Mario Will Need To Be A Statistical Outlier - A Review

[NJshoreCane]

Al Golden had more wins in his first two years, and he inherited a **** of a lot worse situation than Mario. Forget comparing Mario to championship coaches. Compare him to our recent failures and he still falls short. That's scary.

?
I was responding to a post that was comparing Sark to Mario.
His point was that's the closest thing we have to hang our hat on.
My point was that it may not be a good comparison and that we may be in worse shape.

If anything, my comment was a strike against Mario.

I get the frustration and I'm with you, but some of you guys just read what you want to read just to make another statement.
One that I actually agree with, but has nothing to do with what I just posted.

 

[ThomasM]

Why so sensitive? Are you ok?

?
I was responding to a post that was comparing Sark to Mario.
His point was that's the closest thing we have to hang our hat on.
My point was that it may not be a good comparison and that we may be in worse shape.

If anything, my comment was a strike against Mario.

I get the frustration and I'm with you, but some of you guys just read what you want to read just to make another statement.
One that I actually agree with, but has nothing to do with what I just posted.

 

[ThomasM]

A lot of *****ing & moaning in the comments/replies, and 0 solutions. As always.

Solution? Hire a coach that can get the most out of his talent on game day. Stop hiring guys just because they look the part or have ties to Miami.

 

[TheATLCane]

Great writeup (especially if you did it all from your phone)

Of the miracles listed, I think #2 is the most likely. Given Mario's recruiting success, our NIL and the xfer portal. It seems opportunity to land generational QB is high. I know the "QB killa" conversation, but with NIL, sometimes money talks. These days there are enough at-bats with the xfer portal included to land one.

 

[PIPO]

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	1-1	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

1. 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
2. Mario lands a generational QB like Dabo or Jimbo while landing top 5 classes …I don’t love our chances with the first part.
3. 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

There are too many facts here. This must stop, you mope!!

I would be willing to wager a lot of money that if you were to add to your analysis the first 2 years of the losing head coach in the Championship game or even the final 4 (I know some of these guys have lost to each other in the final) that it would look even more bleak for Mario and the statistical probability that he will end up being successful here in terms of bringing a championship.

 

[NJshoreCane]

Why so sensitive? Are you ok?

No...lol, not being sensitive at all.
Don't know where in my post it shows that.

You misread my post. I tried to clarify. That's all.
No big deal.

 

[JayCane20]

Of course we could just adjust our expectations. The odds here for Mario to win a title are basically non-existent after his first 2 years.

But he could pivot to 9-10-11 wins and playoff appearances.

Norvell comes to mind recently. Sucked his first 2 years and then went 13-1. James Franklin was 14-12 and 6-6 in conference his first 2 years at Pedo State. Put together several 10+ win seasons since then. Drinkwitz went 5-5, 6-7, and 6-7 at Mizzou before going 11-2 this year.

Move the goal posts a little bit and we can still be alright. Not sure why people expect Mario to win a title anyway... I never had that expectation. The level of coaching on gameday isn't there, never has been, and never will be.

I'd say the same about James Franklin. Marcus Freeman, Venables, and Lanning have made some questionable decisions on gameday too that seem very concerning if I was a fan of that program... but those guys aren't 12-13 years into their HC career like Franklin and Mario.

 

[TallyCaneFan]

Erickson brought in the one back offense, which was a very early precursor to the modern spread offenses we see today.

Thanks - I thought that may have been you were suggesting.

 

[TriStarCane]

Of course we could just adjust our expectations. The odds here for Mario to win a title are basically non-existent after his first 2 years.

But he could pivot to 9-10-11 wins and playoff appearances.

Norvell comes to mind recently. Sucked his first 2 years and then went 13-1. James Franklin was 14-12 and 6-6 in conference his first 2 years at Pedo State. Put together several 10+ win seasons since then. Drinkwitz went 5-5, 6-7, and 6-7 at Mizzou before going 11-2 this year.

