Coaching Churn

[VFL-82-JP]

My question is : How the heck do you rate Tennessee in the top 4 SEC teams?
We are closer to bottom 4.
Lost me from the start.

You have such a short memory. It has only been the last 12 or so years that we've sucked.

Over a 70-year study, the Vols are absolutely one of the top 21 teams to consider.

 

[SpookyAction]

This HC and staff passed the smell test the 2nd half of 2019 and the first 2 games of 2020. The rest has been garbage.
There is a wrong way to clean a program and UT has done it with the last four hires. TX did it correctly. They had their guy ready and waiting for the announcement. Anything else will be worse than keeping this staff. If Fulmer won't do it right, then he shouldn't do it.

It seems foolish to hope this investigation helps the situation in any possible way. If it is nothing, nothing changes. If it is something, no good coach will come here. If it is big, we are screwed all ways.
Tough time to love the VOLS. I am sick and tired of it.

Even my UT Christmas tree brought little joy this year. All the commemorative ornaments are getting old, just like all our conversations on the forum since the UGA game. We just beat each other with the same tired arguments and negation to any ideas or (the few small or short-term) positives.

OP, interesting organization of information, but there are some other anomalies to be mentioned, like the John Barnhill teams when Gen Neyland was at war. He coached for 4 season and went 32-5-2 at UT (He is my GrtGrt uncle.) Then he moved on to build Arky because the General came home. Oddly, his teams were only in the Top 10 at the end of the season once! Too many variables to draw a lot of conclusions, unless you focus more on the down years. Then the terms of HC's might be more telling, but the results more predictable.

 

['Boro-vol]

You have such a short memory. It has only been the last 12 or so years that we've sucked.

Over a 70-year study, the Vols are absolutely one of the top 21 teams to consider.

This is literally the only thing you've ever posted that I can agree with. It's a shame that the last 12 years have tainted our legacy, and reputation so badly. Many folks no longer know who we are in college football from a historical standpoint.

Most everything else you post is self-aggrandizing pablum, like the OP for instance...but this, this is spot-on. Well-done.

 

[tnutater]

You have such a short memory. It has only been the last 12 or so years that we've sucked.

Over a 70-year study, the Vols are absolutely one of the top 21 teams to consider.

I only need my short memory.
The only thing certain is that things change.
The game, player's ability, coaching and everything else has changed numerous times in 70 years.
There is not very much that has not changed in the game of college football since the Vols were relevant. Most of the current players were in diapers or still a gleam in Daddy's eye.
I do enjoy studies in ancient football history.
Leather helmets, players going both ways, wing t, single wing. Even the power I which we ran a lot when we were last competitive.
In any endeavor, you have to keep up or be left behind.
Tennessee football was left behind 20 years ago.
Our one attempt to keep up was foiled by the same people that run things now.(Fulmer, Clawfense)

 

[ETSU VOL]

WARNING: LONG. Folks with ADD or who do not enjoy reading, you might want to sit this one out.

What's the right answer when it comes to "coaching churn"? You know, that search for a new championship-caliber head coach the most successful schools go through from time to time? What's the best frequency for trying coaches out? One every two years? Four? Six? How does it look for the winningest programs?

That question, or family of questions, was what got me started on some new research. I wanted to find the answers. Or more accurately, I wanted to find out if there are discernable right answers. Because there may not be. A wide variety of approaches and frequencies of coaching churn may provide equally good results. Let's find out.

~ ~ ~
​

Okay, so bottom line up front, here's what I learned: 3.3 to 6.1 years, or about four and a half years on average, is the best frequency for churning through coaches to find a championship-winner. That's based on the successes of many of the best teams in the college game over the past seventy years.

~ ~ ~​

Now, here's how I learned it.

