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College Football Success - Recruiting or Coaching
- Thread starter The Alabaster Yak
- Start date
Ron Zook could recruit, but couldn't coach worth a ****, so there is that. I think you have to have both, talent alone doesn't win if you don't know what to do with them. If it was all talent, then just go get a bunch of used car salesmen. There is a baseline bias in this comparison that we assume all the coaches at the college level have some minimum level of skill and are just as good as their counterparts when it comes to game planning and scheming, but then that all goes to hell when you realize that teams with lower talent levels routinely beat teams with higher talent levels. Then you get teams like Alabama when they have a very high football IQ head coach that hires a bunch of great recruiters and they become the unstoppable force, much like Pete at SC. SC now, still pulls in a lot of top athletes, but the coaching acumen has gone way down.
BlackNGold
Club Member
It is more than those 2 things. I have always felt that it is 40% recruiting, 40% getting your team ready to play, and 20% in game adjustments.
To me, that adds up to 40/60 - Coaching, or the "Coaching Matters More" answer.
BlackNGold
Club Member
Not to me. If you don't have the talent, coaching cannot help. Talent is the foundation and the coaching builds on that.
Getting the team ready to play and in-game adjustments are probably the two biggest aspects of coaching. You said 40% and 20% for those and 40% recruiting. What am I missing here?
I think there's a way bigger difference in recruiting ability than in coaching ability and just basic football knowledge between most college HCs or even coaches. Purely speaking Xs and Os, I am not even sure if there's really like a world's difference between Saban, Meyer and a Texas HS coach. Some are more creative, some have some more wrinkles and are a little more innovative than others, but at the end of the day I think they will all have a very sound understanding of the Xs and Os and concepts.
I generally agree, but teaching the x’s and o’s and expressing them in a manner understood by younger players is a differentiator
very good point, yes. but then i guess thats a problem in all aspects of life. understanding something is one thing, explaining or teaching it to others so its understood is something entirely different. soft skills matter. a lot. in coaching and recruiting ... and recruiting might be all about the soft skills, your empathy, your ability to socialise, relate to people etc and how you communicate your ideas.
I think he's trying to say that it's 100% recruiting, but the other half or more is coaching.
I break it down to 20% Admin/school support structures, 20% Coaching, and 60% recruiting.
For a long time I think CU was really lacking that first 20% - that is, we were generally expecting the coach to create and maintain those structures rather than it being something that was put in place and maintained by the AD (with coach input).
Hawkins was a vacuous empty suit, but he wasn't wrong when he complained that the administration was expecting him to do things that the administration does in most other programs.
Embree was in way over his head, but again - this is what the "water bottle" complaint was actually about, even if it was articulated very poorly: the administration putting things on the head coach's plate that aren't there in well run programs.
Putting that 20% on the head coach is what made CU a place that wasn't attractive to many head coaches: success at CU required them to take on more responsibility than they would have at other schools. Bohn deserves a lot of the blame for completely failing in this regard.
That 20% is where RG and especially Lance Carl have fixed things, and MM definitely helped by wearing some of those hats early on too. The next coach doesn't need to worry about that 20%, and that's the big reason why we're fishing in deeper waters than we have been in prior coaching searches.
It also means that RG can take more of a risk with a relatively "inexperienced" hire: the new coach won't have to worry about too much of the other stuff: they can recruit and coach and rely on Lance Carl for the rest...
For a long time I think CU was really lacking that first 20% - that is, we were generally expecting the coach to create and maintain those structures rather than it being something that was put in place and maintained by the AD (with coach input).
Hawkins was a vacuous empty suit, but he wasn't wrong when he complained that the administration was expecting him to do things that the administration does in most other programs.
Embree was in way over his head, but again - this is what the "water bottle" complaint was actually about, even if it was articulated very poorly: the administration putting things on the head coach's plate that aren't there in well run programs.
Putting that 20% on the head coach is what made CU a place that wasn't attractive to many head coaches: success at CU required them to take on more responsibility than they would have at other schools. Bohn deserves a lot of the blame for completely failing in this regard.
That 20% is where RG and especially Lance Carl have fixed things, and MM definitely helped by wearing some of those hats early on too. The next coach doesn't need to worry about that 20%, and that's the big reason why we're fishing in deeper waters than we have been in prior coaching searches.
It also means that RG can take more of a risk with a relatively "inexperienced" hire: the new coach won't have to worry about too much of the other stuff: they can recruit and coach and rely on Lance Carl for the rest...
Just take a peek over at the Coliseum in LA. How many 4* and 5* guys are at a USC team that just went 5-7? I voted 70% recruiting but that 30% coaching can make the players play below their talent level. You put a Saban or Dabo over at SC for this year and replay the year, i would bet that team goes 10-2 or better
BlackNGold
Club Member
You are thinking of everything on the same level - two dimensional. Recruiting is the foundation that you build upon.
When you build a house the foundation is maybe only 20% of the job but without a good foundation you house will be bad no matter how well you frame and finish it. But with a good foundation a great carpenter/builders work can really shine. He can put a lot of work into finish work to make it really a great project.. And the foundation by itself is not a finished product.
Same with coaching - you need that recruiting foundation to make the other part of coaching shine. The original poll was overly simplistic, IMO.
This also plays in to the administrative and organization aspect of things. USC is dysfunctional right now. That impacts performance on the field.
I wasn't looking for an philosophical discussion on the subject, more just gauging what most people here believe is the cause/effect of sustained college football success. I agree, there is no set formula and it's overly simplistic.
The only time when CU was good under macintyre was when he had NFL quality players on defense. The team was lucky to have those players. The sub-standard recruiting from the macintyre admin explains why his teams were at the bottom of the Pac-12 south in all of his years save the one.
If the majority of your roster is made up of at least 4 star recruits, you can pretty much bumblef*** your way to 7 wins. If you can at least put together a game plan whether good or bad, you can get those same players to win two more. Have half a clue about coaching and you're on your way to finishing in the top 10 year in and year out. Yes Virginia, in the game of college football today recruiting is WAY more important to success.
Even if you don’t have talent?
Yes. They allow you to attract recruits and coaches.
Good organizations are built on leadership and culture. Football is no different.