Long post with numbers and stuff. Pop your adderall and lock in
This post is the result of something I looked into after an intriguing post from
@JayCane20 in the Romberg thread. It’s been discussed before but just how soon would you know if you have a championship level coach?
This is 100% on the nose. Let’s take a 25 year stroll through recent coaching history. We are going to address one of the biggest myths in football fandom: “it takes time to build a championship.” This is, bluntly, horse **** and has been for almost my whole life. While timeline of an achieved championship varies, the data points show that you will know if you have a strong coach within 2 years in modern college football. Let’s look at the table below to see how every championship level coach (that’s still the standard, right?) compares through their first two full seasons
For this jaunt through history, i went back to every coach that has won a title in the post poll champ era (BCS + CFP). I used a couple of key indicators of success that are uncontroversial: overall record, record vs ranked teams, % of games vs ranked opponents, top 12 finishes (since that would be a playoff berth now), and post season record. This spans different championship structures and multiple rule changes. The results all show the same thing: championship coaches do the unimaginable…they win. And they do it pretty much right away. After looking at this you will come to the horrific conclusion that is plain to see: Mario will need to be a statistical outlier in order to win big here.
| Coach | Overall Record | vs Top 25 | % games vs ranked | Top 12 Finish | Post Season Record | School Prior Record - 2 yr |
| Cristobol | 12-13 | 1-5 | 24% | 0 | 0-1 | 15-8 |
| Saban (AL) | 19-8 | 7-5 | 44% | 1 | 1-1 | 16-9 |
| Smart | 21-7 | 6-5 | 39% | 1 | 1-1 | 19-6 |
| Dabo | 15-12 | 2-6 | 29% | 0 | 1-0 | 17-9 |
| Orgeron | 19-7 | 7-4 | 42% | 1 | 1-1 | 17-8* |
| Urban (OSU) | 24-2 | 5-2 | 27% | 2 | 1-0 | 18-8* |
| Harbaugh | 20-6 | 4-4 | 30% | 2 | 2-1 | 12-13 |
| Jimbo | 19-8 | 2-4 | 22% | 0 | 2-0 | 16-10* |
| Chizik* | 22-5 | 7-3 | 37% | 1 | 2-0 | 14-11 |
| Urban (UF)* | 22-4 | 7-3 | 41% | 2 | 2-0 | 15-9 |
| Miles | 22-4 | 8-4 | 46% | 2 | 2-0 | 22-4 |
| Brown | 18-8 | 4-7 | 42% | 0 | 1-1 | 12-12 |
| Carroll | 17-8 | 8-5 | 52% | 1 | 1-1 | 11-13 |
| Saban (LSU) | 18-7 | 6-4 | 40% | 1 | 2-0 | 7-15 |
| Tressel* | 21-5 | 7-3 | 38% | 1 | 1-1 | 14-10 |
| Coker* | 24-1 | 9-1 | 40% | 2 | 1-1 | 20-5 |
| Stoops | 20-5 | 7-1 | 32% | 1 | 1-1 | 9-14 |
| Bowden | 15-8 | 1-2 | 13% | 0 | 1-0 | 4-18 |
| Fulmer | 17-6-1 | 5-5-1 | 45% | 1 | 1-1 | 18-5-2 |
Take aways
- There is not a single metric that has Mario on the path to a championship based on the historical record of coaches that have achieve that since 1998
-He would be the only coach in the last 25 years to win a national title with a losing record in his first two seasons. The second lowest winning % (Dabo at 55%) is still 7 points higher than Mario. The average total victories across a championship coach’s first 2 years is 19.6. Mario clocks in at a robust 12…over 60% off the pace in total wins
- Mario’s record vs Top 25 teams would be the lowest of any coach that won a national championship since 1998. The only other coach with as few wins vs ranked teams is Bowden, who coached before all the schools were integrated and we were just getting done fighting in Nam
- …and what’s worse, Mario’s schedule difficulty is bottom 3. He has lost more games against a softer schedule than only two coaches (both FSU coaches btw…). Mario doesn’t win against ranked teams or ****** teams. Every other coach has at least 2 wins vs top 25 teams and 12 coaches had *gasp* winning records against top 25 teams!
- 14 out of 18 championship coaches had a Top 12, or playoff level, finish in their first 2 seasons. 5 of them would have gone back to back in their first two years. The only modern coaches who didn’t ended up landing prolific QBs to win: Dabo with Watson, Jimbo with Winston, Mack with VY. Bowden is again the the other one and he needed 17 years to win a title. That’s just not reality anymore. Or Maybe we are on a 20 year plan unless you think transfers from Albany will win us a ship
- Something I found interesting was that every championship coach had won at least one bowl or playoff game in their first 2 years…we have a problem with that as well. Bowl games are totally different now, but there is some value in prepping kids to play in big games, right?
- Some guys really didn’t get the memo about having to build. Four coaches won national titles in their first 2 seasons. Weirdos. 3 of the 4 inherited teams with worse 2 year prior records than Mario did with Miami. The only one that inherited a wagon was Coker. None of them had the portal, either.
But TriStar, you ignorant ****. Miami was in way worse shape than all those other programs! About that. Our two season record preceding our new coach was on par with the other programs for the most part. The average two year win total of these teams was 14.5. Ours was 15. In fact, 6 coaches inherited losing records and 4 were hired after major scandals. I don’t think that narrative holds. We had been off penalties for almost 10 years at time of hire. We also have never had more financial support than now. Culture is subjective and I doubt our culture was worse than many of these other schools when the change was made.
But he can recruit! Yeah - so could all these guys. Saban, Smart, Urban are some of the best to ever do it. No one on this list was talent starved. He recruits better than most, but it has not been accompanied with wins like his peers
Okay, so now that you’re depressed, here are possibilities for winning that would be basically small miracles in my assessment
- Mario changes his entire game day coach philosophy, hires top shelf assistance and gives them full autonomy while he works as a CEO and focuses on remaining an elite talent acquisition program …lol
- Mario lands a generational QB like Dabo or Jimbo while landing top 5 classes …I don’t love our chances with the first part.
- Deus ex machina that changes the entire landscape of the sport and old data points become irrelevant. This actually has a higher likelihood of occurring than the other two points, especially with the portal, NIL, Congress, and coaches retiring and leaving.
My take is that we do not have a championship coach and might be further away from it than when Richt retired. Here is hoping this thread gets violently thrown into my face and it’s not prophetic because it doesn’t look awesome. This is my mopery rosebud. God speed
