Michigan Museday: The Gary Moeller Effect

Wait, I thought we were doing Hump Hypotheses? So confused...

OSU should look to someone in the WAC thats never been east of the Mississippi River to be there new HC?

This was something I was thinking about a week ago.

People deride the "Michigan Man" concept as some illogical Michigan arrogance that would stand in the way of progress and future success.

I think Brady Hoke has completely shown how badly that line of thought misses the point.

Brady Hoke isn't a "Michigan Man" because of his devotion to a certain Michigan style of football.  He is perfectly happy bringing in a outside brain like Al Borges and giving him the flexibility to put the best Michigan offense on the field he can.

Brady Hoke is a "Michigan Man' because he is a part of the program, broadly understood.  He is capable of motivating the program base and network and bringing it together in support of a common goal:  Winning.

Considering RichRod, its easy to see him as outside the program.  He was brought in as a savior, a figure transcendent of the program who will drag it into college football modernity.  And I don't want to portray that as inherently bad: while RichRod could have improved his fate and avoided that disastrous turn with better management, his failure also rests on the lack of acceptance amongst the program.

But in the end, I think that is nature of the beast.  The strength of Michigan football is tradition, history, and a lot of people who see the world through maize and blue glasses.  While RR walked in with way to much confidence in his apparent football genius to win over the faithful, Brady Hoke gets it:  the genius and strength of Michigan football isn't dependent upon the head coach.  Michigan football already has both in droves. 

Brady Hoke knows he has a role to play just like everyone else, and it is less to direct the program than it is to be the keystone.  His job is to keep the center strong and working together and enthusiastically towards a better Michigan football team.

For any deficiencies he may have otherwise, I think this is the "IT" that Hoke gets that RichRod didn't, and that is why I think he will be successful.

One of the big things about being a "Michigan Man" are the ties you have locally and regionally.  Lots of football players who have no NFL career or a short NFL career go on to become high school coaches.  These guys of course loved their time at Michigan, trust the staff, and as such function as very vocal recruiters within their team.  So if they get a 5* they'll be telling him how Michigan is the greatest program to further develop their talent.

Additionally if say you played under Bo, learned his Slant 5 defense and go on to coach high school ball, odds are you install his slant 5 defense.  It's what you know.  So the players you produce are pre-groomed for Bo's system.  That lets them get up to speed faster and learn a more complex playbook in college since they already know the basics.  You can also apply this to Mo, Lloyd, Woody and Tressel.

So experience in the region is a huge benefit because you have a social network built up with high school coaches.  Notice how Hoke grabbed all the top Michigan recruits he wanted and pillaged Ohio.  Likely because of ties he has via his pedigree (the Bo/Mo/Lloyd line can become the Bo/Mo/Lloyd/Hoke line) and the ties Mattison developed here and at Notre Dame.  This is a notice step up from Hopson screwing up our DT recruiting by going South and striking out.

The more time you spend ing the B10, the more regional high school coaches you produce and in turn the easier it comes to access talent.

Thanks for doing this, Misopogon. I'm sure it was a bit frustrating to go through all that data and not really get an "AHA!" one way or the other. My one critique is that the concluding line:

" Midwest recruiting roots and success at multiple levels are good indicators of success."

doesn't really seem to draw from the data, and more just repeats some accepted doctrine. Doctrine that makes sense to me, but that I feel is neither proven nor disproven by the data.

Good work

Brandon’s point was that you’re more likely to be successful in the Big Ten if you’ve recruited extensively in the Big Ten catchment area. With three years as an Ohio State assistant and fifteen years as head coach at Youngstown State, he surely qualifies. In fact, he is probably the perfect case.

Now, I will agree that Youngstown State doesn’t recruit head-to-head very often against the Big Ten, but he was going into the same towns and high schools. Indeed, Brandon specifically cited Tressel as an example of the principle he was espousing. (This was before Tressel got fired, of course.)

That is counting the ties as half (actual record was 30-8-2).  Thus, he won 77.5% of his games, right below Carr.  That restores Bo to his rightful position at the top (or below Hoke at 100%)

Loved Gary Moeller as our coach.  I hated to see him get fired.  His offenses were so fun to watch.  This Minnesota game kinda brought me back to those days.

And I definitely think the idea that "big 10 experience" correlates with being a good Big 10 coach is a little dubious.  Regional recruiting experience, though, is important for some tangible reasons...

...as awesome as the Pahokee-Ann Arbor express is, it's always going to be a harder sell (and more expensive/time consuming for recruiters) to get kids to cross the country to play for you, compared with getting kids who live close by.  Plus, presumably, you already have relationships with regional HS coaches, only now you're selling them a better brand.  Last but not least, when you recruit the top guys locally, you are also recruiting them away from your rivals.  (One of my biggest frustrations with RR was how we let Dantonio take the best in-state defensive players 2 years in a row.)  

