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It starts with the right coach

Ethnicsands said:
There are two often cited theories about what a UM coach should be, both of which have been proven failures.

First is the candidate with a UM connection. This is premised on there being something magical (special) about UM that must be ‘tapped into.’ In the absence of a great coach, this clearly isn’t accurate. Shannon was that theory. Richt was partly that theory. Manny seems to be that theory.

Second is the ‘ceo’ there. This is premised on Miami’s natural conditions being such that a decent manager will ride the tide upwards here. This too is a ‘magical’ theory because it supposes that our natural destiny is success and it will become manifest as long as no one interferes. Golden was a ‘ceo’ theory guy. Some saw Richt as that also. The reality is that the local talent theory has been misunderstood and overplayed for ages around here. We’re coming up on 30 years since the bermuda triangle. One title in the meantime, and it took 19 first round picks to make it happen.

One additional note: being a good coordinator does not mean you will be a good head coach. That should be obvious. They are very different skill sets. We have seen great head coaches who weren't great coordinators and great coordinators who didn’t make great head coaches. The coordinator hire is an excuse to project onto someone. It’s probably less risky in the NFL, where the team has a President, GM, player personnel director etc. And maybe big time state programs that have more support. At a place like UM without the structure and infrastructure, it’s a crap shoot. Shannon, Diaz.

If you have a good coach, the program building is incremental. People too often look at examples of where it happened fast, but ignore the probabilities. Good coaches keep it going in the right direction, sell, upgrade, refine, innovate, etc. Eventually, with time, effort and perhaps good fortune, they get it to a top level.

So what makes for a good coach? Someone who can get a team to mesh, buy in, play together. Someone who can pick a philosophy, form a staff to implement it, and lead the staff. Someone who knows where to intervene and where not to. Someone who can evaluate kids, and sell them on the program. Schematic genius isn’t required. Coordinators don’t have to be good at these things, and we often don’t have a way to know if they are. It may be impossible to know who will be good at this, so many, probably most coaches start out someone out of the way and build their careers towards big time programs.

If this is right, Manny was a risky hire, and hired for the wrong reasons. Let’s hope he beats the odds.
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LOL that’s a lot of words to say absolutely nothing.

how many times did you rehearse this post and congratulate yourself?
 
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305407cane said:
It’s hard to say one works better than the other. Kirby was never even a head coach. Neither was Lincoln Riley. Programs like that will overcome. It’s hard for us. A real crap shoot
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OU made a phenomenal hire in Riley, and that’s why they’re killing it. They’ve made a bunch of bad hires over the years and couldn’t overcome them.
 
Andrew said:
@Ethnicsands great post.

Curious to what your thoughts are on hiring a guy with success from a lower-tier program (Golden) or a guy with some success at a major program (Richt). Right now we are seeing Fuente and Taggart get their asses kicked. The selling point on Richt was that he did pretty good at UGA and with our talent, we should win championships. Obviously neither Golden nor Richt worked out.
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Taggart was an obvious bad hire. His record showed it at all his stops. Fuente is the surprise. He checked all the boxes you’d want in an up and coming coach. His only short coming was recruiting.
 
The Franchise said:
You didn’t ask me, but “success” at a lower tier program must be scrutinized to see if it’s actually success or not. Winning 8 games at a lower tier program at this point is fairly easy.

If you’re going to look at a lower tier guy see if he’s dominating at that level like Brian Kelly did at several stops and like Urb did. Don’t get sucked in by the “he won 8 games at Temple, so he’ll win 30 games a year at UM” model. It doesn’t translate that way.

It’s easy to take a terrible program and make it respectable; it’s incredibly hard to take a good program and make it elite. A guy like Folden could have won 8 or 9 games almost every year here. He didn’t have what it took to take it to the next level.

Also, pay attention to the material a guy had to work with at his last stop. If he was at a lower tier but had access to as good or better talent than other teams in his conference but still didn’t dominate that’s a huge red flag. Conversely, if he was at a P5 program with much less material and regularly beat teams with much better material he’s a guy to look at. That’s where a Matt Campbell or Dino Babers is intriguing. Used to be Gary Patterson and Art Briles.
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Babers I think would have been a great hire for Miami. He’s got his offensive philosophy, recruits towards it, his players love him and he runs a solid program. Defense might be a bit questionable but the positives he brings far outweigh the negatives.

