Why Your Coach-Firing Argument Is Bogus

Blame it on Bob Stoops. If you don't want to blame it on Stoops, blame it on Jim Tressel. If not Tressel, then Urban Meyer. All three of those guys took over high-profile programs. All three won national titles in their second seasons. Now any school thinks it can do the same thing. If you're a coach and you can't get your program turned around by the middle of the third season, there will be a fire(yournamehere).com website. And you can look forward to a variety of stock arguments as to why you should be unemployed.

The problem, of course, is that most of these arguments are completely worthless. Don't believe me? Let's investigate.

"We can't let this program sink any further into mediocrity!" Yeah, that's what Steve Pedersen said when he fired Frank Solich and brought in Bill Callahan. I suppose you could argue that Pedersen was correct; instead of sliding into mediocrity, he let the program degenerate into irrelevance. Unless your team just went 0-12, "up" isn't the only possible direction a new coach can take your program.

"Coach never recruits the right personnel!" Unless you're one of about ten programs, you have to do most of your recruiting in-state. If 75% of the high schools in your state are running the flexbone or the power I, you're going to have trouble finding quarterbacks who can throw, wide receivers who can catch, tackles who can pass-block, defensive ends who can rush, and defensive backs who can cover. Other than that, you should be fine.

"Look at these historically bad programs which are passing us by!" I could say something about what blind squirrels sometimes find, but let's grasp a semi-scientific concept instead. It's called "regression to the mean." That's a fancy way of saying that, in the long run, everything averages out. For reasons that should be obvious, the "average" record in college football is 6-6. Every program hits the occasional fallow stretch; maybe it's just your time. After Barry Switzer left, OU had to go through Howard Schnellenberger, Gary Gibbs and John Blake to get to Bob Stoops. Between John Robinson and Pete Carroll was the Ted Tollner-Larry Smith-Paul Hackett interregnum. If OU and USC had to have a bad decade, your team probably will, too.

"Hit 'em in the pocketbook! Don't go to the games! Don't buy the merch!" Oh, I'm sorry; where is your luxury box again? Get real. The last time you went to a game you bought your ticket on Craigslist and you wore a $7 logo t-shirt you bought at Target six years ago. Wow, I guess you're going to tell them, huh?

"Special teams/playcalling/clock management is killing us!" Congratulations! You just discovered the three things football fans only notice when they don't work! Therefore, you've missed all the times when they did work. And please, has any coach ever been described as a "good clock manager?"

"If we don't act now, somebody else will hire Lane Kiffin!" Go to Lincoln, Nebraska. Ask them how well it worked out when they hired a failed Raiders coach to take over their program. And remember, Bill Callahan took the Raiders to a Super Bowl.

"If we don't act now, somebody else will hire Will Muschamp!" It's about a four-hour drive from Lincoln to Ames, Iowa. Ask the Iowa State people if they've seen an immediate benefit from their fire-spitting former Longhorn defensive coordinator. Still not convinced? Gosh, what was Greg Robinson's last job before he took over at Syracuse?

"We shouldn't be going to (insert unpopular bowl game here); we should be playing for a national title!" In the BCS Title Game era, no team has won a national title that didn't win one before the BCS era. In fact, only one team (Virginia Tech) has even played for a national title without having at least one previous championship. Prior to that, your last three first time national title winners were Florida (12 years ago), Florida State (15 years ago), and Washington (17 years ago). It's a nice goal to play for a national title. Unless you've been to the dance before, though, it's probably not going to happen.

Look, there are times when firing a coach is the right move. If you've had multiple seasons of four wins or less, if the NCAA is going through your coaches' garbage, or if the octogenarian billionaire who's been funding your football program since the 1970s says it's time, it's time. But do you want your coach gone because you've had a losing season right after a winning one? Be careful what you ask for. You may get it.