Where do successful coaches come from?

by bruin7982 on Dec 8, 2007 12:25 PM PST

All of the discussion about prospective head coaches and whether UCLA should be willing to hire someone with no previous head coaching experience caused me to take a look at the AP top 25 to see what kind of experience those coaches had before they were hired by their schools. If something like this appears elsewhere on this site, I apologize for the redundancy.

Of the top 25 teams, 16 of their head coaches had some form of college or professional head coaching experience before they were hired, meaning that only 9 did not. The 9 are: Bob Stoops (Oklahoma), Mark Richt (Ga.), Mike Mangino (Kansas), Jeff Jagodzinski (BC), Phil Fulmer (Tenn.), Bret Bielema (Wisconsin), Bronco Mendenhall (BYU), Jim Leavitt (So. Fla.) and Chris Petersen (Boise St.). If I missed prior head coaching experience for any of these folks, I apologize. Of these, only four were promoted to head coach after the prior head coach left: Fulmer, Bielema, Mendenhall and Petersen.

Interestingly, two of the coaches, Mendenhall and Petersen, are among the more popular choices here to succeed Dorrell, even though it seems unlikely that either is interested in the job.

While I haven't carefully studied the background of all of these coaches and have also not carefully studied the background of Dewayne Walker, my gut feeling is that his credentials do not measure up to the other coaches on this list who were made head coaches without prior experience. For example, both Richt and Stoops had significant coordinator experience in very successful programs before they were hired. Of the four who were promoted, only one, Mendenhall, succeeded an unsuccessful coach.

The bottom line is that while it is possible to hire someone with no prior coaching experience and have success with that person, that is not the most common path to success. Unless you can find a Stoops or Richt out there who were longtime successful coordinators in major programs, it is a crap shoot to hire an assistant, especially one off of an unsuccessful staff.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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Thanks 7982.

I submit that Leavitt is a special case, in that he started the USF program from scratch.

by Fox 71 on Dec 8, 2007 12:35 PM PST reply actions

Good post

But I think you need to drill down a little a more. If you do you will find all of the aformentioned coaches had lot more than just 2 years of experience as a college coordinators working under some loser like Karl Dorrell.

Walker is no Bob Stoops.

by Nestor on Dec 8, 2007 1:05 PM PST reply actions