**** shame that we didn’t even talk to him when richt left.
 
NVA CANE said:
Babers I think would have been a great hire for Miami. He’s got his offensive philosophy, recruits towards it, his players love him and he runs a solid program. Defense might be a bit questionable but the positives he brings far outweigh the negatives.

**** shame that we didn’t even talk to him when richt left.
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Kinda hard to reach out to Barber when the nationwide search only lasted 6 hours
 
Ethnicsands said:
There are two often cited theories about what a UM coach should be, both of which have been proven failures.

First is the candidate with a UM connection. This is premised on there being something magical (special) about UM that must be ‘tapped into.’ In the absence of a great coach, this clearly isn’t accurate. Shannon was that theory. Richt was partly that theory. Manny seems to be that theory.

Second is the ‘ceo’ there. This is premised on Miami’s natural conditions being such that a decent manager will ride the tide upwards here. This too is a ‘magical’ theory because it supposes that our natural destiny is success and it will become manifest as long as no one interferes. Golden was a ‘ceo’ theory guy. Some saw Richt as that also. The reality is that the local talent theory has been misunderstood and overplayed for ages around here. We’re coming up on 30 years since the bermuda triangle. One title in the meantime, and it took 19 first round picks to make it happen.

One additional note: being a good coordinator does not mean you will be a good head coach. That should be obvious. They are very different skill sets. We have seen great head coaches who weren't great coordinators and great coordinators who didn’t make great head coaches. The coordinator hire is an excuse to project onto someone. It’s probably less risky in the NFL, where the team has a President, GM, player personnel director etc. And maybe big time state programs that have more support. At a place like UM without the structure and infrastructure, it’s a crap shoot. Shannon, Diaz.

If you have a good coach, the program building is incremental. People too often look at examples of where it happened fast, but ignore the probabilities. Good coaches keep it going in the right direction, sell, upgrade, refine, innovate, etc. Eventually, with time, effort and perhaps good fortune, they get it to a top level.

So what makes for a good coach? Someone who can get a team to mesh, buy in, play together. Someone who can pick a philosophy, form a staff to implement it, and lead the staff. Someone who knows where to intervene and where not to. Someone who can evaluate kids, and sell them on the program. Schematic genius isn’t required. Coordinators don’t have to be good at these things, and we often don’t have a way to know if they are. It may be impossible to know who will be good at this, so many, probably most coaches start out someone out of the way and build their careers towards big time programs.

If this is right, Manny was a risky hire, and hired for the wrong reasons. Let’s hope he beats the odds.
Click to expand...


This thread completely ignores the fact that there simply aren't a slew of good head coaches out there—as proven across the college football landscape—nor does it touch on the situation a new coach takes over.

Let's be honest, how good of "coach" is Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma—or was he just the right guy at the right time taking over a program that had been elite for over 15 years before his arrival? What does Riley look like if he's coaching somewhere else? Same to be said for a Ryan Day—who took over a loaded program Urban Meyer left him.

Dabo Swinney doesn't fit into either of your two boxes above—as he didn't have a Clemson connection, outside of being a positions coach and holdover from a failed Tommy Bowden regime. He also was no CEO, having never even held a coordinators position before becoming interim head coach and eventually the main guy. Talk about a "risky hire".

Took Swinney almost a decade to get Clemson to what it is today—with a lot of setbacks along the way; winning the division year one, backsliding to 6-7 year two, winning the conference year three—but getting smoked in the Orange Bowl (77-30 loss to West Virginia). Looking like a contender year five; getting rolled by No. 5 Florida State, 51-14 at home (the Tigers were No. 3). Had unruly Clemson fans had their way, Swinney would've been canned a few times over those first five or six years.

