SB Nation: Coaching Hot Seat Over/Unders
So today, some of SB Nation's CFB writers took a look at the over-unders for a few college football teams with coaches seemingly on the hot seat, essentially to say if a coach would be fired if they were around that number.
While most of the names/comments revovle around guys you might expect: Sumlin, Kingsbury, RichRod, Gus Malzahn, Jim Mora, there was one section that caught my eye, for... reasons.
Michigan State: 6.5 wins
At 90-42, Mark Dantonio is in the conversation for the best coach in Michigan State history. But there is a sense that the program took advantage of some down years from Michigan and Penn State, and is now on the decline with the big three in the Big Ten East all climbing. Dantonio’s 2016 team was not young, yet went just 1-8 in Big Ten play. Still, is there any chance Dantonio is done if his Spartans barely make a bowl game?
Alex: Here’s a question for Michigan State: Could you do better? I don’t really see it. It’s not like MSU is a bad job, but Dantonio has a track record that will have been interrupted for two seasons. If the Spartans think they can convince someone great to come battle with Jim Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, and James Franklin, in a fine but not incredible recruiting area, they might fire Dantonio. I doubt they think that.
Godfrey: Remember John L. Smith? This job can get really difficult really quickly. The problem is that Dantonio failed to turn 10-win seasons into elite recruiting, and now Michigan and Penn State have reorganized and lapped Sparty in talent. MSU seems destined to regress from its Rose Bowl run. How much is to be determined, and this is a difficult job to hire for.
Basketball recruiting is an entirely different animal than football, though. In basketball, you can win national championships recruiting 2nd tier guys because the basketball equivalent of Rashan Gary is gone after one year, wheresa those 50-100 tier guys tend to stick around 3-4 years. Football's 3-years-after-high-school-graduation requirement makes those top 25 5-star types much more valuable.
Basketball recruiting is also different because of AAU. Those kids basically have shoe contracts and agents to help broker deals for a players one year of service before going pro. Guys like Beilein who refuse to get their hands dirty don't have a chance with those types of players. The football camp circuit is nowhere near as tainted.
"Come play for me at Michigan State. You'll be sooo happy there just like I am."
Maybe they actually could use a church instead of a coach. It might be more useful to them right now.
We got politics and religion in this thread!
I hope he gets fired
Though there's always the possibility, like last year's early season TAMU/Auburn game that was billed as a job wrecker, that things could happen that keep both guys in their jobs.
If he's going 1, there's no way Mora is getting fired, because it means there's been at least some success (unless it's a Sam Bradford junior year scenario).
Do not agree whatsoever. Just look at the former head bball coach of the Washington Huskies. W/L is more important than draft rankings
Football doesn't exactly drive the on-campus conversation in the same way, either. There's just not the fanbase demand for win-at-all-costs. As a result, mediocre coaches get more leash, and new hires aren't made with quite the same pressure.
Remember, USC fired Lane Kiffin at the airport. Rick Neuheisel was practically carried off the field after he was fired (FWIW it was the classiest possible exit, but that doesn't happen at USC or Alabama or Ohio State). The mentalities of managing the coaches are different.
And, ultimately, it's the coaching that matters. A great coach at UCLA would win big, if they could hang on to him. But the pressure to find that great coach is low.
Awesome school. Great campus. Not a true football school.
It's on a different planet than Westwood, in terms of traffic. In Michigan terms, it would be like if the stadium was in South Lyon, only there was a city the size and density of Chicago in between. For a 12:30 PAC-12 game, students would probably have to leave three hours early to make it, and that's just an estimate.
Basically all PAC 12 schools, besides Oregon and Utah, have very weak and fickle football fanbases. That includes USC.
USC's stadium is always half empty unless they are top 10, and that is despite being located in the middle of a metro of 13.5 million people.
All that said, UCLA is probably below average even within the PAC 12 in football attentiveness. The far distance from the stadium to campus (at least an hour driving) complicates things, but it still probably wouldn't be anywhere near B1G/SEC levels if the Rose Bowl was in Westwood.