Move the goal posts a little bit and we can still be alright. Not sure why people expect Mario to win a title anyway... I never had that expectation. The level of coaching on gameday isn't there, never has been, and never will be.

I'd say the same about James Franklin. Marcus Freeman, Venables, and Lanning have made some questionable decisions on gameday too that seem very concerning if I was a fan of that program... but those guys aren't 12-13 years into their HC career like Franklin and Mario.

I think this is at the heart of the point of the deep dive. If you are expecting Mario to bring #6 to Coral Gables, it seems misguided barring a miraculous change or intervention. But if you come to grips with what our ceiling is, then it might be achievable

 

[Reyrey]

Great post. My own opinion is that we can’t always take precedent as a source of truth for future.

One you left of was Sark. First two years were 13-11. I’m excluding bowl games because in this era. The mean nothing with transfers/opts outs. The two years prior they were 15-8 and three years prior were 25-12. So, they got worse before they got better.

Now don’t get me wrong, Mario has odds stacked against him. He needs to make a lot of game day improvements. If he doesn’t, we will blunder games we shouldn’t.

Sonny Dykes went 13-2 year one (incredible) but 5-7 year 2.

There isn’t an exact science to it. It’s unfortunate that with Mario we have to take the patient approach and let him build the roster out for long term success. We have been dying for competitive teams. It’s never been more magnified here to have it. But there has been a significant influx of talent. Especially the LOS. Year three we should be able to see the depth and development we brought Mario in to do.

I would rather seem long term sustainability than short term success. I’m no expert, but if it takes 3-4 years of incremental improvements, not just W-L, I’m all for it. Sucks in the short term.

Again, Mario HAS TO IMPROVE ON THE FIELD. Year 3 is as important as ever. Team needs to turn all these close losses last year to close wins. HAVE TO. The main reason I am being half glass full and trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, If not Mario, who? No coach wants to win at Miami more and No coach will work as hard. I’m not slurping, just being optimistic and giving him the benefit of the doubt. Year 1 to year 2 had improvements. They were small in the W-L but larger in other areas (competitiveness, talent, depth). Year 2 to year 3 we need to see the same. 2 win uptick gets us to 9 wins. A think we feel more optimistic then for sure.

It’s def **** or get off the pot in 2024

 

[SinisterCane]

If Mario had a five-year contract, his seat would be center of sun hot

 

[CaneAlum11]

I don’t disagree, but I do think the state of our program when Mario took over was far worse than the programs

 

[JamesQuall]

But TriStar, you ignorant ****.

 

[SinisterCane]

And now with a 12 team playoff it's going to be even harder (pause) to really catapult into being a title contender.

On it's face you would think more teams would make it easier & give us a better chance, but the exact opposite is likely to happen. More teams in the playoffs means it will be backlogged with borderline SEC teams & any time Notre Dame has a 9-3/10-2 season they'll basically be automatics.

Our best bet of making the playoffs was going on a run & winning the ACC. That will still be our pathway, but unless we just start miraculously ripping off multiple 10/11 win seasons, simply going 8-4, or even 9-3 won't be enough.

The bar has been lowered to where just finishing above .500 is considered a success, but the likelihood of Mario suddenly Jumpstarting this team into an annual 10+ win ACC & playoff contender is pretty much slim to none.

There's a much higher probability we have another 7 win season heading into year 3 of his tenure than winning 10+ & that is alarming if you're not a total brain dead slurper...

But of course, none of that matters because #2029IsTheTime!

Sadly, the only good thing about that eight year contract is that Mario can’t use used the excuse “gotta to give Mario more time to get my guys” if the canes are still doing bad round year 5,6 and 7. Continued **** result should stop him from a getting a contract extension.

 

[TriStarCane]

I don’t disagree, but I do think the state of our program when Mario took over was far worse than the programs

Help me flesh this out. The other programs listed had significant issues as well, even scholarship reductions and sanctions. Is it just because our players were lazy and didn’t work? I saw what Romberg said, but don’t think there is anything special about our program compared to others in that way

 

[Cajuncane]

Love the chart and the info OP BUT….