Poaching Brent Venables from Oklahoma was also a game changer for him in 2013—as Venables is proving to be Bud Foster-like in digging a defensive coordinator role and staying put, opposed to making that head coaching leap. Venables did 13 years in Norman, to leave for the same gig at Clemson? That's an anomaly as most guys don't do that. Would've expected him to stay at OU or to take a head coaching gig—but he's become Swinney's defensive staple and Clemson has had little staff turnover—another shocker as the offensive guys have stuck around, too.

Countless intangibles going into what makes a "good coach"—timing, circumstances, getting enough good brakes to not get run out of town, players staying healthy, more recruiting hits than misses, minimal staff turnover, etc.



Fact remains, Manny is a good fit for Miami in the sense that he gets the program and culture, he wants to be here and he appears to be an up-and-comer type that proved his worth revamping the defense. Not a lot of guys are lining up to take the UM gig and most that do would be using it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else.

Based on all that alone, he's a less risky hire than Swinney was at Alabama—and is more in like with Riley at OU, with the exception that Riley inherited a program that had been a well-oiled machine for almost two decades while Diaz was Miami's fifth head coach in 14 seasons and UM football has been a full blown disaster, leaving it in need of a full-blown rebuild.
 
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Ethnicsands said:
There are two often cited theories about what a UM coach should be, both of which have been proven failures.

First is the candidate with a UM connection. This is premised on there being something magical (special) about UM that must be ‘tapped into.’ In the absence of a great coach, this clearly isn’t accurate. Shannon was that theory. Richt was partly that theory. Manny seems to be that theory.

Second is the ‘ceo’ there. This is premised on Miami’s natural conditions being such that a decent manager will ride the tide upwards here. This too is a ‘magical’ theory because it supposes that our natural destiny is success and it will become manifest as long as no one interferes. Golden was a ‘ceo’ theory guy. Some saw Richt as that also. The reality is that the local talent theory has been misunderstood and overplayed for ages around here. We’re coming up on 30 years since the bermuda triangle. One title in the meantime, and it took 19 first round picks to make it happen.

One additional note: being a good coordinator does not mean you will be a good head coach. That should be obvious. They are very different skill sets. We have seen great head coaches who weren't great coordinators and great coordinators who didn’t make great head coaches. The coordinator hire is an excuse to project onto someone. It’s probably less risky in the NFL, where the team has a President, GM, player personnel director etc. And maybe big time state programs that have more support. At a place like UM without the structure and infrastructure, it’s a crap shoot. Shannon, Diaz.

If you have a good coach, the program building is incremental. People too often look at examples of where it happened fast, but ignore the probabilities. Good coaches keep it going in the right direction, sell, upgrade, refine, innovate, etc. Eventually, with time, effort and perhaps good fortune, they get it to a top level.

So what makes for a good coach? Someone who can get a team to mesh, buy in, play together. Someone who can pick a philosophy, form a staff to implement it, and lead the staff. Someone who knows where to intervene and where not to. Someone who can evaluate kids, and sell them on the program. Schematic genius isn’t required. Coordinators don’t have to be good at these things, and we often don’t have a way to know if they are. It may be impossible to know who will be good at this, so many, probably most coaches start out someone out of the way and build their careers towards big time programs.

If this is right, Manny was a risky hire, and hired for the wrong reasons. Let’s hope he beats the odds.
Click to expand...

What makes a good coach in today’s game???

One that walks into grandmas house with a bag of cash. Because she’s going to sell that kid to the highest bidder and she’s not smart enough to know better.

If anyone think ls anything else is a bigger factor in today’s game, then they’re really so ignorant they’re ****ing into the wind with their pants up
 
ItsAUThing.com said:
This thread completely ignores the fact that there simply aren't a slew of good head coaches out there—as proven across the college football landscape—nor does it touch on the situation a new coach takes over.

Let's be honest, how good of "coach" is Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma—or was he just the right guy at the right time taking over a program that had been elite for over 15 years before his arrival? What does Riley look like if he's coaching somewhere else? Same to be said for a Ryan Day—who took over a loaded program Urban Meyer left him.

Dabo Swinney doesn't fit into either of your two boxes above—as he didn't have a Clemson connection, outside of being a positions coach and holdover from a failed Tommy Bowden regime. He also was no CEO, having never even held a coordinators position before becoming interim head coach and eventually the main guy. Talk about a "risky hire".