First, I selected 21 top-tier teams. I picked 4 of the best programs from each Power 5 conference (took a little liberty with what the Big 12 includes, since they bled off some of their most successful programs in the past decade or two), plus Notre Dame. That initially looked like:

View attachment 335851

Next, I set a start and end date for the research. Chose 1950 for the start (first year with both the AP and Coaches Poll, and late enough in football history that no amateur head coaches remained), and 2019, obviously, for the end date. That yielded exactly 70 seasons, a nice easy number to work with.

Then, time for research. I gathered three metrics for each program: how many head coaches they went through over the 70 years, how many of those coaches were national title winners (whether once or more than once), and how many national championships total the program won.

That came out looking like this (sorted by # of championships):

View attachment 335854

And almost immediately, interesting facts started to jump out of the data:

(1) Could take Wisconsin, North Carolina, A&M, and Oregon off the list; they couldn't teach us anything about finding championship caliber coaches. For that matter, could remove Georgia and UCLA as well, since 1 single success doesn't mean much. That brought the working group down to 15 schools.

(2) The team with the fewest coaches over those 70 years was Penn State, at 5. The average PSU coach lasted 14 years. Naturally, you and I know that is skewed by Paterno's 46-year tenure. Still, it's an interesting bookend. The other bookend of that stat? Pitt, with a whopping 22 head coaches. That's a new coach every 3.2 years. Of course, we (Tennessee) are partly responsible for Pitt's lack of coaching longevity, as we stole away one of their two championship-caliber coaches, Johnny Majors, right after he won them the first of the two listed titles. A&M would steal Jackie Sherrill from them in a similar way not long after their 1980 title. Isn't it curious that the teams with the greatest and shortest coaching longevity are both from the same state?

(3) The teams with the most championship-caliber coaches weren't exactly the same as those with the most championships. LSU and Notre Dame each have had 4 championship coaches in the past 70 years (Leahy, Parseghian, Devine and Holtz for ND; Dietzel, Saban, Miles, and Orgeron for LSU), but LSU won only 4 titles with those gentlemen (ND was more successful, pulling in 9). The teams with the most titles, Bama and Oklahoma, actually did it with fewer coaches, 3 each (Bryant, Stallings, Saban; and Wilkinson, Switzer, Stoops). I was actually tempted at this point of the research to collapse all my study down to those two programs, since they seemed to have broken the code on finding and retaining championship coaches for maximum gain. But decided to continue with the 15 programs to see what else they might yield collectively.

Okay, so here is where I realized something that some of you probably noticed almost from the start. The churn only matters when you DON'T have the championship caliber coach. So the data above isn't nearly as useful as it would be after removing the guys who won a title and tallying up the rest.

Okay, so back to the wiki pages, to come up with this:

View attachment 335870

Some new lessons emerge from this revised look:

(a) We do not want to be like Pitt or Washington, churning away every 2-3 years and getting very little in return. That's the over-energetic end of the spectrum.

(b) We also do not want to be at the Clemson / Penn State end of the scale, with a habit of sitting on a coach for long time frames without anything to show for it. Keep in mind, that Penn State finding, that's AFTER taking Paterno out of the data. They simply stay with a coach for much longer than the norm.

(c) So the "right answer" seems to be in the 3 1/2 to 6 year range. Oklahoma, at 3.3, and Bama at 3.6 years, are certainly successful finding championship caliber coaches. At the other extreme, Ohio State at 5.2 years and LSU at 6.1 are also very successful finding a coach who can get to the title game. So that's the answer to the central question of the poll: 3.3 to 6.1...round it to 3-6 years. Four and a half on average. That's how long the best programs spend on each coach before they churn to another one.

(d) You might think Tennessee is at the longish end of the spectrum. But we stuck with Johnny Majors for almost 16 years, without ever getting a national title from him. Not saying we shouldn't have, Johnny is a state treasure. Just saying that emotion ruled over objective reasoning in his case. If you take Johnny out of the math, the Vols only spend 3.9 years on each coach, on average. So maybe that's one lesson that some might draw: if you care only about titles, not about things like having a Native Son everyone loves as your head coach, don't get stuck with a guy for a decade-plus; if the first national title hasn't come by then for you, it likely never will.

