Good coaches win the games they should win

[boydbuff]

I said this during the offseason over and over and of course had some virtual battles with the likes of Duff, but I think HCMM is starting to prove the point very well. Good coaches win the games they should win and have their teams ready to play every week. We have better athletes than CSU and we should beat them. We did. Last year we lost games we had no business losing based on the talent on our roster (which is lower than most Pac programs but not lower than FCS schools, CSU or probably Fresno State although that is probably debatable).

While Central Arkansas has some good athletes, as a whole team, we are better than them and should win that too.

Great coaches win games they shouldn't. I think it is clear that HCMM is at least a good coach. We'll see this season and next season if HCMM & Crew are great coaches, in part measured by if we can win 1-2 games a year that we shouldn't (i.e. where we are outmanned).

Go Mac 2 and Go Buffs!

 

[sackman]

Geez. I think it's time to tap the brakes just a little.

 

[Quattro]

 

[boydbuff]

Sacky just sayin hcmm is at least a good coach menining we should beat the teams where our talent is better.

As a proxy we can measure the # of bcs offers our starters have vs our opponents and predict we win the games where we have more.

Csu check
Cent Arkansas well see
Not sure how we compare to fresno state and Utah but of we are higher we should beat them too.

 

[Dark Bohner]

I said this during the offseason over and over and of course had some virtual battles with the likes of Duff, but I think HCMM is starting to prove the point very well. Good coaches win the games they should win and have their teams ready to play every week. We have better athletes than CSU and we should beat them. We did. Last year we lost games we had no business losing based on the talent on our roster (which is lower than most Pac programs but not lower than FCS schools, CSU or probably Fresno State although that is probably debatable).

While Central Arkansas has some good athletes, as a whole team, we are better than them and should win that too.

Great coaches win games they shouldn't. I think it is clear that HCMM is at least a good coach. We'll see this season and next season if HCMM & Crew are great coaches, in part measured by if we can win 1-2 games a year that we shouldn't (i.e. where we are outmanned).

Go Mac 2 and Go Buffs!

The bolded is still an unknown. Great start to HCMM's tenure, but let's get by Central Ar-Kansas and some of the rest of the schedule before we annoint him as the second coming.

 

[whatthebuff]

Would you guys consider Paul Rhodes and Mike Riley good coaches?

 

[sackman]

Would you guys consider Paul Rhodes and Mike Riley good coaches?

I see what you did there. Why didn't you throw in Grandpa Snyder while you were at it?

The talent gap between FCS and FBS, particularly at the top of FCS and bottom of FBS, is nonexistant, IMO.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Sacky just sayin hcmm is at least a good coach menining we should beat the teams where our talent is better.

As a proxy we can measure the # of bcs offers our starters have vs our opponents and predict we win the games where we have more.

Csu check
Cent Arkansas well see
Not sure how we compare to fresno state and Utah but of we are higher we should beat them too.

Your BCS offers as a proxy argument is ridiculous. What about kids that commit early and don't get as many offers, or kids that get hurt their senior year of HS, or academic risks that scare some programs away? What about playing at home versus the road? What about injuries? How did Hawk beat Oklahoma?

You're trying to make this a simple equation and it's not.

 

[NashBuff]

I see what you did there. Why didn't you throw in Grandpa Snyder while you were at it?

The talent gap between FCS and FBS, particularly at the top of FCS and bottom of FBS, is nonexistant, IMO.

That's the truth. Had Embree still been the CU coach, I would not be very confident of CU beating UCA this Saturday but HCMM and his coaches really has BuffNation believing again.

 

[Alfred91]

Well since everyone jumped boyd before I got a chance, I won't pile on.

I'll just say that this MM love is going to go away fast if we **** the bed on Saturday.

 

[InTheBuff]

everybody needs to enjoy Sunday but realize that csu's QB will most likely be the worst QB Colorado will face all year-

 

[boydbuff]

I am saying-HCMM had our team prepared to play all 4 quarters and mostly in all phases of the game. We beat a team we should beat because we have superior players. Good coaches RARELY lose games to significantly lower level opponents. Great coaches on occasion beat teams they shouldn't.

