In terms of evaluating a coach, regardless of whether he's the current guy or a prospective coach.
Is it ability to sign and recruit high-profile recruits? This is tough. Ratings have their flaws. Some schools recruit themselves, while other schools historically sign the same quality of guys.
Is it putting players in the NFL or getting them drafted? This seems like a sure-fire way to do it, except the majority of coaches' experience are at schools that don't put guys in the NFL.
Is it strictly wins and losses? I'd argue strongly against this one. I just can't imagine that a missed/made kick here, or a 4th down stop/conversion there is that predictive of a coach's future ability to win games with completely different players.
What about comparing how a coach performed at XYZ school v. how all other coaches performed at XYZ school? Of course, defining "performed" would be difficult and whatever definition you came up with would be very squishy.
What about using advanced stats like Bill Connelly or Brian Fremeau's stuff to measure how a coach's offense & defense performed on an adjusted per/play basis? This seems reasonable.
Even if you could isolate a few things that were predictive of a coach's future success, how predictive are those things really?
In other words, let's say it was conclusive that a coach's margin of beating the betting spread was predictive of future success. Meaning, a coach that beats the point spread by an average of 10 points per game has a better chance of winning games at a different program 5 years in the future than a coach who performed 10 points worse than the spread.
How sure are we that that trend will continue? If you have a particular belief that someone should or shouldn't be hired/fired/retained based on one of these predictive factors, how strong should you hold those convictions?
For example, Coach A has some predictive factor(s) working in his favor, while Coach B does not. Does that mean Coach A has a 2% chance of being more successful than Coach B? 5%? 20%?
These are ridiculously tough questions. I mean, if we knew the answer, we could start our own consulting firm and make millions. Still, I'm curious what people's thoughts may be.
I'd probably say that consistently beating the point spread is more predictive than anything else, but that's only because I put a lot of stock into that sort of thing. In other words, I'd argue that a 10-30 w/l coach that was 30-10 against the spread, would be a better candidate than a coach that was 30-10 and 10-30 against the spread.
With a complete understanding that this a sports message board full of sports opinions, I find it amusing that people hold such strong convictions that so-and-so won't be a successful coach somewhere because they think something in that coach's past is, not just predictive of future success or failure, but an out-right guarantee of it.
Is it ability to sign and recruit high-profile recruits? This is tough. Ratings have their flaws. Some schools recruit themselves, while other schools historically sign the same quality of guys.
Is it putting players in the NFL or getting them drafted? This seems like a sure-fire way to do it, except the majority of coaches' experience are at schools that don't put guys in the NFL.
Is it strictly wins and losses? I'd argue strongly against this one. I just can't imagine that a missed/made kick here, or a 4th down stop/conversion there is that predictive of a coach's future ability to win games with completely different players.
What about comparing how a coach performed at XYZ school v. how all other coaches performed at XYZ school? Of course, defining "performed" would be difficult and whatever definition you came up with would be very squishy.
What about using advanced stats like Bill Connelly or Brian Fremeau's stuff to measure how a coach's offense & defense performed on an adjusted per/play basis? This seems reasonable.
Even if you could isolate a few things that were predictive of a coach's future success, how predictive are those things really?
In other words, let's say it was conclusive that a coach's margin of beating the betting spread was predictive of future success. Meaning, a coach that beats the point spread by an average of 10 points per game has a better chance of winning games at a different program 5 years in the future than a coach who performed 10 points worse than the spread.
How sure are we that that trend will continue? If you have a particular belief that someone should or shouldn't be hired/fired/retained based on one of these predictive factors, how strong should you hold those convictions?
For example, Coach A has some predictive factor(s) working in his favor, while Coach B does not. Does that mean Coach A has a 2% chance of being more successful than Coach B? 5%? 20%?
These are ridiculously tough questions. I mean, if we knew the answer, we could start our own consulting firm and make millions. Still, I'm curious what people's thoughts may be.
I'd probably say that consistently beating the point spread is more predictive than anything else, but that's only because I put a lot of stock into that sort of thing. In other words, I'd argue that a 10-30 w/l coach that was 30-10 against the spread, would be a better candidate than a coach that was 30-10 and 10-30 against the spread.
With a complete understanding that this a sports message board full of sports opinions, I find it amusing that people hold such strong convictions that so-and-so won't be a successful coach somewhere because they think something in that coach's past is, not just predictive of future success or failure, but an out-right guarantee of it.
