Why does this coaching carousel feel off?

[Alex C]

I have been hearing and thinking about the travels of Lane's family and he has been around a bit. He has Ole Miss working and is the son of a legendary coach in Monte.

Here begins what I do not understand. Why is he the top candidate for so many searches? He has a longer history that is neutral or bad- Tenn, USC, the Raiders to name a few.... But he was a Saban rehab project (so is Sark, but when we hired him there were not schools and NFL teams clamoring for him, although Lane had 2 stops as a HC between the 2 events)

Here is where that thinking took me- coach rankings based on some categories. These are my impressions and and totally subject to my biases (which I lay out some below). But it also made me think about James Franklin and Sark. Penn St knew who Franklin was. I do not know if there is someone ready to be better. So I decided to rank some known current coaches and some Championship winners to try to keep in context Sark is a great coach (I am no Sark hater, so I continue to root for him) and the number of truly great coaches that are proven and can repeat success is small.

 

I welcome banter/ comments/ feedback or any challenge on how I rated them. My ultimate conclusion was: I would not want to be looking for a coach right now. 

 

Some assumptions:

1) Some of these coaches have long runways and some are short. I am not giving a lot of benefit of the doubt to the unproven side
2) I watch Texas religiously, and then the SEC some, and don't watch much from other conferences
3) These are gut reactions and may be a little nuanced by coordinators, schedules, etc, and are my interpretation on how i would rank them in a coaching search. (I don't claim to be right- for instance if Kirby has had more top 5 defenses than Venables)

Here is my ranking list:

[Roysterr]

Player Development under Mack Brown would not be a B+ in my opinion. lower 

[Alex C]

I thought a lot about that, too. I tried to remove recency bias of his last few years where the team got soft. 

If I look at the number of NFL players that were on the early to mid 2000s teams, the recruiting was good but those players who stuck around 3 or 4 years got better and played on Sundays.

[ArizonaLonghorn]

Hypothetically, say Sark wants to leave (for whatever reason) and CDC is OK with it - no buyout, nothing like that, just a mutual amicable parting of the ways.  Texas job is open.

There are only two coaches on the list who just might (possibly) come here that I think would do an excellent job, based on what they've done the past say 5 years - I'm leaving out Kirby, Dabo, Saban, Cignetti - the usual extremely unlikely or unobtainables.

Marcus Freeman and Dan Lanning are the two I think would be great fits at Texas.  I know there are solid reasons that might keep them in their current jobs, but those are the two I'd go for who seem even remotely feasible, probably in that order.

What do you guys think?  Any other big names that you think are interested?  Would Freeman or Lanning be suitable for you?

[Jeff Howe]

The realistic pool of college coaches isn't as deep as maybe some folks making decisions at other programs thought it would be.

Throw in a shallow pool of proven candidates for NFL jobs and those who don't get their top choice could be going pretty far down the wish list to hire a coach. 

[Alex C]

Is this a product of the time to fire (TTF- a new metric in the NIL era!) being quicker over the past few years in the 12 team playoff cycle? 

The fact that Lane was the definitive "Hot" coach always seemed weird to me as he is slightly better than average in a P4 setting, in my opinion.

I wonder how much the retirement of Saban plays a role, too, as there were always coordinators in his org that were in the mix with up and coming head coaches. 

Knowing the coaches that were "poachable" were Kiffin, Rhule, Drink, and Sumrall makes it seem a bit of a letdown compared to previous cycles. (And maybe its the money keeping many names like Lanning, Cignetti, Smart, Day, etc completely out of consideration)

Thoughts @Jeff Howe?

[Alex Butler]

1 hour ago, Roysterr said:

Player Development under Mack Brown would not be a B+ in my opinion. lower 

I disagree he had some great classes. As a whole player develop was solid. Just not at the end. 

[Alex Butler]

This is fantastic!! I agree about Kiffin. I think people fall in love with the offense but forget what a trainwreck a lot of his teams are especially defensively. I’m not a Kiffin fan at all. 

[Atticus]

Having Sark as an A- for offense is inaccurate. Especially when putting Day and Kiffin as a B+ there. 

There are plenty of other aspects of that chart I disagree with, but that direct comparison is one that I’ll point out. 

[Alex C]

23 minutes ago, Atticus said:

Having Sark as an A- for offense is inaccurate. Especially when putting Day and Kiffin as a B+ there. 

There are plenty of other aspects of that chart I disagree with, but that direct comparison is one that I’ll point out. 

Oh sure there are some things that I think we can adjust a bit, but I don't know If I think Day or Kiffin are any better than Sark on offense, maybe they are a wash, in reality. But seeing as their overalls are the same is a point of emphasis for me. Outside of Kirby (and maybe Marcus Freeman, but he only has a couple years as HC) there is not a lot of separation for a lot of those coaches. 

And I think my hypothetical is- Is there was no money implication, how would you trade Sark for straight up that would be an improvement? My answer is pretty much nobody because the improvement for anyone but Kirby or pulling Saban out of retirement would be a benefit and there would be costs short term to make a switch. 

TLDR: I like having Sark as the coach and need him to figure it out so he does not become Stejames Sarkfranklin. 

[Roysterr]

Stat's are total football FBS   Ole Miss has consistently had the better offense in all but one year.   

 

Kiffen's Offense :  2025 : 3rd   2024 : 2nd   2023 12th  2022 : 8th

Sark's Offense  :    2025 80th   2024 : 21st   2023 : 9th   2022 : 35th                    

 

[jkates]

It feels off because it started crazy early.