College Football 2012 Wrap-up

This BCS bowl season, two teams, Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, were coached by interim coaches in their BCS bowl game after their head coach left the team to accept a new position.  There seems to be an increasing trend of coaches leaving their teams before a bowl game to accept a new coaching position.  I began wondering whether schools that are searching for a new head coach should try to scoop other coaches before the bowl games are completed, or if they should factor in the bowl game performance (maybe make the candidates feel some extra pressure to win)?  Schools tend to want to fill their coaching vacancies ASAP because this provides the new coach an extra month to put together his coaching staff and recruit.  But does this process of hiring coaches before the bowl game actually lead to better football success?

I chose to look at head coaches who lead their team to one of the BCS bowl games, then accepted a new college coaching position the following year.  While this leaves a small sample size (n=9), it is easier to evaluate the performance of these coaches because it is assumed that the new school is expecting the new coach to lead his new team to BCS bowls.  Here is a summary of the 9 coaches:

Coach	Previous Team	Old BCS Record*	Year	Last Bowl	New Team	Record	New BSC Record
Steve Spurrier	Florida	2-1	2001	W	South Carolina	66-37	0-0
Urban Meyer	Utah	1-0	2004	W	Florida	65-15**	3-0
Walt Harris	Pitt	0-1	2004	L	Stanford	6-17**	0-0
Rich Rodriguez	West Virginia	1-0	2007	W*	Michigan	15-22**	0-0
June Jones	Hawaii	0-1	2007	L	SMU	31-34	0-0
Brian Kelly	Cincinnati	0-1	2009	L*	Notre Dame	28-11	0-1
Randy Edsall	UConn	0-1	2010	L	Maryland	6-18	0-0
Bret Bielema	Wisconsin	0-2	2012	L*	Arkansas	-	-
Dave Doeren	Northern Ill.	0-0	2012	L*	NC State	-	-

* = Coach left team before BCS bowl game, so it was coached by interim coach. If the head coach left the school before the BCS bowl game, it is not reflected in his BCS record.

** = No longer with this team. Meyer retired and Harris and Rodriquez were fired. 

A few interesting gems from looking at this table:

• Only 3 of these 9 coaches won a BCS bowl game with their previous team (Spurrier, Meyer, Rodriguez).  
• Only 2 have taken their new teams to a BCS bowl game (Meyer, Kelly), with Meyer being the only coach to win a game (actually 3, including 2 national championships).
• The only coach to win a BCS bowl game with their new team (Meyer) had won a BCS bowl game with his previous team.
• 3 of the 4 teams coached by intermin coaches lost their bowl game, with West Virginia being the only exception.

Yes, programs that are hiring coaches have probably suffered some losing seasons and need time to rebuild, so these results could change in another year or 2.  Plus, this is a small sample size, so we would probably be better off by including all coaches who leave their teams, not just ones leaving after reaching a BCS bowl game.  In my opinion, schools that are hiring college football coaches are placing too much emphasis on reaching BCS bowl games and not enough on winning these games. Even if it is all about the money of BCS bowl games and not actually about winning, most of these big-name hires are struggling to take their new teams to a BCS bowl game.

If I were in charge of hiring a new football coach to turn around a struggling program and win national championships, here would be my one major piece of advice:

If you are serious about winning national championships, hire a coach that has actually won a BCS bowl game. If none of these coaches are available/interested, then don't settle for a coach who has taken his team to a BCS bowl game but lost - what makes you think he can do better next time (ahem, Brian Kelly)?  Save your money and take a chance by hiring a coach who hasn't been to a BCS bowl (but has preferably won other bowl games). You might just hire the next Les Miles (2-1 in BCS bowl games since 2005, including a national title).