(e) Good people like SJT will argue we should churn faster than we already do. Faster than one every 3.9 years. Maybe as fast as every 2 to 3 years. But I think this data shows that there is such thing as going too often. I'd be interested in hearing SJT's thoughts on that particular point.

~ ~ ~​

Okay, that's it. I think I've answered the initial questions, at least to my own satisfaction. How about yours? If you're still reading after all this, you certainly care about college football trends. I'd like to hear what you think.

Thanks for joining me while I slogged through these thoughts.

Go Vols!



Notes:
(a) On championships counted: unlike ESPN, I firmly believe more than just the AP poll counts in deciding who won a national title. The Coaches Poll is equally valuable, and before either of those polls existed, there were a number of useful rating systems, some of which continue to award national titles to this day. But it does get confusing to count every little computer system that some geeky economist comes up with. So the way I decided what counted was this. I started with the list of title winners on this wiki page ( College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS - Wikipedia ) and gave credit to any team where two or more polls/ratings agreed. That eliminates the after-the-fact one-offs, like Sagarin or CFRA going back and awarding titles from decades before their systems ever existed. The only time I counted a single source as valid by itself was for the AP or UPI/USAToday.
(b) For those who still crave more on championships and how they were awarded over the decades, I found this to be a nice read:
SMQ: A brief history of college football national championship claims

Good read and analysis of this subject. You mention that if you throw out Majors it brings us to 3.9. What happens if you throw out Kiffin’s 1 year?

 

[imavolfan]

I’m ok with the math of 3-4 years turnover. You know by the end of year 3 if the coach is making progress with his own recruits. Also, I’d be ok with a 4 year run with a coach that makes us competitive again with Al, GA, and FL and winning 8 games a year with good recruits. That makes us more attractive to a national championship winning coach.

 

[SpookyAction]

That really sounds great right now.

I’m ok with the math of 3-4 years turnover. You know by the end of year 3 if the coach is making progress with his own recruits. Also, I’d be ok with a 4 year run with a coach that makes us competitive again with Al, GA, and FL and winning 8 games a year with good recruits. That makes us more attractive to a national championship winning coach.

 

[BeardedVol]

My question is : How the heck do you rate Tennessee in the top 4 SEC teams?
We are closer to bottom 4.
Lost me from the start.

Because he's being selectively subjective, while feining objectivity.

It's the same reason he has Pitt as a 'top tier' ACC program even though they have only been in the ACC since 2013, and have been wholly irrelevant, in spite of being in the weaker division of the conference.

 

[DaddyChad]

Don't want to keep Pruitt. If we can have a Bob Stoops instead. But I certainly don't want to leap off into another coaching search without knowing we can bring in a proven winner.

So try again, Bearded. You continue to take pot shots at where I'm not.

So are we supposed to keep Pruitt until we know we can hire a proven winner? Bc we already know Pruitt is a proven loser. I’m sure you’ll view this as an attack but I’m legitimately trying to understand your thinking.
What level of coach are we viewing as a proven winner? Was Mullen before Florida? He was to me but to others not so much. What about Malzahn?

 

[tnutater]

Because he's being selectively subjective, while feining objectivity.

It's the same reason he has Pitt as a 'top tier' ACC program even though they have only been in the ACC since 2013, and have been wholly irrelevant, in spite of being in the weaker division of the conference.

If we open 2021 with Pitt would you take the Vols even up?

 

[hUTch2002]

WARNING: LONG. Folks with ADD or who do not enjoy reading, you might want to sit this one out.

What's the right answer when it comes to "coaching churn"? You know, that search for a new championship-caliber head coach the most successful schools go through from time to time? What's the best frequency for trying coaches out? One every two years? Four? Six? How does it look for the winningest programs?

