A close relative of mine mentioned that a person who played football at my high school a few years ago is intent on becoming a coach. Knowing that he is an offensive lineman, I guessed his head was likely more round than the average person's*. Since phrenologists decades ago proved that people with round heads don't look smart, that got me wondering which positions produce the most coaches. Obvious examples to the contrary aside, it seems as though being a head coach at the Div-1A level takes at least a modicum of intelligence. I always assumed quarterback was the most likely path to a future coaching job, but I decided to conduct rigorous research until I proved my hypothesis correct or until I got bored.

Below are the fruits of my research, in three pie charts. The first describes all current Div-1A coaches by the positions they played in college. A few remarks:

1) I am highly certain this is not perfectly accurate. Coaches are being hired and fired weekly, so I may not have caught the latest changes.

2) Some coaches played both ways in college. I picked the position I deemed, in my infinite wisdom, that they played more of. In other words, I just arbitrarily picked one. So much for repeatability.

3) A few coaches either did not play a sport in college or I could not find any information on their collegiate career. These are all classified as "DNP" (did not play).

4) Two coaches played a varsity sport not football in college. In an attempt to be clever, I labeled this category as "NFL" (non-football lettering). (Sonny Dykes, La. Tech. coach, baseball; Bobby Hauck, UNLV coach, track. If you were wondering.)

5) I categorized ends as linemen.

6) Just to be clear: DB = defensive back; DL = defensive line; LB = linebacker; OL = offensive line; QB = Jim Harbaugh; RB = running back; WR = wide receiver.

7) I have heard that Div 1-A was changed to some acronym. I refuse to believe it, which makes me not subject to it. All references to Div 1-A are "Div 1-A" or "Div-1A", depending on my mood. All dates herein are Anno Domini. Also, "he" is gender-neutral unless context dictates otherwise. Since all current coaches are male - especially Robb Akey - and college football isn't very old, those last two may not be relevant.


* The actual person mentioned is probably pretty smart, since he went to Northwestern (which, as we all know, is the Harvard west of the Harvard of the West). In addition, he's a lot bigger than I am, so I should state explicitly that anything that could be taken as an insult is not.




You'll note a glaring absence of kickers and punters. I'm sure this is due to racism/sexism/environmentalism. But I can't prove it yet.

Since I already had the data compiled, I also divided by defense and offense:


And again by "SKILL" or "LINE". I don't really like the division between "skill" and "those without skill", since all Div-1A players have at least some skill. For this chart, LBs are included in "LINE".




What is the use of these data? Probably not much, unless you are a high school student, wanting to become a coach someday, and wondering what position you should play in college. If you follow the above examples to give yourself the best chance at a Div-1A coaching job and it doesn't work out, at the very least you learned a valuable lesson about spurious variables.