MSU has almost never been able to sustain success. Dantonio has the highest winning percentage of any coach there since the 1940s, and even Perles really only had two good years (1987 and 1990). So as much as I dislike the guy, what Dantonio has done there is pretty remarkable.
...and unsustainable, if Michigan and PSU are really back. (I'm confident we are, but I'm not entirely sure if PSU is.) But that isn't to say MSU is completely out of the picture. MSU can still compete and win games, even perhaps another conference championship. I just have a very hard time seeing them win 10+ games 5/6 years like they did.
8/9 win season, though? Maybe not this year, but in 2018 perhaps.
I doubt it's wins and losses that would get him fired, rather it'd be all the off field issues going on. That said, he probably won't get fired and will probably retire within the next year or two. He's old and has heart problems, and no doubt he wants to go out with a winning record against Michigan, which he won't have if he decides to stick around for another 5 years.
...he would need to be tied to what's going on, or have actively tried to sweep it under the rug. I have a hard time believing that. I mean, for petty crime--sure. But not this. (Just being honest here.)
Otherwise I agree. My feeling is that he coaches through 2018 or 2019 then retires. Then who knows--maybe they try to hire Narduzzi from Pitt. Or Schiano from OSU.
is what lands on Dantoni but by iteslef isn't enough to get him fired. The sex scandal lands on Hollis and administration above him. The only way I see Dantoni getting the ax (not the axe that attracts 20 year old coeds) is if the sex scandal takes down Hollis. The new AD might come in looking to take a final swipe at cleaning things up and toss Dantoni after another underwhelming season.
Agree, the off-field issues are the wild card. A losing record this year might make Dantonio's seat warm, but even going to a bowl in 2018 would then be enough to keep the dogs at bay. He'll field teams good enough to retire at his leisure, unless the abuse scandal envelopes the department and they are forced to put him to the sword.
You just finished reading a Biblical passage, didn't you? Sounds vaguely like something one might read in Kings, perhaps.
So much of the recent MSU bad press has been for reasons that are hard (and IMO wrong) to celebrate. I can get behind this sort of bad press.
It likely especially stings because it's true. MSU is unlikely to be a "destination" coaching position. And much of their recent success is due to Michigan and Penn State being in down years.
Apart from the cultural issue, Dantonio's done a remarkable job on the field. His reward will be regressing back to Perles-esque performance.
Dantonio will have a chance to match Perles' two losses to the Chippewas.
Don't understand why people put James Franklin in the conversation with Meyer and Harbaugh. The guy sucks.
I don't think they will next off-season.
into a program capable of winning 8 games and won the B1G last year. I think he sucks as well, but its not that hard to look at that resume and think he's a good coach.
game last year Franklin had only won ONE game against a ranked opponent, and his seat was getting hot. After the Michigan beat down there was talks of firing midseason. His year was saved by a blocked FG if I remeber correctly, somehow beat WI with arm punt throws. This year they will start off ranked pretty high, but I think it will be a pretty hard fall back to reality.
I would take MD coaching my team over Franklin everyday.
People keep pointing to those Vandy years as some proof he's an elite coach. Here are the teams he beat to get to 9 wins:
- Presbyterian
- 5-7 Missouri
- 3-9 Auburn
- UMass (2x)
- 2-10 Kentucky (2x)
- 7-6 Ole Miss
- 5-7 Tennessee (2x)
- 5-7 Wake Forest, 4-8 Wake Forest
- 7-6 NC St.
- Austin Peay
- UAB
- 8-5 Georgia
- 4-8 Florida
- 8-5 Houston
And he mostly did that with guys already on the roster; it's telling that after he left a lot of his recruits couldn't sustain the success. And yeah, I get this is Vandy and they aren't a powerhouse by any means, but Meyer leaves Florida and they kept winning for a bit, Harbaugh leaves and Stanford continues beating people up.
He's a good coach, but he's behind Harbaugh, Meyer, Dantonio, Fitzgerald, and maybe Chryst IME as a coach in this conference.