That question, or family of questions, was what got me started on some new research. I wanted to find the answers. Or more accurately, I wanted to find out if there are discernable right answers. Because there may not be. A wide variety of approaches and frequencies of coaching churn may provide equally good results. Let's find out.

~ ~ ~
​

Okay, so bottom line up front, here's what I learned: 3.3 to 6.1 years, or about four and a half years on average, is the best frequency for churning through coaches to find a championship-winner. That's based on the successes of many of the best teams in the college game over the past seventy years.

~ ~ ~​

Now, here's how I learned it.

First, I selected 21 top-tier teams. I picked 4 of the best programs from each Power 5 conference (took a little liberty with what the Big 12 includes, since they bled off some of their most successful programs in the past decade or two), plus Notre Dame. That initially looked like:

View attachment 335851

Next, I set a start and end date for the research. Chose 1950 for the start (first year with both the AP and Coaches Poll, and late enough in football history that no amateur head coaches remained), and 2019, obviously, for the end date. That yielded exactly 70 seasons, a nice easy number to work with.

Then, time for research. I gathered three metrics for each program: how many head coaches they went through over the 70 years, how many of those coaches were national title winners (whether once or more than once), and how many national championships total the program won.

That came out looking like this (sorted by # of championships):

View attachment 335854

And almost immediately, interesting facts started to jump out of the data:

(1) Could take Wisconsin, North Carolina, A&M, and Oregon off the list; they couldn't teach us anything about finding championship caliber coaches. For that matter, could remove Georgia and UCLA as well, since 1 single success doesn't mean much. That brought the working group down to 15 schools.

(2) The team with the fewest coaches over those 70 years was Penn State, at 5. The average PSU coach lasted 14 years. Naturally, you and I know that is skewed by Paterno's 46-year tenure. Still, it's an interesting bookend. The other bookend of that stat? Pitt, with a whopping 22 head coaches. That's a new coach every 3.2 years. Of course, we (Tennessee) are partly responsible for Pitt's lack of coaching longevity, as we stole away one of their two championship-caliber coaches, Johnny Majors, right after he won them the first of the two listed titles. A&M would steal Jackie Sherrill from them in a similar way not long after their 1980 title. Isn't it curious that the teams with the greatest and shortest coaching longevity are both from the same state?

(3) The teams with the most championship-caliber coaches weren't exactly the same as those with the most championships. LSU and Notre Dame each have had 4 championship coaches in the past 70 years (Leahy, Parseghian, Devine and Holtz for ND; Dietzel, Saban, Miles, and Orgeron for LSU), but LSU won only 4 titles with those gentlemen (ND was more successful, pulling in 9). The teams with the most titles, Bama and Oklahoma, actually did it with fewer coaches, 3 each (Bryant, Stallings, Saban; and Wilkinson, Switzer, Stoops). I was actually tempted at this point of the research to collapse all my study down to those two programs, since they seemed to have broken the code on finding and retaining championship coaches for maximum gain. But decided to continue with the 15 programs to see what else they might yield collectively.

Okay, so here is where I realized something that some of you probably noticed almost from the start. The churn only matters when you DON'T have the championship caliber coach. So the data above isn't nearly as useful as it would be after removing the guys who won a title and tallying up the rest.

Okay, so back to the wiki pages, to come up with this:

View attachment 335870

Some new lessons emerge from this revised look:

(a) We do not want to be like Pitt or Washington, churning away every 2-3 years and getting very little in return. That's the over-energetic end of the spectrum.

(b) We also do not want to be at the Clemson / Penn State end of the scale, with a habit of sitting on a coach for long time frames without anything to show for it. Keep in mind, that Penn State finding, that's AFTER taking Paterno out of the data. They simply stay with a coach for much longer than the norm.