As for the BCS offers of starters as a proxy for team quality. We have had this argument in other threads and I find it shocking that people violently react to it. I said BCS offers of starters (not total team BCS offers or offers for injured players).

Furthermore, I and others have provided links in other threads to academic research which has demonstrated that some measure of aggregate team quality (i.e. average star ratings or other measures of the aggregate skill level) plus coaching quality are the largest determinants of team performance.

Not sure why that shocks anyone either. Yes there are other variables, like home vs. away, injuries (accounted for by my use of BCS offers for starters), etc. but they account for a very small amount of the variance in team performance compared with overall team quality and coaching quality.

My point, yet again, which I raised numerous times over the summer, is that I expected a very big improvement over last year across the board b/c, my argument goes, one of the 2 most important predictor variables (coaching quality) changed substantially.

While one game does not prove my point yet, Embree's teams never played that well, NEVER including last year when he had about 80% of the same athletes on the field (albeit sans PRich). If you get close to controlling for one of the two variables (in this case team quality) and the other major variable changes, and there is a sizable subsequent change in the dependent variable (i.e. team performance as measured by W/L or margin of victory), you have strong empirical evidence that indeed coaching quality has a significant impact on the outcome.

Sorry for geeking out but I felt obligated to justify my argument.

 

[Jerry]

Funny how all the talk about inferior talent on the roster has noticeably subsided now. In college and in Pac 12, you should be able to "coach up" average talent to have a winning season every year.

 

[boydbuff]

Funny how all the talk about inferior talent on the roster has noticeably subsided now. In college and in Pac 12, you should be able to "coach up" average talent to have a winning season every year.

That is thing-I am with you. I got frustrated during the off-season with all the talk that we sucked so bad b/c our talent level was so bad-and my argument was that our talent-level is below average for the Pac but not so bad we should be 1-11. That with good coaching last year we should have been in the range of 3-4 victories.

This thread continues the argument by using our first game under a competent head coach to suggest that indeed we are better than we appeared last year.

 

[BlackNGold]

I felt before the game that CSU was one of the worst teams we would see all year. After seeing them, they were worse that I expected.

Enjoy the victory (we should enjoy them regardless of the opponent after the last several years) but time will tell and that time line may be more than one season.

 

[boydbuff]

I felt before the game that CSU was one of the worst teams we would see all year. After seeing them, they were worse that I expected.

Enjoy the victory (we should enjoy them regardless of the opponent after the last several years) but time will tell and that time line may be more than one season.

Ok, here is what I don't get about people rationalizing our general dominance of CSU by saying they are a terrible team. Does anyone really think in their 2nd year with their Coach Mac, with the same QB who started last year, and the same OL with another year of playing time, and a few new guys with some talent like their Hollywood guy, that they are much worse than last year? I don't.

So if you follow that logic through-and for the sake of argument-say that CSU is about the same as they were last year, and you look at how we played them last year, vs. this year, across the board (not just Prich's contribution), than how can you explain away the vastly improved performance?

Our coaching staff has implemented better schemes, has done a better job of coaching them, and performed a near miracle with Wood. Face it, we have a real coaching staff for the first time in a looong time, and we are going to play better in every game compared to how we played last year.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Boyd, the argument you've been making and supporting with your "academic research" is that teams with more talent and better coaching tend to win more...well no s**t. I don't need to read some thesis you pulled off the web to tell me that talent and coaching are important to winning.

The issue I have with your BCS offer argument is that you first made this claim in a thread you started to compare the BCS offers of CU and CSU in which you decided not to even bother looking up the CSU roster to support your own argument. Now CU wins and you're telling everyone "I told you so" as if you've discovered some magical algorithm to winning. You're making s**t up.

 

[boydbuff]

Boyd, the argument you've been making and supporting with your "academic research" is that teams with more talent and better coaching tend to win more...well no s**t. I don't need to read some thesis you pulled off the web to tell me that talent and coaching are important to winning.

