coaches (+ to account for a couple who did NFL before college), 15 coordinators (8 offense, 7 defense), 13 proven lower level head coaches (11 of which came from Group of Five, one of which had a Group of Five-equivalent job long prior but was coming from a Power Five assistant job, and only one of whom did not come from major college football at all....I KNOW you can guess this guy, same guy as before); and 2 position coaches (again an easy one for us to guess!). Across the whole data set, the median age of a Power Five turnaround artist at time of hire is 48.
Much more to dig into below, let's get to it.....
The largest category by what seems like a significant amount are proven Power Five coaches (and certainly the overall category of proven head coaches is the overwhelming route for successful hires). Here is that first category:
Proven Power Five+ Coaches
Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss): Spectacularly successful Florida Atlantic head coach but more known for being the head coach of the Oakland Raiders, USC, and Tennessee; has also been offensive coordinator at Alabama and USC [Miscellaneous: Ole Miss was in a mire of sanctions and mediocrity but he now has them as an apparent powerhouse] - 45
Chip Kelly (UCLA): Former San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Oregon head coach; previously Oregon and New Hampshire offensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: I'm grudgingly making a slight assumption UCLA ends up with an 8+ win season this year, which would be two in a row and qualify for my definition of a turnaround] - 54
Bronco Mendenhall (Virginia): Very successful BYU head coach; previous defensive coordinator at BYU, New Mexico, and Oregon State, along with defensive position coaching jobs [Miscellaneous: currently available] - 50
Jim Harbaugh (Michigan): Spectacularly successful tenures at San Francisco 49ers, Stanford, and University of San Diego; previously NFL QB coach and player [Miscellaneous: as with Kelly it's debatable whether I should even include Harbaugh for this gig as, despite immediately prior mediocrity Michigan is hardly a mediocre program. I did not include Brady Hoke despite two good years because the case for Michigan's mediocrity was even more tenuous pre-Hoke and Hoke's trajectory was bad.] - 51
Todd Graham (Arizona State): Moved laterally from Pitt after a mediocre season; previously spectacularly successful head coach of Tulsa and also head coach of Rice; earlier he had defensive coordinator and position coaching jobs at Tulsa and West Virginia [Miscellaneous: the coaches in this list had trajectories of all sorts and Graham's is one where turnaround came immediately and tremendously and then he sputtered, so clearly not a good/sustainable trajectory, but 28 wins in three years and top two in the Pac-12 South four times in six years is a turnaround artist despite his eventual failings] - 47
Mike Leach (Washington State): Came back from a two year timeout for bad behavior after his spectacular tenure at Texas Tech; prior to Texas Tech was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oklahoma and Kentucky [Miscellaneous: One of many offensive minds on these lists who cut his teeth as an offensive line coach] - 51
Jim L. Mora (UCLA): Technically not a Power Five head coach but an NFL head coach from the Atlanta Falcons and Seattle Seahawks; previously San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: ditto as with Graham in terms of excellent early results that tapered off] - 50
Brian Kelly (Notre Dame): Spectacularly successful tenures at Cincinnati (I realize Cincinnati isn't Power Five now, but Big East was fairly major back then), Central Michigan, and Grand Valley State [Miscellaneous: His predecessors, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis, were edge cases for this exercise. They arguably inherited mediocre programs and both had good seasons but Notre Dame is Notre Dame and their trajectories were bad so I don't think they're what we're talking about here. Arguably Kelly isn't either because it's Notre Dame, but he fits the criteria better.] - 48
Bill Snyder (Kansas State, the second time around): GOAT Hall of Fame coach coming off of a 3+ year retirement for an excellent second act; long ago he was Iowa's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach [Miscellaneous: hey, maybe Shaw can leave for a while and then clean up after his replacement's failure; Snyder left too healthy of a program for me to count Chris Klieman as a turnaround artist, but he's clearly been an excellent coach and if I included him he would have been in the proven lower level coach category] - 69
David Cutcliffe (Duke): Successful tenure at Ole Miss and fired after his only losing season for refusing to fire assistants; most recently Tennessee offensive coordinator [Miscellaneous: long-time Tennessee assistant alongside and then under Phil Fulmer] - 53