mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
2019-20 Coaching Discussion/Carousel
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Mike Norvell is only 37 years old, that’s as much a hot up and comer as it gets. He’s being floated as a serious option for us when I view that as approximately a snowballs chance.
I could also see a scenario we don’t get a top 5 coach available because he decides to wait a year for a better job. Coaches get anxious to jump while the iron is hot. Whitman seems like a good salesman that goes big or goes home. As long as he’s silent about it, I’m good with that. Don’t want another Tennessee situation on our hands. We are Illinois our confidence is naturally shaken.
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mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Great points. Completely forgot Locksley jumped onto that Florida coaching staff in '04. That one seems to make a little more sense because he went from RB coach (and looks like running game coordinator?) to OC at Illinois. I think that is part of the rub that makes it feel tough to lament the loss of Campbell. He had an option of coming to Illinois and becoming the OC under Beckman (tough to make a comparison but looks like Cubit was given $400k in 2012) or become the head coach at Toledo (they paid him $495k). Even if Illinois met that salary, would that have been enough to motivate him to switch (without knowing all of the background of whether they trusted Beckman to succeed at Illinois because that is difficulty to discern).
He brought a good staff. Talent. The guy took us to the rose bowl. And back to back bowls for the first time ever.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Let's all agree that he absolutely was not born to be a special teams coordinator.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Very good point, one that I’ve made many times here. People seem to assume that a coach will take our job just to be in the Power 5 when in reality, there’s nothing stopping a guy like Luke Fickell from saying “I don’t love any of these jobs and I’m happy staying in my home state making 2M, I’d rather wait and see what else comes up”.
I don't know. His first two years sucked, but I could live with his last 5 over and over again.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Too high for Tennessee, Michigan and Virginia Tech. Phil Fulmer won't admit defeat on Pruitt. Michigan is fine, they'll win 10 games. They'll give Fuente a chance to see what the post-Bud Foster era looks like. I know I just said otherwise, but I wouldn't entirely rule out USC winning enough for Helton to wiggle off the hook either. And honestly, if FSU can find 6 wins from somewhere, it wouldn't shock me to see Taggart get another year.
Rutgers, Ole Miss, Illinois. That's a very small list of dead men walking for this part of a season.
"Established winner in the AAC" is what I meant by "tippy-top of the non-Power Five market" both of which apply to Norvell, regardless of his age.
Todd Orlando is over a decade older than Norvell, but he fits the profile of someone who would be a credible hire at Illinois, but who Florida State wouldn't stoop to consider. Everyone isn't selecting from the same list.
Absolutely true, but it's not very methodologically rigorous to say "If I can make a fair case that the coach wouldn't be interested, or would hypothetically have better offers, cross him off the list". You'd have certainly eliminated Lovie Smith and Brad Underwood through that methodology.
The way to do it is to draw your list all the way up to the line of not passing the straight face test (Stoops, Meyer, etc) and then understand that the upper part of your list are lower-percentage possibilities.
I guess it depends what your goals are. The way I see it is lets take a look at a list of names reasonably sized enough to get our arms around, that nonetheless has a very high probability of containing the ultimate selection.
Not sure if it was this board or not, but the big initial list I made for our last two had Lovie and Underwood on them. To shamelessly toot my own horn.
Yeah, on paper Zook looked okay (though he underachieved at Florida), but he never had the right mental makeup to be a successful head coach. He did some good things for us, but he wasn't a good game-day coach, and he didn't have the kind of personality to hold the respect of his players.
While we analyze the crap out of the internet, may I suggest we get Mike White as an interim coach? We can extend his contract, you know, the usual game, while we find a great fit.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
The thing that's amazing to look back on, in a lot of ways Ron Zook invented the internet. What I mean by that is that we live in this world now where large numbers of random nobodies who don't know each other personally but who share some particular interest can gang up via the internet and create a mass movement that gets reported on by the media and that enters the public consciousness and has a real effect on real world decision making through purely online means.
If there's an earlier example of that than FireRonZook.com I'm all ears, but I think that was kinda patient zero of basically everything the world was to become.
And make no mistake, that is a critical piece of why Ron Zook became the head coach at Illinois. Ron Guenther was absolutely horrified by the way Zook was treated at Florida. The power demonstrated by the unwashed masses of fans in that saga was the antithesis of Guenther's entire belief structure about college sports. And for less ideological but obviously more personal reasons, Zook was really raw about it too, and the two bonded over that.
Oh and I had to mention this too. Not true in the slightest. Those kids LOVED Zook. He was not a disciplinarian and let them get away with too much off the field, so maybe it wasn't the ideal kind of leader-pupil type relationship, but Zook's players adored him and worked their behinds off for him in a football context.
And the same was true of the players' families. Zook had a way with people.
