Interesting article about how Ok. State's Gundy, eschewing the traditional hire-my-buddies attitude that seems to permeate college football, selected his Offensive Coordinator from a Division II school. He selected him by digging through stats and eventually procuring video to validate.

Quote:"No chance," Gundy told ESPN.com. "I don't care what people think. They can go fly a kite for all I care. Nah, most people aren't going to be strong enough in their own skin to say there's a guy at Division II wherever that's the best coach for a major Power 5 conference school that had been in the top five in offense year after year after year."

http://www.espn.com/college-football/sto...r-internet

Quote:When Yurcich leaves, Gundy plans to search the lower divisions again. He believes some of the best football coaches work at high schools or small colleges. They either don't want the lifestyle challenges of working in the FBS, or they haven't had the chance to move up.

Emphasis mine.

Well, our guy did pick at least one coach from a "small college."
But it's certainly all within-network hires...

I think this article should end up on the desk of every athletic director in Division 1. In fact, the question(s) of how a head coaching candidate will fill their coaching staff should tell an AD a great deal about the head coaching candidate, in particular their willingness to take calculated risks and how they find the right fit for a program, or even consider cultural fit in their decision process. Thank you Antarius for bringing the article to our attention.

Didn't Bloomgren say he was going to hire people he was familiar with and whom he trusted?

(01-02-2018 12:15 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Didn't Bloomgren say he was going to hire people he was familiar with and whom he trusted?

Yes he did, and that's pretty much what he has done.

I've said before, the formula I would use is
1) Pick coordinators (offense, defense, special teams) that I trust and rely on them to implement their schemes.
2) Tend to keep one or two off the old staff for continuity purposes, generally keeping ones with the most significant recruiting contacts.
3) Fill out the remainder of the staffs with HS coaches who either a) had Rice backgrounds, or b) were recent presidents of the Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana high school coaches associations.

Then I'd have the coordinators and me hole up with a bunch of film and figure out how we wanted to organize things and get them done, and I'd tell everybody else to hit the trail and recruit, recruit, recruit.

Fred probably came closer to that approach than any other recent Rice coach. Bloomgren did the first one, obviously. He doesn't seem to have done the rest, although we don't know the composition of the full staff. I'm not 100% in agreement with the total philosophy that he has expressed, but at least he has expressed one pretty clearly, and one that he has seen work, so we can see how well he can execute it. I never really understood what Bailiff was trying to do, and I don't think it was clear to many of us, if any.

I would tend to believe that one reason Gundy was comfortable with that approach was that he knew he could run the offense if the guy turned out to be a bust, so he could take a flyer on someone who had the potential to bring useful ideas into the process. I probably wouldn't go that way at the start, but after being in one place for a while, it is probably very useful to have some staff turnover to bring in new ideas.

I thought it was a good article and represents good out-of-the-box thinking, but if we're being honest, there's no way Gundy (or any coach, for that matter) does this if he didn't already have some political capital built up at OSU (after tying for first in the Big 12 South in 2010 and winning the Big 12 in 2011 (the first conference championship for OSU in 35 years)). When you've had unprecedented success at a school, you can get away with stuff like this - albeit Gundy's hiring philosophy stemmed from wanting someone more unknown, since all of his coordinators left for better jobs, not because some were incompetent. I don't have a problem with a new head coach hiring people they trust and are friends with, but if it doesn't work out, they need to be able to go in a different direction and think outside the box.

I don't inherently have an issue with hiring people you know and trust - and the post was made as a hey-this-is-interesting, not a slam on Bloomgren. For example, if Nick Saban wants to hire his buddies, then by all means please do.

That said, the good coaches recognize that their buddies may not be up to par... or aren't buddies with people who aren't up to par and adapt accordingly. Gundy seems to have decided that he could do better than just the people he knew and was willing to take a risk.

It fundamentally comes down to the age old observations of how all the pretty girls seems to hang out together; birds of a feather.. and all that. Sticking with a failure as a coordinator for years is a huge problem in College Football. If your coordinators who are your buddies are bad, you probably are as well.

(01-02-2018 12:55 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  I don't have a problem with a new head coach hiring people they trust and are friends with, but if it doesn't work out, they need to be able to go in a different direction and think outside the box.

This.

I still have PTSD from the 7 long years of Driesbach.

(01-02-2018 12:57 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(01-02-2018 12:55 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  I don't have a problem with a new head coach hiring people they trust and are friends with, but if it doesn't work out, they need to be able to go in a different direction and think outside the box.

This.

I still have PTSD from the 7 long years of Driesbach.

I enjoyed the article immensely, especially the bit about when he offered the guy the 400k contract (standard for OSU coordinators) all Gundy heard was silence and he thought the phone call had been dropped.

Turns out the guy was speechless, as he had been making 52k at that point.

Another chuckle on the exchange following the silence:

Quote:"Are you there?" he asked.

"Yessir."

"Well, do you need to talk to your wife?"

"I don't need to talk to anybody."

(01-02-2018 12:55 PM)Antarius Wrote:  I don't inherently have an issue with hiring people you know and trust - and the post was made as a hey-this-is-interesting, not a slam on Bloomgren. For example, if Nick Saban wants to hire his buddies, then by all means please do.
That said, the good coaches recognize that their buddies may not be up to par... or aren't buddies with people who aren't up to par and adapt accordingly. Gundy seems to have decided that he could do better than just the people he knew and was willing to take a risk.
It fundamentally comes down to the age old observations of how all the pretty girls seems to hang out together; birds of a feather.. and all that. Sticking with a failure as a coordinator for years is a huge problem in College Football. If your coordinators who are your buddies are bad, you probably are as well.

At least on paper, it would appear that Bloomgren's hires so far are not only trusted friends by also highly competent coaches. At least they have gotten results. And they are relatively young up-and-coming types, not old and over the hill.

I'll give him a pass on anything until I see how it works. I gave Bailiff a pass from the start, until Nicholls, and I gave him a pass again after 2008. But after 2009, no mas. I'll be the same way with Bloomgren.