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[QUOTE="Scooch, post: 1536150, member: 628"]
One more bit of analysis...

Of the 23 coaches I looked at ten of them inherited a program with a winning record the year before they took over (meaning 7 wins or better).

Five of those 10 won more games in their third year than the team won in the year before they started (Dabo, Patterson, Sumlin, Fitzgerald and Niumatalolo).

Two won the same amount (Gundy, Campbell).

Three won less (Shaw, who won 11 but that was less than Harbaugh's 12; Whittingham, who won 9 but that was less than Meyer's 12; and Fedora, who won 6 which was less than Whithers's 7).

So even when having to clear a high(ish) bar, 7 of the 10 coaches with team's currently in the top 25 or others receiving votes managed to win more, or the same, as their immediate predecessor's last season.  Of the three that didn't two of them still had great year 3s (Shaw, Whittingham) so there was  really little question that they were up to their jobs.

I guess we're hoping Shafer can be like Fedora, although he hasn't won less than 6 games in his 4 years and is on his way to his 4th straight bowl.

And for what it's worth, by excluding the programs I felt subjectively were "elite" I thought I'd be skewing this analysis to help Shafer. I figured those were the programs that would be much more capable of turning things around more quickly, since they likely had more talent on hand for a new coach, and/or recruit at a higher level and could get more game-ready kids on the field earlier in their careers.  By focusing on tier 2 and below I thought I'd see more programs that took more time to build to their current status.  But the data suggests those programs have ramped up relatively quickly all things considered.
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