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This is where my worry comes in. Even though we won’t be shopping with the big boys (should they join the carousel) we will be shopping with the schools that the big boys pluck a coach from.
And if the big boys are taking from a school, we know (assume) that school has been successful. So they will definitely be a more attractive choice to the coaches we are looking at.
It might be a scenario where urban Meyer and one of the big named coordinators plug those big time jobs.
What is the number 1 trait you desire in a coach? Mine is being elite at either offense or defense over multiple spots. I want to know, with as much certainty as possible that, they called the plays on that side and are elite. Aranda is my example for this as his defense has been good no matter what place he’s been at. That way, if we ever do become better, we only have to worry about 1 side of the ball when our coordinators get poached. We would have our identity. He’s probably out of our league, but I’d feel this would raise our floor. Don’t cheat and say the trait is winning as all our candidates have that in common, unless we hire Jeff Fisher.
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ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
The longer I follow this stuff, the more clear it becomes that there's no one template for what you're looking for, and that a resume doesn't necessarily prove what someone's skills are.
But I think maybe the most important trait in a Power Five head football coach is the ability to identify, hire, develop, and empower and delegate to good assistants. The ability to do it and the desire to do it.
My wife is a BC grad so i watch alot of there games i want no part of Steve Addazio
I don't know how to format this with the quotes, so I'll address this in a highly professional "A-B-C" manner.
A. I, respectfully, do not agree with your assessment of the Tennessee and Michigan jobs. Doesn't make me right of course, simply means I see them a different way, Michigan in particular where winning 10 games is nowhere near as important as winning the Big Ten Conference, qualifying for the CFB Playoff and defeating Ohio State (All of which Harbaugh has done a a collective zero times). There's also another factor, Harbaugh himself. That job doesn't have to open up purely by way of his being fired. The Willie Taggart comment is fairly odd. If someone in that program is safe with 6 wins, one could make the case for Lovie Smith and his staff being safe at 4 wins with 8 close losses at which point this discussion is much ado about nothing.
2. Hm. Feels as though we may actually be bantering over something we agree upon. My general point from the beginning of this topic has been to identify and talk through realistic candidates for this position. I agree wholeheartedly that we're not all shopping in the same grocery aisle. Mike Norvell, Dave Aranda and Luke Fickell are not realistic candidates for this job and as such, I don't see the value in the exercise of discussing them. Todd Orlando, however, could or even should be a candidate for us. He's a man we need to devote time into researching.
3. I can't speak for the masses but as I've said many times on this board Lovie was the exact type of candidate, to the letter, that I thought we would hire. I believe we do need to go through the process of eliminating names if we can't make a reasonable case for why they would accept this job. Otherwise, I feel as though we trap ourselves into the annual game of mismanaging our own expectations and then complaining when those mismanaged expectation fall back to where they belong. Lots of fan bases are guilty of this but it seems to run rampant with us.
Wow. Did you do all that? Thanks!
I agree about the staff part. If I could also get an offensive guru that would be nice.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I understand the basis you're claiming for the distinction here, but I don't think it's tenable.
And the thing about these guys that you're claiming are certain to turn us down, is that there are more of them than there are better jobs than Illinois, let alone open ones, let alone open ones seeking them.
Is Ole Miss going to offer Dave Aranda their head coaching job? Has Dave Aranda ever been offered a Power Five head job before? Has he ever been offered any head coaching job before? He went from a guy no one had heard of to priced out of MAC-type HC range very quickly.
Is Luke Fickell dying to be a Big Ten head coach?
How do we know?
Your sense of the head coaching marketplace is strong, but your sense of the randomness of these things is weak, IMO.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal
I’m only mildly joking when I say I’m ready to moderate a coach search podcast featuring Gritty and Twangers.
My only pushback is when comparing fsu getting 6 wins would mean U of I should be happy with a 4 win lovie. Lovie was basically safe year 2 no matter what and probably year 3 as well. If this was year 3 or 4 at FSU, you likely need 9 wins to keep the job.
Bolded: That's probably fair, though there is method in the madness.
Dave Aranda. I am very thrown off by this. Maybe 8 years ago he was a guy no one had heard of but this is not 2012, this is 2020. He's a multiple time, as far back as 2013-ish, Broyles Award finalist. His name recognition is extremely high and has been for some time. Has he been offered from a Power 5? Not to my knowledge. Had Kirby Smart been offered from a Power 5 before the Georgia gig? No he had not. If you have a high profile job with a high profile salary in that high profile conference and you've got the results to back it up, previous offers will not dictate your value to the marketplace. And Dave Aranda (The highest paid and arguably best coordinator in all of college football) has the profile, salary and results that are as high as it gets. He's so far out of our realm, it's not worth the discussion.
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