(c) So the "right answer" seems to be in the 3 1/2 to 6 year range. Oklahoma, at 3.3, and Bama at 3.6 years, are certainly successful finding championship caliber coaches. At the other extreme, Ohio State at 5.2 years and LSU at 6.1 are also very successful finding a coach who can get to the title game. So that's the answer to the central question of the poll: 3.3 to 6.1...round it to 3-6 years. Four and a half on average. That's how long the best programs spend on each coach before they churn to another one.

(d) You might think Tennessee is at the longish end of the spectrum. But we stuck with Johnny Majors for almost 16 years, without ever getting a national title from him. Not saying we shouldn't have, Johnny is a state treasure. Just saying that emotion ruled over objective reasoning in his case. If you take Johnny out of the math, the Vols only spend 3.9 years on each coach, on average. So maybe that's one lesson that some might draw: if you care only about titles, not about things like having a Native Son everyone loves as your head coach, don't get stuck with a guy for a decade-plus; if the first national title hasn't come by then for you, it likely never will.

(e) Good people like SJT will argue we should churn faster than we already do. Faster than one every 3.9 years. Maybe as fast as every 2 to 3 years. But I think this data shows that there is such thing as going too often. I'd be interested in hearing SJT's thoughts on that particular point.

~ ~ ~​

Okay, that's it. I think I've answered the initial questions, at least to my own satisfaction. How about yours? If you're still reading after all this, you certainly care about college football trends. I'd like to hear what you think.

Thanks for joining me while I slogged through these thoughts.

Go Vols!



Notes:
(a) On championships counted: unlike ESPN, I firmly believe more than just the AP poll counts in deciding who won a national title. The Coaches Poll is equally valuable, and before either of those polls existed, there were a number of useful rating systems, some of which continue to award national titles to this day. But it does get confusing to count every little computer system that some geeky economist comes up with. So the way I decided what counted was this. I started with the list of title winners on this wiki page ( College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS - Wikipedia ) and gave credit to any team where two or more polls/ratings agreed. That eliminates the after-the-fact one-offs, like Sagarin or CFRA going back and awarding titles from decades before their systems ever existed. The only time I counted a single source as valid by itself was for the AP or UPI/USAToday.
(b) For those who still crave more on championships and how they were awarded over the decades, I found this to be a nice read:
SMQ: A brief history of college football national championship claims

Interesting for sure. Thanks for putting in the work. You almost have to toss Saban out of all such analysis because he is such an anomaly. He didn’t win a NC until his 9th year coaching a P5 school as it was year 4 at LSU after 5 at Mich St. and the run he is on at Bama is unparalleled. The man has lost 12 games in the last 10 years. We lost 7 just this year! I don’t think you typically can know for sure that someone is the right guy after 3 years but I absolutely think you can know if they aren’t the right person after 3 years. That’s where we are.

 

[BeardedVol]

If we open 2021 with Pitt would you take the Vols even up?

Not with Pruitt as our HC.

We have way more recruited talent than Pitt, but we're seeing regression.

 

[VFL-82-JP]

This HC and staff passed the smell test the 2nd half of 2019 and the first 2 games of 2020. The rest has been garbage.
There is a wrong way to clean a program and UT has done it with the last four hires. TX did it correctly. They had their guy ready and waiting for the announcement. Anything else will be worse than keeping this staff. If Fulmer won't do it right, then he shouldn't do it.

It seems foolish to hope this investigation helps the situation in any possible way. If it is nothing, nothing changes. If it is something, no good coach will come here. If it is big, we are screwed all ways.
Tough time to love the VOLS. I am sick and tired of it.

Even my UT Christmas tree brought little joy this year. All the commemorative ornaments are getting old, just like all our conversations on the forum since the UGA game. We just beat each other with the same tired arguments and negation to any ideas or (the few small or short-term) positives.