The issue I have with your BCS offer argument is that you first made this claim in a thread you started to compare the BCS offers of CU and CSU in which you decided not to even bother looking up the CSU roster to support your own argument. Now CU wins and you're telling everyone "I told you so" as if you've discovered some magical algorithm to winning. You're making s**t up.

Some people say I am full of sh*t for saying coaching and team quality are the most important. Others like you say I am just stating the obvious.

This ongoing discussion emerged from the debates about how important quality coaches actually are to W/L and some people defending Embree by saying we just had shi**y players and therefore it was not his fault we sucked donkey d*k.

My arguments, leveraging academic research, are that in fact coaching quality does make a big difference and that if you gave the keys to the Buffs to a competent coaching staff you would see a dramatically improved product on the field.

Furthermore my arguments using team aggregate recruiting rankings, and/or BCS offers as a proxy for team quality have been used to demonstrate that are overall team skill is not that bad to play as bad as we did last year, and therefore, incompetent coaches were largely at fault for the disgusting product we put on the field.

If you feel that none of those points are a contribution to any conversation, so be it.

 

[Alfred91]

I'm just not comfortable saying "Good coaches win the games they should" after one game.

What about Sparkles? Could it be that he is a bad coach? ****, Embree won game one against CSU, then lost the next year. Couldn't it be the case with Sparkles, too? I just don't think we can up and classify MM as the next Coach Mac (pun intended) on the strength of one game.

If CU beats CA, then goes out and pulls the upset on Fresno (yes, it would be an upset), then maybe we can re-evaluate. Until then, it's just one freaking game. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see the team look like they knew what they were doing on the field, but again - one freaking game.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Some people say I am full of sh*t for saying coaching and team quality are the most important. Others like you say I am just stating the obvious.

This ongoing discussion emerged from the debates about how important quality coaches actually are to W/L and some people defending Embree by saying we just had shi**y players and therefore it was not his fault we sucked donkey d*k.

My arguments, leveraging academic research, are that in fact coaching quality does make a big difference and that if you gave the keys to the Buffs to a competent coaching staff you would see a dramatically improved product on the field.

Furthermore my arguments using team aggregate recruiting rankings, and/or BCS offers as a proxy for team quality have been used to demonstrate that are overall team skill is not that bad to play as bad as we did last year, and therefore, incompetent coaches were largely at fault for the disgusting product we put on the field.

If you feel that none of those points are a contribution to any conversation, so be it.

Nobody said either of these things. You are arguing with the wind.

 

[boydbuff]

I'm just not comfortable saying "Good coaches win the games they should" after one game.

What about Sparkles? Could it be that he is a bad coach? ****, Embree won game one against CSU, then lost the next year. Couldn't it be the case with Sparkles, too? I just don't think we can up and classify MM as the next Coach Mac (pun intended) on the strength of one game.

If CU beats CA, then goes out and pulls the upset on Fresno (yes, it would be an upset), then maybe we can re-evaluate. Until then, it's just one freaking game. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see the team look like they knew what they were doing on the field, but again - one freaking game.

I am not saying HCMM is the Mac2. He could be, but one game does not a brilliant coach make.

What I am saying is that we have one piece of evidence to suggest that HCMM may in fact be a good coach because he beat a team he should beat and because the product was not only entertaining but also showed discipline and quality across the board we haven't seen in many years from a Buffs team.

Given what he did at SJSU it is hard to argue that there is insufficient evidence that he is probably a good coach. If he continues to win the games he should (which are few this year) and wins 1 or 2 this or next year that he shouldn't win, than perhaps he is on his way to being a great coach.

He'd have to compete regularly for the Pac 12 South and get into BCS caliber bowls (i.e. playoffs) in the next 5+ years to be in the Mac 1 stratosphere

 

[cnbuff410]

I think it is clear that HCMM is at least a good coach.

Let's wait until the game on this Saturday finishes

 

[rolandftw]

Great coaches obviously help, as they get the best out of recruits that might have been overlooked by other programs. I think we'll have a decent idea after the Fresno State game.

