2017 Coaching Carousel

Andewa

Andewa

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Yomanser said:
I could think of worse (Lane Kiffin being one of the first names to come to mind). Anyone that can make Rutgers relevant would do a great job basically anywhere else. I can certainly think of a few names that I'd want to look at before Schiano, but I would not be complaining if Schiano wanted to take the job at Georgia Tech and we struck out on some other options

Frankly, if I could have ANY coach - realistic or not - to lead Georgia Tech, the number one name on my list would be Mark Dantonio, followed closely by Mike Leach, if that gives you any indication on what I value and look at in a coach
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I freakin' love Mike Leach. He gives the best conferences and is every bit as direct as CPJ.

His presser from 1 week ago:
 

Yomanser

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Techster said:
You and I have very different definitions of "a great head coach".
Louisville (under Petrino and Strong), WVU were able to make multiple appearances in the top 25 during those years...why couldn't Schiano at Rutgers do it?
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Because it's Rutgers. The inherent restrictions at Rutgers make it harder to win than in Louisville or Morgantown, both of which have a better history and were willing to invest in their respective programs more than Rutgers was (and in Louisville's case, overlook moral flaws to enable a culture of winning at any cost)
Techster said:
EDIT:

Also this to consider: At Rutgers, football isn't the 247-365 obsession it is in the SEC and especially at a school like UT. Schiano could do things with relative anonymity compared to the microscope he'll be put under at UT. You think someone like Schiano would hold up well in that environment when he also has to coach against coaches like Saban, Malzahn, Smart, Mullen, an improving and recruiting ace like Orgeron, Smart, and whoever TX AM gets?
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Absolutely. And as far as coaching goes, he's a better coach than anyone on that list besides Saban and possibly Malzahn or Mullen, but even then I think Schiano is at the very least on par with those two if not better (you said Smart twice, by the way, lol)
 

SoCal_GT_Fan

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Just to add to Yomanser's comments about Greg Schiano, here's an article from the NY times about the low points of the program:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/s...tgers-seems-stuck-in-a-vortex-of-failure.html
And here's an article about the high-times:
https://njmonthly.com/articles/jersey-living/leap_year/

Rutgers at one point or another was discussing going to a lower division in football. Serious discussions about it. They were that bad. They were getting routinely beaten by Div-1AA schools. Just read that first article from the NY Times and you get how inept they were. Literally when Schiano got there, there wasn't much FBS talent on the team (travesty since New Jersey is a pretty talent-rich state for its size. I would say it has more talent then the whole northeastern states combined), there were budget issues and people were not willing to spend money on the football program, and Rutgers sees itself academically as something of an IVY league school (a bit delusional if you ask me).

He had A LOT of work to do. It did take him a good 4 years to right the ship, worked his butt off bringing in better recruits from within the New Jersey area but also from Florida (recruiting ties from his days as the DC of the U). He did develop talent and there were a good number of players who went to the NFL (Anthony Davis, Ray Rice, Brian Leonard, I think the Pats McCourty to name a few).

The job he did there was short of amazing. He made Rutgers relevant. Now, I can't speak for his personality or why things didn't work out in Tampa but I think that 68-67 record at Rutgers is a bit misleading and required some context.
 
Techster

Techster

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Yomanser said:
Because it's Rutgers. The inherent restrictions at Rutgers make it harder to win than in Louisville or Morgantown, both of which have a better history and were willing to invest in their respective programs more than Rutgers was (and in Louisville's case, overlook moral flaws to enable a culture of winning at any cost)

Absolutely. And as far as coaching goes, he's a better coach than anyone on that list besides Saban and possibly Malzahn or Mullen, but even then I think Schiano is at the very least on par with those two if not better (you said Smart twice, by the way, lol)
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Sorry, but the definition of a "great coach" is someone who transcends their situation and takes their team to something more than a 58% winning record (and that's minus his first two years). If you look at Rutgers operating budget during Schiano's years, Rutgers was very much in the same tier of operating budget as schools like VT, Louisville, WVU, etc. Yet still only 1 top 25 season in 11 years? That's an OK or even good coach...not a great coach. He's a tremendous DC, but as HC not nearly the same level. (BTW, Schiano was the highest paid HC in the Big East when he left.)

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

Let's compare Schiano to CPJ's situation at Navy. CPJ took over what many considered a hopeless situation coaching a military academy. In his six seasons at Navy, they qualified for 5 bowl games, and ended the season of 2004 ranked 10-2 and ranked #24. So in almost half the time, CPJ was able to qualify for just as many bowls (CPJ 5, Schiano 6) and was able to match Schiano in the number of seasons ranked in the top 25.