OP, interesting organization of information, but there are some other anomalies to be mentioned, like the John Barnhill teams when Gen Neyland was at war. He coached for 4 season and went 32-5-2 at UT (He is my GrtGrt uncle.) Then he moved on to build Arky because the General came home. Oddly, his teams were only in the Top 10 at the end of the season once! Too many variables to draw a lot of conclusions, unless you focus more on the down years. Then the terms of HC's might be more telling, but the results more predictable.

Thanks, Spooky. I totally agree that Texas absolutely showed the right way to time it this weekend. Firing and hiring all in 24 hours. In a single day, iirc. That's really solid behind-the-scenes work.

That doesn't mean their new coach is going to be super successful. Sark is Kiffin, with alcohol rather than co-eds and tweets as his kryptonite. He may never be a championship coach. But he's got a shot, just like Pruitt has had at Tennessee. Pruitt's chance is rapidly coming to a close; he's got this one more season, I'd say.

Anyway, you mentioned John Barnhill. I think it's super cool that he's your relative. He is one of my favorite "hidden" stories about the Vols' history. If you go strictly by winning %, even more successful than the General. He absolutely deserves to be remembered, and fondly.

If he hadn't come outside the time limits of my study, I would certainly have mentioned and considered him.

Thanks again for the note; appreciate it.

 

[VFL-82-JP]

Good read and analysis of this subject. You mention that if you throw out Majors it brings us to 3.9. What happens if you throw out Kiffin’s 1 year?

Not much movement. Maybe from 3.9 to 4.0. I mean, it's a 1 man, 1 year blip.

EDIT: I went back and calculated it: 4.3 years without Majors or Kiffin's tenures.

 

[tnutater]

Not with Pruitt as our HC.

We have way more recruited talent than Pitt, but we're seeing regression.

True that.
Watching the bowl games it appeared the best teams practiced execution.
The Vols are still trying to learn the game.
And not doing that very well.

 

[photovol]

Over the past 14 years Memphis would definitely rate higher than the Vols in football

 

[Johnnyreb#VFL]

I think every coach should be given at least 4 years to get 4 full recruiting cycles in, unless there are other glaring issues imo.

In b4 people start mentioning the glaring issues Pruitt and co currently face

 

[Illinoisvolfan2]

Cliff Notes version please. WTF did he say in a few sentences?

 

[VFL-82-JP]

So are we supposed to keep Pruitt until we know we can hire a proven winner? Bc we already know Pruitt is a proven loser. I’m sure you’ll view this as an attack but I’m legitimately trying to understand your thinking.
What level of coach are we viewing as a proven winner? Was Mullen before Florida? He was to me but to others not so much. What about Malzahn?

I didn't see that as an attack. No worries. I get that it's a real question. My answer:

No. But there's no rush to get rid of him without knowing we can hire one, is there?

As I took a break this afternoon, I thought through something related to this.

Bama goes out and hires their champions. They didn't go after Bryant until they knew he was a proven winner. They didn't go after Saban until he'd won a natty for LSU. They are strictly mercenary with their key coaching picks.

Now, that doesn't mean they never had to churn. They did. And when they churned, they tended to go after old Bryant players. Even guys like Stallings who played for Bryant not at Bama, but at A&M (he was one of the Junction Boys--more importantly to this study, he was also a proven conference championship winner, with A&M, before Bama ever considered him).

But from time to time, an opportunity presented itself to go buy the best coach out there. And both times, that's just what they did.

Back to Tennessee's case.

We may or may not have a chance to go out and buy the very best right now. Bob Stoops, for instance. Sometimes, the opportunity just isn't there. So we'll keep churning. But, importantly, it's not such a big deal how fast or slow we churn while waiting for that rare opportunity. Anywhere in that 3.3 to 6.1 year window seems about right. So rather than going through another coaching change, I think it's well worth giving Pruitt one more chance to see if he can grow into the head coaching job.

Did that answer your question? Or did you need me to say, no, Freeze is not the caliber we're looking for. Neither is Malzahn. Or Chizik. Or Kiffin. Or Leach. Or any of the other Goggle-names mentioned recently. Mullen would be an interesting discussion. But he's not available.

