10-11-2022, 07:16 PM
(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)
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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.