James Franklin, in 3 years at Vanderbilt playing in arguably the toughest conference at the time (SEC), was able to qualify for half as many bowls (3) and was able to end the season ranked twice as many times as Schiano...in less than a third of the time.

The jobs of Franklin and CPJ at Vandy and Navy in similar circumstances are examples of very good to great coaching jobs. Schiano at Rutgers? I'll let others decide on that, but from my perspective, he did OK to good.

Answer this: If Schiano was as good of a coach as you want to believe, how come the many teams across college football that have needed a "great head coach" since he was fired from Tampa in 2013 never stepped in to try and hire him until Tennessee this weekend? Saban was hired before he finished out the year in Miami, Chip Kelly had every major program with an opening lining up to hire him the last 2 years. "Great head coaches" aren't left coaching high school and being a position coach until OSU hired him to be a DC.
 
Techster

Techster

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SoCal_GT_Fan said:
Just to add to Yomanser's comments about Greg Schiano, here's an article from the NY times about the low points of the program:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/s...tgers-seems-stuck-in-a-vortex-of-failure.html
And here's an article about the high-times:
https://njmonthly.com/articles/jersey-living/leap_year/

Rutgers at one point or another was discussing going to a lower division in football. Serious discussions about it. They were that bad. They were getting routinely beaten by Div-1AA schools. Just read that first article from the NY Times and you get how inept they were. Literally when Schiano got there, there wasn't much FBS talent on the team (travesty since New Jersey is a pretty talent-rich state for its size. I would say it has more talent then the whole northeastern states combined), there were budget issues and people were not willing to spend money on the football program, and Rutgers sees itself academically as something of an IVY league school (a bit delusional if you ask me).

He had A LOT of work to do. It did take him a good 4 years to right the ship, worked his butt off bringing in better recruits from within the New Jersey area but also from Florida (recruiting ties from his days as the DC of the U). He did develop talent and there were a good number of players who went to the NFL (Anthony Davis, Ray Rice, Brian Leonard, I think the Pats McCourty to name a few).

The job he did there was short of amazing. He made Rutgers relevant. Now, I can't speak for his personality or why things didn't work out in Tampa but I think that 68-67 record at Rutgers is a bit misleading and required some context.
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I'm not taking anything away from what Schiano did at Rutgers. He did a good job of turning that program around. But it's not like he turned that program into a juggernaut in a very weak conference....a conference so weak that all the good programs fled to other conferences. Even then Schiano did OK to good after the good programs left.

Schiano wouldn't have done any better at UT than what they had in Butch Jones...who BTW won the Big East twice in 3 seasons before moving on to UT.

BTW...MANY schools in P5 conferences have talked about moving down a level at one time or another. GT being one of them.
 

SoCal_GT_Fan

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Techster said:
I'm not taking anything away from what Schiano did at Rutgers. He did a good job of turning that program around. But it's not like he turned that program into a juggernaut in a very weak conference....a conference so weak that all the good programs fled to other conferences. Even then Schiano did OK to good after the good programs left.

Schiano wouldn't have done any better at UT than what they had in Butch Jones...who BTW won the Big East twice in 3 seasons before moving on to UT.

BTW...MANY schools in P5 conferences have talked about moving down a level at one time or another. GT being one of them.
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Ok, no problem. I just wanted to make sure people weren't just going by that 68-67 record at Rutgers and thinking, "meh". Yea, if you look at just that by itself, it's not impressive at all but if you are able to look at what he had to start with and what that program was at the end of his tenure, it's like night and day.

With Butch..... I think he just was lucky enough to follow after Brian Kelly from WMU to Cinncinati and had some pieces to work with at both jobs before he was picked up by Tennessee. It wasn't a tear-down project like what Schiano had. Also, there were some academic restrictions that Schiano had to contend with (Rutgers has a similar situation like GT with the Hill).

Now, I don't know HOW Schiano would have done at U of T. I mean, there are other HC's like Schiano who resurrected doormat programs (Al Golden at Temple, Gary Barnett at Northwestern come to mind) and they didn't exactly light the world on fire at the next HC gig.

EDIT: Sorry Cuse, I was typing away when you had posted above. You can send this post into the coaching carousel thread as well as the other one I had about Rutgers/Schiano.
 

Yomanser

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Techster said:
Sorry, but the definition of a "great coach" is someone who transcends their situation and takes their team to something more than a 58% winning record (and that's minus his first two years). If you look at Rutgers operating budget during Schiano's years, Rutgers was very much in the same tier of operating budget as schools like VT, Louisville, WVU, etc. Yet still only 1 top 25 season in 11 years? That's an OK or even good coach...not a great coach. He's a tremendous DC, but as HC not nearly the same level. (BTW, Schiano was the highest paid HC in the Big East when he left.)

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

Let's compare Schiano to CPJ's situation at Navy. CPJ took over what many considered a hopeless situation coaching a military academy. In his six seasons at Navy, they qualified for 5 bowl games, and ended the season of 2004 ranked 10-2 and ranked #24. So in almost half the time, CPJ was able to qualify for just as many bowls (CPJ 5, Schiano 6) and was able to match Schiano in the number of seasons ranked in the top 25.

James Franklin, in 3 years at Vanderbilt playing in arguably the toughest conference at the time (SEC), was able to qualify for half as many bowls (3) and was able to end the season ranked twice as many times as Schiano...in less than a third of the time.

The jobs of Franklin and CPJ at Vandy and Navy in similar circumstances are examples of very good to great coaching jobs. Schiano at Rutgers? I'll let others decide on that, but from my perspective, he did OK to good.

Answer this: If Schiano was as good of a coach as you want to believe, how come the many teams across college football that have needed a "great head coach" since he was fired from Tampa in 2013 never stepped in to try and hire him until Tennessee this weekend? Saban was hired before he finished out the year in Miami, Chip Kelly had every major program with an opening lining up to hire him the last 2 years. "Great head coaches" aren't left coaching high school and being a position coach until OSU hired him to be a DC.
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This will probably be my last post on the topic, since I think we've hit an impasse - you clearly believe he is not a great coach according to your definition, whereas I think the term applies - and I just wanted to address some of your points

Firstly, regarding the Navy-Rutgers and CPJ-Schiano comparison: Navy was not in the same situation as Rutgers. Before Schiano, Rutgers had only been to 1 bowl game in its entire 131-year history (1869-2000, the year Schiano took over). Before CPJ took over in 2002, Navy had been to several and won 9 games as recently as 1996, a feat that before Schiano, Rutgers had not accomplished since 1978, coincidentally the only year they had been to a bowl game. Rutgers was more of a dumpster fire than even Navy. And I'm not saying that CPJ is not a great coach - I think he is. He deserves a ton of credit for turning Navy around in such a short time and setting them on the path to consistent success. But at the same time, it feels disingenuous on your part to acknowledge that and give it proper credit, yet not give Schiano the credit he deserves at Rutgers. After his first 4 years, when he was able to get his first full 4-year cycle of recruits in, Schiano went 56-33 and went to 6 bowl games, winning 5 (as I said previously, Rutgers had only been to 1 before Schiano, and lost it). You also mentioned that Schiano and CPJ only finished ranked one of their years. You didn't include, however, that Rutgers finished 12th in the nation, whereas Navy only finished 24th - barely in the Top 25. Both orchestrated the same turnaround - it just took CPJ a little less time than it took Schiano (and in fact, CPJ was 1-4 against Schiano during his time at Navy), so to call one of them great and the other not just because of an arbitrary time limit seems a little misleading to me

Secondly, regarding the Schiano job prospects: Schiano has been offered several high-profile jobs since his firing from Tampa in 2013. There are several reports and reasons why he turned them down - he first took a couple of years from coaching to redefine his philosophy and his approach, as well as stepping away to focus more on his family (much like how Gene Chizik stepped away this year to focus on family and how Pete Carroll stepped away for 2 years after being fired from New England). During this time, he was a volunteer coach at his son's high school in Tampa, not because he couldn't get a good job as a HC or DC at the college level but for the reasons I mentioned above. When he came to Ohio State, he always intended to coach through the 2017 season in Columbus because his sons would graduate high school by the end of the 2017 scholastic year and he didn't want to move his family before then. It wasn't a matter of nobody approaching him - he didn't go anywhere because he was waiting for the right job and time to do so

Finally, I encourage you to read this article - https://www.si.com/2014/11/04/nfl-greg-schiano-year-off - not because I think I will change your opinion on this (you sound pretty determined, which is why I don't see too much of need to keep this conversation going since neither of us are going to convince the other) but because I think it's a good read and might help you understand where I'm coming from. If you do want to keep this conversation going, however, I am more than happy to help CuseJacket move these posts to the Coaching Carousel thread and we can continue discussing there without clogging up this thread

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree with it, and I hope the above clarifies a little why I think that Greg Schiano is a great coach
 
MikeJackets1967

MikeJackets1967

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According to NBC College Sports Talk Rumor Mill Tennessee is talking to Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy and the word going around is Tennessee is offering him twice what he's getting paid by OSU.
 
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