Answered?

 

[ETSU VOL]

Not much movement. Maybe from 3.9 to 4.0. I mean, it's a 1 man, 1 year blip.

EDIT: I went back and calculated it: 4.3 years without Majors or Kiffin's tenures.

Thanks man I was just curious if Kiffin’s 1 year tenure pulled our avg numbers down any. Seems it only effected the average by 0.4 years or about a half a year.

 

[Rickyvol77]

It's the "Fahr Pruitt" approach. If you don't kick and scream for his head, you must want him to stay.

Yes there are lot of these type posters here

 

[VFL-82-JP]

Thanks man I was just curious if Kiffin’s 1 year tenure pulled our avg numbers down any. Seems it only effected the average by 0.4 years or about a half a year.

By the way, there are a surprising number of one-year coaching tenures among the schools in this study. I don't know the stories behind most of them, I'm sure they came and went for all kinds of reasons. But the point is, if you're worried Kiffin was throwing us out of 'normal,' I wouldn't worry about that. It's a pretty common occurrence.

 

[VFL-82-JP]

This is literally the only thing you've ever posted that I can agree with. It's a shame that the last 12 years have tainted our legacy, and reputation so badly. Many folks no longer know who we are in college football from a historical standpoint.

Most everything else you post is self-aggrandizing pablum, like the OP for instance...but this, this is spot-on. Well-done.

Oh I don't know, Boro, don't undersell yourself. I feel like I've seen you agree with me once or twice before in the past five years.

 

[DiderotsGhost]

Interesting analysis, though, I do think it can be difficult to quantify given the immense differences from time period to time period. When Johnny Majors was at Pitt, he recruited 85 new players in his first year. So he basically turned over the entire roster in a single season. Not possible any more. We're now on the other end of the spectrum, where it can really take 4-5 years to turn over a roster due to scholarship restrictions. Ironically, teams have grown more impatient in spite of this.

I personally think Texas made a huge mistake firing Tom Herman. He brought in the #3 ranked classes in 2018 and 2019 and the #8 ranked class in 2020. He turned the corner this season; would've been 10-3 in a normal season; Texas's best season since 2009. And all 3 losses were by less than 3 points; including a 4OT loss to Oklahoma, the conference champion. He also won the Sugar Bowl 2 years ago. If that's not an argument for more patience, I don't know what is. In an age of scholarship reductions and slow turnarounds, Herman has done a very good job at Texas and got fired by impatient boosters, who have the stupid "IF YOU DONT WIN IN 3 YEARS, YOULL NEVER WIN" philosophy.

Auburn with Malzahn and Nebraska with Pelini are interesting case studies, because both coaches were consistently good, but rarely great (Malzahn went to the national title game in Year 1, but that's his only "great" season. And Pelini was the king of going 9-4 / 10-4 with some huge loss to a great team. Both coaches appear to be "good coaches" who would never be great (maybe a better case for Malzahn than Pelini). I think both firings were justifiable, but also difficult because neither coach ever really "flopped"; they were just never great either.

In any case, I do think most Tier 1 programs are too quick to fire nowadays, rather than the reverse. But I also think there's typically some point where you know whether a coach can be great and the time period varies from coach to coach. But even that's not foolproof. Look at Gene Stallings, for instance. He bombed at Texas A&M and became a legendary coach at Alabama. A&M was right to fire him for poor performance, but he was a totally different coach 20 years later.

I'm rambling, though

 

[DonDiego]

I'll say I appreciate your hard work on this. I'm also more of an 'on the fence' guy regarding Pruitt - I'll live whichever way they go. Having said that, I'm just not convinced your study proves too much. Too much subjectivity in your school choices, too large a period of time covered, there's something off here.

Admittedly, it was so long I mostly skimmed it, but it just appears you could have written your conclusion, then put the data together to back it up.