I think Mario with his ego is out to change the agenda that he is not a good game day coach …he knows he can recruit and that’s his specialty and he gets off with people singing his praises when it comes to his recruiting……BUT

1) I don’t think Mario is going to change anything about his coaching until he manages to rid himself of the “ ****** game day coach “ mantra he now carries with him…..and

2) after seeing Michigan and Harbaugh just win the NC with what Mario seems to think is the perfect offense there is NO CHANCE IN **** he will change the way he wants to coach and because of that U-M winning and Mario trying to win this way will eventually be the downfall of this program….and

3) because of 2 he will be unable to get any type of top notch OC coordinator that wants to run any type of wide open offense to come here knowing that Mario is going to change any offense this guy has been good enough to get the job with will be trimmed to fit Mario’s agenda.

The success of this program will rise or fall on Mario’s willingness to move into the 21st century with his offensive thinking so the first thing the recruiting savant needs to do is get a generational type QB to run his offense which I don’t believe he will ever be able to do because these type QB’s come to college to improve their stock for the NFL and get developed for a league that HAS moved into the 21st century and no QB worth a sHT is going to come here to hand the ball off 40 times a game.I’m hoping he is able to hold on to Nickel cause he might be the QB that can turn the program around but I don’t see him coming if Mario doesn’t let his ego turn the offense in totality over to the OC and let him open the offense up to where a generational QB will feel like if he does come his stock will go up and he will get developed for the next level.

Will Mario do this…..Man I sure hope so cause I only have so many years left.

We he? I doubt it but we all can hope.

 

[harphong]

Big oofs. Truth told. Mopementum at 3500rpm.

 

[sdaly12]

Not trying to dispute you at all. I get that on Schnelly and JJ, but what innovation did Erickson bring?

Dennis brought in that 1 back or empty set, which i disliked in the fact we could not run the ball...... causing losses to Bama & Nebraska. Dennis was great as game prep and in game coaching..... why not make the call mario you need the help

 

[ItsAUThing.com]

Let it play out instead of trying to solve it like a math equation.

This 7-6 team was 10-3 or 11-2 this year if quarterback play as good instead of pure trash.

Keep stacking talent and get a solid quarterback—and keep getting more guys like Bain, Mauigoa and Fletcher. Build a culture of dogs instead of cats.

One team wins it all every year; the job of a head coach of a program like Miami is to have your kids in the hunt.

The Canes were the best team in the nation from 2000 through 2002 and only have one title to show for it—and that almost went up in smoke at Chestnut Hill or Blacksburg late season.

Takes talent, timing, luck, coaching, chemistry and all the dominoes falling your way to win a title.

Michigan has tried year after year with Harbaugh and come up short—and real talk, if Bama doesn't upset Georgia in the SEC Championship your playoff is:

1. Georgia
2. Michigan
3. Washongton
4. Texas

Michigan winds up playing Georgia in Houston for the natty on January 8th and the Bulldogs threepeat—while the "Harbaugh can't win the big one" narrative rolls on.

Instead the Wolverines won their first natty since the 1997 split and their first one outright since 1948.... and they had to cheat all season to pull it off.

 

[ItsAUThing.com]

Dennis brought in that 1 back or empty set, which i disliked in the fact we could not run the ball...... causing losses to Bama & Nebraska. Dennis was great as game prep and in game coaching..... why not make the call mario you need the help

Miami lost to Alabama and Nebraska as they got blown away in the trenches. Same with the Ohio State game in 2002—even with a running game that 2002 line couldn't hold a candle to 2001, just like 1992 was a shell of 1991.

Mario is building up the trenches just like Alabama, Michigan, Georgia and other powers. Let it play out.... but Dennis' one-back wasn't the problem. Worked just fine in 1989, 1990 and 1991—he was just in trouble recruiting-wise after that as his lines were never the same one Leon Searcy was gone.