That said, I'd characterize it as an advantage rather than a prerequisite for success.  Building a good staff and having a strong idea for what you want to achieve and a plan for how you intend to get there are, IMO, more important.  This is why Hayden Fry was so successful, why Bo was so successul and why Alvarez was so successful.  Guys like Kirk Ferentz, Moeller/Lloyd and Bielema, in turn, are successful because they leverage these advantages and provide continuity (tweaking, rather than rewriting, the formula).  

The ones who aren't successful...well, a few can be chalked up to the difficulties of running a doomed program like Indiana or Minnesota...and the rest, I'd say are the result of doing one of the aforementioned things poorly.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, we all know how bad RR's defensive staff was--tragicomic, really. I think it's obvious he did have a good plan for revamping our offense, and we started to see the results last year.  Unfortunately, there was so little direction in the other elements of the game that it didn't matter in the end.  You have to play credible defense against big bruising offenses in the Big 10, and have depth to get through the season...we couldn't and didn't.  

Hoke...it's too early to tell, but signs are good at present.   

I made the front page! I can die happy now. Thanks for doing this, Misopogon.

Having said that, maybe the results can be presented a little better after the Success/Failures section? Maybe a table that summarizes the number of local vs outsiders and an overall success percentage for each group. Of course with caveats for incomplete sample size and all that.

But I still do think that having local ties, especially recruiting ties to an area is really important. RR, and particularly his staff (a lot of whom were raided from USF) who do the bulk of the recruiting, were much more familiar and comfortable recruiting Florida. They didn't come with pre-existing with high school coaches here and those relationships take a long time to establish. It is a lot harder to convince a warm weather kid with three traditional football powers in the same state to come to Michigan. It is not a high percentage strategy.

Also, I never understood why Fred Jackson, the one holdover from the previous staff, was assigned to recruit the south! Sure, he was born in Louisiana but has spent most of the last 30-35 years here, and building relationships here. He seemed like the logical choice to handle in-state recruiting given a staff that was new to the area. He is back recruiting the state, and I believe the results are already starting to show.

Forgot one.

What, you want a sample size > 1 game???

Nice work, interesting how things worked out.

Philosophical question of the day: How many of Jim Tressel's wins actually count?

In BTN's Icon episode on BO, Mo had the usual to say about how he was influence by Bo and all that, but it got me thinking..."what could he have accomplished in another five or so years?"  Would we have had a NC?  I would say yes.  This post talks about how he was essentially the best coach in the big ten for the years he was there, and he's often forgotten.  I know that I practically skip over him and go straight from Bo to Carr.  I understand that means I left out the Desmond years, but when people think of the Desmond years I don't hear them talk about Mo.  They say he was recruited by Bo.  I think it's important to remember Mo and how great he was, and I'm glad this post puts him in the proper perspective and gives him the historical respect he deserves.  

Penn State is excised because when JoePa took over every team was in the Pangaea Conference.

Interesting analysis is nice and all, but lines like this are why a lot of us stop by.

I think he would have done real well if he continued.  It would have been interesting if our results against Tressel would have been better with Moeller.

Still, Carr won a higher percentage of his games than Moeller and got us a National Title with an undefeated team, so hard to complain.

I think Hoke will be a success but there are so many OTHER factors thans the ones you listed to consider that I don't think this is a fair analysis.  And it is just waaaaayyyyyy to soon to judge.  But here are the other main pieces that will contribute to Hoke's success (at least short term):

1.  Inherited a veteran team on both sides of the ball - few freshman starters and everyone has been battle tested for the last 2/3 years.

2. He has Denard - DRob makes up for a ton of problems and buys him time to recruit up.

3. OSU is literally IMPLODING after losing its head coach and star QB. That opens up the Ohio valley for recruitment and means a win against them is MUCH more likely than it was before all the carnage.

4. The Big 10, after going through one of its most dominant 4 year stretches in the history of the conf, is at its wakest point I think I have EVER seen.  It is no longer the Big 2, it is the Big 1 (Wisconsin) and we don't know how strong they are yet b/c they haven't really played anyone.

Credit to Hoke for making the most of the pieces he had and then ADDING to them but we have to make sure to understand the world he walked into is very very different than the one most coaches inherit after a regime change (no one gets to see the dominant program wipe itself off the map).

Bill Mallory's 6 bowl games would disagree that Pont was "the last guy to make Indiana good"...

Excellent post.  I found this fascinating.