The Quest: Coaches

Today I’m going to delve into one of the most important aspects of the college game: coaching. In the college football atmosphere where players can change from year-to-year with transfers, graduations, and early departures for the NFL draft, a coach is the one stable constant factor that you can hang your hat on as a fan. Of course, most of the schools in my final 34 have coaches who have been at the school for less than 7 years. But the experience factor also counts for something, with 15 of the 34 having over 10 years of being a head coach at the D-1 level. Much like the NCAA Football video games, I have broken coaching out between two categories: Coaching Experience and Coaching Prestige. 

Level of Interest: Average

Given that the bandwagon I’m jumping off of just fired the winningest coach in NCAA Football history who had over 40 years of experience, I know I am going to have to tone back my expectations in a coach. To be honest, I don’t need a team with a coach that has a ton of years, but I want to see success.

In calculating the Coaching Experience ratings, I considered 3 factors: Total Years as a Division 1 Head Coach, Overall Winning Percentage as a D-1 Head Coach, Bowls Made During Coaching Career. To properly scale these components into a formula to yield a 1-10 score, I did the following calculations:

Virginia Tech (Frank Beamer – 25 years), South Carolina (Steve Spurrier – 22 years), Kansas State (Bill Snyder – 20 years), Texas Tech (Tommy Tuberville – 17 years), and Alabama (Nick Saban – 16 years) were the top scorers in the Years As Head Coach category. 

In the Overall Record category, Boise St (Chris Peterson – 92.4%), Oregon (Chip Kelly – 85%), Stanford (David Shaw – 84.6%), Ohio St (Urban Meyer – 81.9%), and TCU (Gary Patterson – 78.6%) were the winningest coaches. 

Finally, there were 8 coaches who had been to a bowl every year of their coaching career: Frank Spaziani (Boston College), Dabo Swinney (Clemson), Larry Fedora (UNC), Brett Bielema (Wisconsin), Gary Patterson (TCU), Chris Peterson (Boise St), Chip Kelly (Oregon), and David Shaw (Stanford). Yes, I do know that Shaw has only been at Stanford 1 year, but that factor was addressed in the “Years as Head Coach” component so I’m not too worried about the offset in the Bowl Appearances component.

These three factors were then averaged to give the final score for Coaching Experience. The top scorers in Coaching Experience were:

1t. Virginia Tech (Frank Beamer) – 8.8

1t. South Carolina (Steve Spurrier) – 8.8

3. TCU (Gary Patterson) – 7.8

4. Kansas St (Bill Snyder) – 7.7

5. Alabama (Nick Saban) – 7.6

6. Boise St (Chris Peterson) – 7.4

7. Georgia (Mark Richt) – 7.3

8. Ohio St (Urban Meyer) – 7.1

9. LSU (Les Miles) – 7.0

10t. Texas Tech (Tommy Tuberville) – 6.9

10t. Wisconsin (Brett Bielema) – 6.9

10t. Washington St (Mike Leach) – 6.9

As a final note, you may be surprised to see Washington St appear in the Top 10 here, but it’s important to remember they just hired Mike Leach who had a run of successful seasons at Texas Tech, so while Leach has yet to coach the Cougars, his experience still counts positively for the program.

Level of Interest: High

A coach’s Prestige can be a difficult thing to measure. The metric to be used needs to take into account all of the accomplishments a coach has achieved, both at their current school and throughout their career. Coaching loyalty is another important factor in Coaching Prestige, as I don’t want to cheer for a school whose coach is going to jump ship on them at the first sign of a job in Arizona. What a coach has done at their current school is important to me, along with the number of championships (either Conference or National) the coach has won. With that in mind, here is how I devised the Coaching Prestige Rankings.

Since a coach’s entire career plays into their prestige, I included the 3 components (Years as Head Coach, Overall Record, Bowls per Season) that were used to determine Coach Experience in the Coach Prestige calculation as well. In addition to these 3, I added 5 more factors to the calculation: Coaching Loyalty, Record at Current School, Conference Championships Won, National Championships Won, Bowl Winning Percentage.

Coaching Loyalty was determined by the percentage of a coach’s career they had spent at their current school. I know I could have included more data here, but I did enough data gathering so I went easy on this calculation. The percentage was multiplied by 10 to get a 0-10 number. Frank Spaziani (Boston College), Dabo Swinney (Clemson), Mike London (Virginia), Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech), Kirk Ferentz (Iowa), Brett Bielema (Wisconsin), Bill Snyder (Kansas St), Mike Gundy (Oklahoma St), Gary Patterson (TCU), Ken Niumatlolo (Navy), Chris Peterson (Boise St), Jon Embree (Colorado), Chip Kelly (Oregon), David Shaw (Stanford), Steve Sarkisian (Washington), and Mark Richt (Georgia) have all spent their entire head coaching career at the same institution. 

Record at Current School simply took the coach’s winning percentage and multiplied by 10 to get a 0-10 number. Schools like North Carolina, Ohio St, Penn St, UCLA, Washington St, and Texas A&M suffered here because they just hired their coaches this offseason. Boise St (Chris Peterson – 92.4%), Oregon (Chip Kelly (85%), Stanford (David Shaw – 84.6%), Alabama (Nick Saban – 82.1%), and LSU (Les Miles – 81.5%) were the highest scorers in this category. 

Conference Championships was taken as a straight number and not scaled for the calculation. Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech) and Steve Spurrier (South Carolina) have both won 7 conference titles. Gary Patterson (TCU) has won 5 and Chris Peterson (Boise St) and Urban Meyer (Ohio St) have won 4.

Only 5 coaches on the list have won National Championships. Nick Saban (Alabama) leads the pack with 3, followed by Urban Meyer (Ohio St) with 2, and Gene Chizik (Auburn), Les Miles (LSU), and Steve Spurrier (South Carolina) round out the list with 1 each. Due to the importance of the National Championship, each National Title was multiplied by 5 for the final calculation.

Bowl Winning Percentage was a relatively simple calculation that took Bowl Wins divided by Bowl Appearances. I multiplied the number by 10 to get a 0-10 number that could be used in the final calculations. Auburn’s Gene Chizik led all coaches with a perfect record in bowl games. Urban Meyer (Ohio St) was second with an 88% winning percentage, followed by Duke’s David Cutcliffe who ran up an 80% mark while the head coach at Ole Miss (mostly thanks to Eli Manning) and NC State’s Tom O’Brien who also has an 80% bowl record.

These five factors, combined with the 3 that went into the Coaching Experience ranking were all averaged together to yield a Coach Prestige score. Here are the top scorers:

1. Alabama (Nick Saban) – 7.1

2. Virginia Tech (Frank Beamer) – 6.8

3. TCU (Gary Patterson) – 6.6

4t. South Carolina (Steve Spurrier) – 6.5

4t. Boise St (Chris Peterson) – 6.5

6t. Georgia (Mark Richt) – 6.0

6t. LSU (Les Miles) – 6.0

8. Kansas St (Bill Snyder) – 5.7

9. Oregon (Chip Kelly) – 5.6

10t. Ohio St (Urban Meyer) – 5.5

10t. Iowa (Kirk Ferentz) – 5.5

With these two factors added into the overall calculation, here is the updated Top 25 Rankings: