Somebody please help me out. I'm confused about why Tony Elliott seems to be such a high prospect for the HC position on this board. I'd really like to hear from some of the CPJ bashers on this one.
The question is: If you had a choice between these two, which one would you take? That is the decision that you are making:
1) a coach with 22 years of head coaching experience, two DI-AA National Championships, the 4th winningest head coach currently in college football, and a 3-time ACC Coach of the Year (along with MANY other accomplishments including an 86% graduation rate), and
2) a young assistant coach who isn't even his team's sole offensive coordinator, whose only accomplishment is apparently the assistant coach of the year in 2017, and that's about it.
What about this since we’re throwing in retired coaches:
3) College Football Hall of Fame Coach. Head coach of Auburn and Clemson. Won 6 conference titles and a national championship. Invented the forward pass. Also, will coach basketball, baseball, and serve as Athletic Director.
At the end of the day, it’s about the best available coach who wants to come to GT. We should compare them considering risk (e.g. standard deviation of likely outcomes) and reward (average expected outcome). Low risk, high reward coaches (e.g. Saban and Meyer) are out of our price range (except for Art Briles, who comes with other baggage). High risk, low reward coaches shouldn’t exist in FBS.
Of the two remaining buckets, fans tend to like high risk, high reward coaches (e.g. Paul Johnson) over low risk, low reward coaches (Chan Gailey) because they like the excitement around having the potential to win it all. An up and coming coordinator from a top team with 4* and 5* recruiting is a high risk, high reward option. On the other side, Whisenhunt would be a low risk, low reward option.
Athletic Directors have different incentives. They don’t want to be fired. If TStan hires a coach who wins a national championship, that’s great, but it doesn’t put TStan in a different position (he still has the same job). On the other hand, if TStan hires a guy who only wins 3 games for his first two years, TStan could get fired. So his bias it to prevent that. He’ll take Whisenhunt and 6-win seasons over a risk of getting fired.