What makes a head coach? Nearly every college football coach played football somewhere. Does playing experience matter to universities looking for a head coach? Did most head coaches play quarterback in order to learn the game? Is there a pattern to grooming a head coach? These are some of the questions I posited to my (probably annoyed) fiancée today, wondering if there was indeed some special path to landing one of these gigs.
I decided to look at each of the head coaches in the AAC and figure out if there was any type of pattern for hirings in the conference based upon a coach’s playing years, his first coaching job, and his last stop before the current gig. Schools within a conference are intimately familiar with one another, so perhaps they follow similar practices when hiring coaches.
[table id=19 /]Columns 3 and 4, where each coach played and their position, doesn’t tell us much. There seems to be no pattern or preference in regard to where a coach played his college ball.
Of the 12 head coaches in the American, only five played for an FBS school (Willie Taggart played at Western Kentucky when it was an FCS program) and only four played at current Power 5 schools. Five of the the head coaches were quarterbacks, but three were also wide receivers and three primarily played defense.
I also found a few surprises. Believe it or not, SMU’s Chad Morris never played college football, but was a quarterback at Edgewood High School in Texas. Only Central Florida’s Scott Frost won a national championship as a player. None of the 12 coaches of the AAC currently coach for their alma mater, another surprise.
Column 5 also does not seem to point to future success. Most interesting is that every single head coach either assisted at their own school after graduation, or a school with a shared geographic or (in the case of Tom Herman) religious identity.
Six of the 12 coaches took student assistantships just out of college. Only two of the 12 started their coaching careers for high schools. Only one coach, Chad Morris, received a head coaching gig as their first job.
With column 6 we’ve arrived at the real meat of the discussion. Eight of the twelve coaches were hired from prominent positions at Power 5 schools or Notre Dame. Every coach on this list had a major coordinator or head coaching job prior to their current position. Only one coach, Matt Rhule, left the NFL for an AAC coaching gig, but he had been at Temple the six years prior, four of those as offensive coordinator.
The three coaches brought in from other G5 schools, Fritz, Taggart, and Niumatalolo, all were either head coach or associate head coach. Niumatalolo was the only coach hired from within. Taggart left his alma mater to coach at South Florida as did Montgomery (Duke).
So for all you future head coaches out there, the best advice seems to be not to shoot for the moon. Take that internship at the school down the street or the area high school and work your way up from there. Don’t be afraid to change locations and always look for the next step up. You too might one day coach in the AAC (just not at your alma mater).
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