SWC75
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Here is the summary of the study I did on this a decade ago. I looked that the 25 winningest basketball coaches of all time and the 25 winnignest football coaches, (whose careers had ended).
Summary
Of the 50 top winning coaches in the two sports I found 37 situations that seemed relevant to Jim Boeheim’s potential retirement: a long and successful run at one big-time school that is now over so we can examine the success- or lack thereof- of his replacement. That’s a pretty good database.
In 26 of those 37 cases the school picked a current assistant, a former assistant or a former player- “one of our guys”. In those cases, the legend they replaced had a cumulative winning percentage of .721 and “our guys” went .609, a drop off of 112 points. 17 of “our guys” wound up getting fired, (which includes being pressured to resign), while 5 are still coaching, (which means they could get fired). Two retired. One went back to the pros, (Perkins) and one became the athletic director, (Oldham).
The 11 new coaches who had had no prior connection with the program replaced legends who went .704: the new guy went .565, 139 points worse. Five of these guys got fired. Three more moved on, just as they’d moved on to your school. In one case, (Shaughnessy), the school gave up the sport. The other two, (Dunphy and Pitino), are still coaching. Staying within the family isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Those guys not only have a better record but they are less likely to move on to a better deal.
Of the 26 new coaches who had prior associations with the university, 15 were internal promotions of current assistants. They replaced guys who went .729 and went .581 themselves, a drop of 148 points. An astonishing 12 of them wound up getting fired. Two retired and one is still coaching. Internal promotions have a way of producing external demotions.
The 11 guys who left home and came back replaced coaches who were .711 and went .648 themselves, a drop of only 63 points. Five have been fired. Four are still at it. One left for the pros and one became athletic director. So there’s something to be said for gaining experience elsewhere before taking on your dream job.
Fifteen new coaches had previous major college head coaching experience. Bob Wade had high school head coaching experience and Ray Perkins had pro head coaching experience but I don’t consider those the same as a college job so I didn’t include them.
These 15 guys replaced coaches who went .714 and went .665 themselves, a drop off of only 49 points, so being a head man at the college level before you take over seems to help. But 6 of these guys have been fired. Three moved on. Oldham became and AD and Chicago gave up the sport. The four others are still coaching at their schools.
Of the 22 new coaches with no prior college head coaching experience, fully 16 have been fired. Two retired, one jumped to the pros and the other are still at it. They replaced legends with a .710 percentage and went .573 themselves, a drop of 137 points. Not a good record.
Does it help to come from the pros? Six new coaches did. They replaced guys who had gone .688 and went .612, a drop of only 76 points. Four of them, (Ferentz, Hill, Groh and Pitino) are still at it. One, (Perkins) returned to the pros and Crowton got fired. That’s better than most categories but not better than having had previous college head coaching experience.
But perhaps the key stat is that, in every category, the success rate of the program went down. The only replacements to have a higher winning percentage than their legendary predecessors have been Oldham, Pitino, Gene Bartow, Sampson and Rodriguez. Bartow’s term at UCLA was only two years compared to 26 for Wooden and Pitino and Rodriguez are not done yet so we don’t know if they will stay ahead of Crum and Nehlen.
So what’s it all mean? Firstly, great coaches are not that common. A great program might have more than one of them in its history, but they are unlikely to be consecutive. The idea that a great coach has gotten away with mistakes for a long time due to his reputation and that his replacement will make the right adjustments while retaining his predecessor’s strengths and thus go on to even greater success is not borne out by the historical record. The new man will have strengths and weaknesses of his own.
A new coach will have the advantage of an established program- in most cases. But he has the disadvantage of not having the prior coach’s teflon reputation, built upon a history of success and the fact that most fans of the school won’t be able to remember when he wasn’t the coach. The new coach may find that the underpinnings of the program’s success which allowed the old coach to become a legend have eroded and his going will be much harder, (see Chicago, Vanderbilt, Rice, Oklahoma State under Iba, UNLV, etc.). Or it may be that the program actually declined under the old coach and will now be built up by the new guy. Johnny Oldham was the head coach at Tennessee Tech for 9 years before he returned to Western Kentucky and had a credible but unspectacular 107-72 record, (.597). Ed Diddle at Western had gone 10-32 in his final two years, his only losing records. Oldham then had a seven year run of 150-35, (.811) before sliding into the AD’s chair. Diddle didn’t suddenly become and idiot and Oldham a genius. They spent some money on that program. But the more likely scenario is that the reputation of the old coach masked the program’s decline and the new man inherited a reputation and a program that could no longer live up to it.
Maybe the most dismal stat is that of the 37 replacements, 22 were fired. Seven are still coaching and their fate awaits them. We need to wish Mike Hopkins luck, because he’s going to need it.
