Handicapping College Coaches
If you listen to the mainstream media, you get the impression that every
head coach in college football is a fantastic leader. They're either
veterans who have always run solid programs, up-and-comers who are ready to
make their mark, or great guys who are handcuffed by outside limitations of
the program. You'll never hear a play-by-play guy or game analyst, say "this
guy is just a bad coach!"
If you listen to call-in radio shows in football cities, you get the
impression that every head coach in college football is horrible! Doesn't
matter if the guy has won multiple national championships, gone to 20
straight bowls, or put 40 guys in the NFL. You'll find a bunch of locals who
think the program would be better with somebody else.
So, which one is it? Should handicappers try to determine if some coaches
have advantage over others? Or, is it really a sport where the players
decide who wins.
It's important to get a handle on this if you're trying to pick winners.
And, it's important that you come up with your own way of evaluating the job
that coaches do for their teams. You can't be swayed by what you hear from
either the hype artists or the harsh critics. The media can't pick winners.
Guys who call radio shows and rant can't either. You've got to see through
the smoke and see the reality.
One thing I want you to keep in mind is that college football has just gone
through a sequence of innovation and reaction that created several illusions
across the sport. Here's what I mean:
*Several coaches installed spread offenses that caught defenses flat footed.
They had great results for a couple of seasons taking their programs to new
levels. Maryland started winning games. Oklahoma started playing for
national championships. Even a program like Boise State made a name for
themselves by dominating at the mid major level.
*Many of these coaches climbed up the ladder and moved to bigger programs.
Guys who made names for themselves at places like Boise State, Utah, and
Louisville are now running programs in major conferences.
*Success breeds copycats, and soon a lot of other teams were trying to make
this approach work for their teams.
*Defenses got tired of chasing people, and made adjustments that have
basically neutralized this style of offense in most cases. It will still
work against the bottom 25-percent of college defenses. But, that's it.
And suddenly, all the coaches who were geniuses a couple of years ago don't
look like they're bringing any edges to the table at all. It's not that
these guys have been exposed as pretenders. They were either one-trick
ponies who had their trick taken away. Or, they were copycats who can't find
anything to copy any more.
This has happened at Purdue, Maryland, NC State, and even at Oklahoma. Even
though the Sooners have a strong team that's capable of playing with
anybody, it was just a few years ago that people were saying they had one of
the greatest teams of ALL TIME! They were supposedly head and shoulders
above the rest of the sport. Defenses figured out what they were doing, and
now they're just another marquee program hoping they can catch a break in
close games.
Here are some quick tips for evaluating colleges coaches in terms of what
they mean to their teams right now:
*Look at defenses. This is where the latest innovation has occurred. Teams
who have mastered blitzing and disguising their coverages are having great
success. Give credit to the coaches whenever you see a team that
consistently holds opponents under 20 points and 400 yards.
*Look at turnover differential. This is a great key indicator for evaluating
how a team performs the fundamentals. Since the coach's job is to teach
fundamentals, this reflects directly on coaching quality.
*Look at pointspread results. We're at the point now where most of the
influences determining Las Vegas pointspreads concern the talent on the
field for each team. If you see somebody that's covering a lot of spreads,
or not covering a lot of spreads, more often than not you can trace that to
strengths or weaknesses of the head coaches.
If you make a concerted effort to evaluate head coaches in the college game,
you'll see immediate success in your football handicapping. You'll start
finding edges you hadn't seen before. And, you'll start avoiding the traps
you had been falling into because you were paying too much attention to what
other people thought about coaches who fell off their one-trick ponies.
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