College Football Coaches in Their 2nd Year

For the first time ever I bought a preseason magazine for college football, Phil Steele's annual preview. I was impressed by all the work he put into it and all the numbers he crunches to come up with what is ultimately an educated guess.

Jimbo Fisher (left) has rightfully high expectations at FSU.

In that same vein, I decided to crunch a few numbers of my own relating to coaches at BCS conference schools and five additional programs (Boise St., TCU, Notre Dame, Hawaii, and BYU). I took a look at coaches hired from 2000-2010, giving me 11 years of data. Some coaches are still active, some just finished their first year in 2010, and others have been hired more than once. 

The first stat I wanted to look at was how much coaches improved their school's win total from one year to another. I only took a look at the first four years of a coach's tenure, realizing that some coaches did not make it to even their second year at a school, let alone their third and fourth years, and a small number of coaches are at their same school after 10 years or more. Schools typically give a coach four years to work on their program before deciding on whether to keep him or not. 

Out of 113 coaches hired at the schools I studied, 49.5 percent were able to increase their school's win total in their first year, 13 percent stayed the same, and 37.5 percent went down. Remarkably, of the 100 coaches that have made it to their second year, 59 percent increased their win total from the previous year, 13 percent stayed the same, and 28 percent went down in win totals. But things take a downward turn in the third year. 

Of the 82 coaches in their third year at the same school, only 41 percent increased their win totals from the previous year, 12 percent stayed the same, and a whopping 47 percent went down in win totals. I figured that this would be the case if a coach had a strong second season, then it would be difficult to match those win totals in the third year. OK. I can buy that argument. So I went ahead and took a look at the coach's fourth year, a critical year for all coaches in terms of contract extensions and retainability. Of the 60 coaches in their fourth year, 45 percent increased their win totals from the year before, 5 percent stayed the same, and an eye-opening 50 percent went down in win totals.

This speaks to the importance of a coach's second season. This information doesn't speak to any one school looking at insight for what to expect from their coaches, but it does appear that coaches are able to build upon their first year 59 percent of the time, and at no other point in their first four years will they be more likely to increase their school's win total from the previous year than in that second year. This means good things, especially if your coach's first season was a good one, because the likelihood your school will not at least match the previous year's win total is only 28 percent. 

I think the numbers also suggest that being a college head football coach is very difficult, and to be able to sustain a winning program is even harder. In some ways, the longer a coach is at a school, the harder it may become to continue building off of any initial success. It could also suggest that a coach simply isn't very good or isn't a good fit at a school, and it takes about four years to finally figure that out. 

This is by no means a guarantee of anything in any way, but it speaks well of a second-year coach in charge of a talented team. Recent second-year coaches that have won a national title or appeared in the title game since the 2000 season include Bob Stoops, Urban Meyer, Chip Kelly, Jim Tressel, and Gene Chizik. If this trend holds up, Notre Dame's Brian Kelly and Florida State's Jimbo Fisher should very well  be considered legitimate national title contenders.