 

[Germinator]

Funny how all the talk about inferior talent on the roster has noticeably subsided now. In college and in Pac 12, you should be able to "coach up" average talent to have a winning season every year.

If everyone's so scared of Central Arkansas because the talent gap isn't so huge, then why wouldn't you apply that same logic in our favor? If the talent gap between CU and central Arkansas is small enough to fear Central Arkansas, then i say the talent gap between CU, asu, Cal, and UofA is small enough that we have a legit shot To beat those teams.

 

[FlatironsBuff]

If everyone's so scared of Central Arkansas because the talent gap isn't so huge, then why wouldn't you apply that same logic in our favor? If the talent gap between CU and central Arkansas is small enough to fear Central Arkansas, then i say the talent gap between CU, asu, Cal, and UofA is small enough that we have a legit shot To beat those teams.

Have you ever known someone in an abusive relationship? It comes down to, we have been so beaten down by CU football and admin, that we cannot see anything positive about our team. We cannot fathom competing with ASU, Cal UofA at this point because a scant 9 months ago it was impossible to see a light at the end of the tunnel. We beat CSU pretty well, even making mistake and letting them back into the game, when playing very vanilla. We fear CA because we had our butts whipped by these types of schools in recent memory. We can't find a way to think we can beat Fresno after our team pretty much rolled over and wet themselves last year.

But it is a new year, new coaches, which look amazing after the last few train wrecks, and yet, we can't beleive that we could have good fortune. Find it hard to think that....CU football *MIGHT* actually be on its way back. The former abuse has made us see the bad side of everything.

 

[boydbuff]

Have you ever known someone in an abusive relationship? It comes down to, we have been so beaten down by CU football and admin, that we cannot see anything positive about our team. We cannot fathom competing with ASU, Cal UofA at this point because a scant 9 months ago it was impossible to see a light at the end of the tunnel. We beat CSU pretty well, even making mistake and letting them back into the game, when playing very vanilla. We fear CA because we had our butts whipped by these types of schools in recent memory. We can't find a way to think we can beat Fresno after our team pretty much rolled over and wet themselves last year.

But it is a new year, new coaches, which look amazing after the last few train wrecks, and yet, we can't beleive that we could have good fortune. Find it hard to think that....CU football *MIGHT* actually be on its way back. The former abuse has made us see the bad side of everything.

FIB, I find it incredibly refreshing that someone who finds himself on the pessimistic side sometimes, owns up to the fact that is is not entirely logical to be pessimistic in light of the evidence from Spring, Fall and game 1 (plus this staff's performance at SJSU), but finds it hard to trust his head b/c he his heart has been let down too often. I respect that. Rep for your honesty.

 

[Eggon]

Have you ever known someone in an abusive relationship? It comes down to, we have been so beaten down by CU football and admin, that we cannot see anything positive about our team. We cannot fathom competing with ASU, Cal UofA at this point because a scant 9 months ago it was impossible to see a light at the end of the tunnel. We beat CSU pretty well, even making mistake and letting them back into the game, when playing very vanilla. We fear CA because we had our butts whipped by these types of schools in recent memory. We can't find a way to think we can beat Fresno after our team pretty much rolled over and wet themselves last year.

But it is a new year, new coaches, which look amazing after the last few train wrecks, and yet, we can't beleive that we could have good fortune. Find it hard to think that....CU football *MIGHT* actually be on its way back. The former abuse has made us see the bad side of everything.

Further, those focused on the negatives per our talent level are just as over-revved as those of us boozing in Kool Aidville! Star rankings are just not an end all! They overly simplify evaluation of a players potential when properly applied! In addition, we now have three QB's that look the part and can see over the line of scrimmage (yes I thought Gehrke looked solid!). This is a big stride item!

When you look at the results of these players in high school. The majority are from very competitive high school football regions, and they excelled in tough conferences! They can play some football! Both sides of this discussion will likely meet in the middle some day soon. Hopefully it is post a win against C ARK this weekend! One game at a time, but I am enjoying the turn at this moment.... :thumbsup: