https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/co...ge%2Fstory

Found this particularly striking:

"A few years ago, Colorado political science professor Scott Adler tried to measure the success, or lack therof, of athletic directors who change football coaches in the hopes of landing a winner.

"For his 2012 study entitled “Pushing ‘Reset: The Conditional Effects of Coaching Replacements on College Football Performance,” Adler collected data from more than 100 teams in college football’s top division between 1997 and 2010. For teams that changed coaches, Adler looked at the first five years under the new coach, and compared their records to similar teams that did not change coaches.

"Adler’s conclusion: Changing coaches has minimal, if any, impact on team success. Among the worst teams, Adler found, those that changed coaches won about the same amount over five years as those that didn’t. For mediocre teams, those that changed coaches actually fared worse.

"There are, of course, examples of coaching changes that turn around football programs, Adler acknowledged, such as Nick Saban’s hire at Alabama in 2007, and Jim Harbaugh’s this season for Michigan. But for every revival, Adler found, there were several teams that just cycled through coaches, piling up millions in severance along the way."