Took Swinney almost a decade to get Clemson to what it is today—with a lot of setbacks along the way; winning the division year one, backsliding to 6-7 year two, winning the conference year three—but getting smoked in the Orange Bowl (77-30 loss to West Virginia). Looking like a contender year five; getting rolled by No. 5 Florida State, 51-14 at home (the Tigers were No. 3). Had unruly Clemson fans had their way, Swinney would've been canned a few times over those first five or six years.

Poaching Brent Venables from Oklahoma was also a game changer for him in 2013—as Venables is proving to be Bud Foster-like in digging a defensive coordinator role and staying put, opposed to making that head coaching leap. Venables did 13 years in Norman, to leave for the same gig at Clemson? That's an anomaly as most guys don't do that. Would've expected him to stay at OU or to take a head coaching gig—but he's become Swinney's defensive staple and Clemson has had little staff turnover—another shocker as the offensive guys have stuck around, too.

Countless intangibles going into what makes a "good coach"—timing, circumstances, getting enough good brakes to not get run out of town, players staying healthy, more recruiting hits than misses, minimal staff turnover, etc.





Based on all that alone, he's a less risky hire than Swinney was at Alabama—and is more in like with Riley at OU, with the exception that Riley inherited a program that had been a well-oiled machine for almost two decades while Diaz was Miami's fifth head coach in 14 seasons and UM football has been a full blown disaster, leaving it in need of a full-blown rebuild.
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I didnt ignore that at all. It still matters that you properly assess what you need, in order to know where and what to look for. If you need a dentist but you hire a proctologist because he used to date your sister, you shouldn’t be surprised if you wind up with a painful butt and an ugly smile. Likewise, if you need a surgeon but hire an oncologist on the theory he knows how to delegate, well, good luck with that.

We have hired based off bunk theories, and gotten results you could expect when you do that.

You say that manny is a good fit because he ‘gets the program and culture.’ That tells me nothing about his coaching abilities. Plenty of HS coaches in Florida ‘get the UM culture.’ That is an awful hiring criterion. It’s what you look to to differentiate otherwise qualified candidates. It’s not itself a qualification.

You also say he’s a good fit because ‘he wants to be here.’ That is a terrible rationale. Some of our most successful coaches who built this program wanted to be elsewhere, but winning at UM was a way to get there. That’s fine. Maybe it should be preferred, as it adds motivation and urgency. We want a coach who loves us is what we fall back upon when we have no ideas about how to win.

Next you say Manny ‘appears to be an up-and-comer type that proved his worth revamping the defense.’ But that assumes your conclusion without evidence. He may be a good DC. That does not in any way prove he can or will be a good HC. What makes him an up-and-comer as a HC? Nothing we know. He was hired at Temple, not a P5 program, for his first HC gig. He had zero prior HC experience when he took the UM gig without ever coaching at Temple. The rationale for him being a fit at UM was not head coaching ability, but rather what you say, which was UM connections and wanting to be here. Those are not good reasons, IMO.
 
RedSquare said:
What makes a good coach in today’s game???

One that walks into grandmas house with a bag of cash. Because she’s going to sell that kid to the highest bidder and she’s not smart enough to know better.

If anyone think ls anything else is a bigger factor in today’s game, then they’re really so ignorant they’re ****ing into the wind with their pants up
Click to expand...
And yet UCF has become a very good program right under our eyes. Was that all bags?
 
ItsAUThing.com said:
This thread completely ignores the fact that there simply aren't a slew of good head coaches out there—as proven across the college football landscape—nor does it touch on the situation a new coach takes over.

Let's be honest, how good of "coach" is Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma—or was he just the right guy at the right time taking over a program that had been elite for over 15 years before his arrival? What does Riley look like if he's coaching somewhere else? Same to be said for a Ryan Day—who took over a loaded program Urban Meyer left him.

Dabo Swinney doesn't fit into either of your two boxes above—as he didn't have a Clemson connection, outside of being a positions coach and holdover from a failed Tommy Bowden regime. He also was no CEO, having never even held a coordinators position before becoming interim head coach and eventually the main guy. Talk about a "risky hire".