19-19 at Pittsburgh. That was after Pittsburgh went 24-15 in the 3 years immediately prior to Chryst. Pittsburgh is 16-10 in the 2 years immediately following him.
Hasn't really won any big conference games in his 2 years at Wisconsin. Lost to both Iowa & Northwestern (the other B1G West contenders) in 2015, did get to 10 wins but partially because he got the best possible draw of opponents out of the east (Rutgers & MD). Lost to all of OSU, Michigan & PSU in 2016; got by Nebraska in OT at home to win the West.
His Cotton Bowl victory over Western Michigan was the second in his career over a team that ended the season with 10+ victories. Duke (10-4) in 2013 was the first.
Chryst didn't really elevate Pittsburgh --- and I'm not sure he will ever elevate Wisconsin either. I could honestly see Chryst on the hot seat in a couple years.
Chryst is on the border for me; I have to see how he does this year to know if he is sustainable as a head coach or just a guy who just sort of rode the coattails of the Wisconsin machine. And I do give him some credit for the offensive team they have at Pitt now; that certainly isn't Narduzzi's work. And Pitt before he arrived was trending down; they went from 10 to 8 to 6 wins, and Chryst seemed to stem the flow down a bit after taking over what seemed like a pretty fractured team (4 coaches in, like, 2 years). So he might just be a steady guy. But I sort of see Franklin like that as well - a guy who can win with exactly the talent he has, but he isn't a tactical genius. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if he lost 2-3 games this year just because guys like Harbaugh and Meyer out-coach his club.
and I agree - he deserves some credit for that. I will never understand Pittsburgh firing Dave Wannstedt. They went 10-3 in 2009. In 2010, if they had stopped Connecticut from getting a first down on 4th-and-2, Pittsburgh takes over in UConn territory down 2 with 2:00 left - they likely win that game and win the Big East (go to the BCS to play Oklahoma).
Instead they fire Wannstedt, and it devolves into a total circus there for the next 12+ months.
We'll see. I think Wisconsin needs an "elevator" coach, I don't think they have enough structural advantages versus their peers for "steady" to work there. Going 9-4 or 10-3 is fine for now - but 1 or 2 other teams will elevate in the West and then suddenly Wisconsin will be 7-6 every year.
Agree on Franklin - not a tactician. His teams do seem to like him, though (Vandy + PSU - well the post-Hackenberg PSU teams). And that's important too.
has a millstone around his neck named Barry Alvarez - who has never completely relinquished all his head coaching responsiblities.
Wisconsin is weird because they have some wiggle-room every couple of years; they finished in the top 10 a couple of times under Bert, and I'm not sure anyone in the West is poised to really take off. There isn't a huge reecruiting hotbed in that part of the Midwest, and unless people really believe Nebraska has a chance to turn it around, no historical powers. So it's not crazy that they can steady-state at 9+ wins, then have a year where they get a Russell or a stud RB and get to the B1G title game. Then, you just have to win 1 game, and as we saw this year they were within a TD of the big 3 in the other division.
I don't think Chryst is the type of coach to do that, but Alvarez is always floating around and will just replace him. Wisconsin really does feel like a machine that you just have to maintain and it'll keep on running with little deviation.
Franklin looked thoroughly mediocre for his first 2 years at Penn State and then - to his credit - made a great hire in Joe Moorhead to rescue his offense which is what drove much of last year's success. Crediting Franklin with PSU's success is kind of like crediting Hoke with the turnaround of Michigan's defense. When Moorhead goes, Franklin had better get someone good because Moorhead is saving his job right now
Michigan beat ohio last year ... unless you count the ref's points too.
Go Blue!
Don't do that. That is embarrassing to the entire fanbase. We lost, move on.
I was coming to say the same thing. He was legitimately in trouble at PSU not a year ago. Hell, his team basically gave up and lost by 39 to Michigan and needed a very late blocked kick and return to beat PSU after getting something like 250 yards of total offense. Yes, PSU's offense looks good, but it astounds me that people think he's on Harbaugh's or Meyer's level because he finally won more than 9 games for the first time in his career.