Took Swinney almost a decade to get Clemson to what it is today—with a lot of setbacks along the way; winning the division year one, backsliding to 6-7 year two, winning the conference year three—but getting smoked in the Orange Bowl (77-30 loss to West Virginia). Looking like a contender year five; getting rolled by No. 5 Florida State, 51-14 at home (the Tigers were No. 3). Had unruly Clemson fans had their way, Swinney would've been canned a few times over those first five or six years.

Poaching Brent Venables from Oklahoma was also a game changer for him in 2013—as Venables is proving to be Bud Foster-like in digging a defensive coordinator role and staying put, opposed to making that head coaching leap. Venables did 13 years in Norman, to leave for the same gig at Clemson? That's an anomaly as most guys don't do that. Would've expected him to stay at OU or to take a head coaching gig—but he's become Swinney's defensive staple and Clemson has had little staff turnover—another shocker as the offensive guys have stuck around, too.

Countless intangibles going into what makes a "good coach"—timing, circumstances, getting enough good brakes to not get run out of town, players staying healthy, more recruiting hits than misses, minimal staff turnover, etc.



Fact remains, Manny is a good fit for Miami in the sense that he gets the program and culture, he wants to be here and he appears to be an up-and-comer type that proved his worth revamping the defense. Not a lot of guys are lining up to take the UM gig and most that do would be using it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else.

Based on all that alone, he's a less risky hire than Swinney was at Alabama—and is more in like with Riley at OU, with the exception that Riley inherited a program that had been a well-oiled machine for almost two decades while Diaz was Miami's fifth head coach in 14 seasons and UM football has been a full blown disaster, leaving it in need of a full-blown rebuild.
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OU wasn’t elite when Riley took over. They were good. He’s made them a perennial playoff team.
 
Ethnicsands said:
And yet UCF has become a very good program right under our eyes. Was that all bags?
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Coastal may suck but their schedule in Scott Frost’s unbeaten season was beyond embarrassing. I don’t think they’d have that kind of sustained success in any power 5 conference.
 
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Andrew said:
@Ethnicsands great post.

Curious to what your thoughts are on hiring a guy with success from a lower-tier program (Golden) or a guy with some success at a major program (Richt). Right now we are seeing Fuente and Taggart get their asses kicked. The selling point on Richt was that he did pretty good at UGA and with our talent, we should win championships. Obviously neither Golden nor Richt worked out.
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Because simpletons around here believed that Miami had/has more talent than Georgia.

Literally every piece of factual evidence tells us that this is BS, but that's what people around here thought.
 
The good coaches have a plan of what they’re going to do. Kirby went the talent route. He was losing his first year but you could see what he was trying to build in the recruiting class he was assembling.

Riley’s plan was to implement his offense and win that way. 12-2 in his first two years.

Honestly, I have no clue what Diaz’s plan is. It’s not loading up on talent. He wants to beat you schematically but it seems the offense is a bit complicated and his defenses take a level of maturity to execute. We’ll see but I don’t have much faith.
 
NVA CANE said:
The good coaches have a plan of what they’re going to do. Kirby went the talent route. He was losing his first year but you could see what he was trying to build in the recruiting class he was assembling.

Riley’s plan was to implement his offense and win that way. 12-2 in his first two years.

Honestly, I have no clue what Diaz’s plan is. It’s not loading up on talent. He wants to beat you schematically but it seems the offense is a bit complicated and his defenses take a level of maturity to execute. We’ll see but I don’t have much faith.
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It's 4 games into his tenure as HC, how do you know what Diaz is trying to achieve?

He's had an uninspiring start, but unfortunately we have to let this play out.
 
OldhamA said:
It's 4 games into his tenure as HC, how do you know what Diaz is trying to achieve?

He's had an uninspiring start, but unfortunately we have to let this play out.
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I don’t know that’s why I said we’ll see but that I’m not too confident. History and every other metric is against manny. Nothing personal against him, it’s just reality. Hopefully he proves to be an outlier.
 
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