I’ve been. We aren’t discussing best campus for generic, suburban white dudes here. Have you been to New Haven, CT? The status of that town doesn’t seem to keep Yale from being a destination for super smart people.
Mike Gundy’s average record is 9-4 since taking over as head coach at OSU.
Let’s look at some other programs that fired their coach that averaged 9 wins and what has happened to them since doing that…
Nebraska:
- Frank Solich - 9 wins - fired because he wasn’t as good as Tom Osborne… and really, the NCAA limiting the walk-on program and eliminating almost all of the things that made Nebraska good… Worst run in program history before hiring…
- Bo Pelini - 9 wins - fired because he was a jerk… but really the fans were frustrated with not being better. Nebraska is still recovering, two coaches later.
Michigan:
- Lloyd Carr - 9 wins - WON A NATIONAL TITLE, but couldn’t beat rival Ohio State consistently. Spoiler: he was 6-7 in the rivalry game… Michigan has been terrible since, and they’re about to fire a guy that is averaging 10 wins per season, but can’t beat Ohio State.
Tennessee:
- Phil Fulmer - 9 wins - won a national title… but he had two bad seasons at the end of his tenure so they forced him to retire. Tennessee is a dumpster fire, but at least Phil gets to oversee it as athletic director.
Miami:
- Larry Coker - 10 wins - won a national title… with Butch Davis’ players… but the move from the Big East to the ACC was rough for the Canes and they haven’t come close to the glory that Coker led them to at the turn of the century.
Arkansas:
- Ken Hatfield - 11 wins - for some reason, longtime hogs AD Frank Broyles never let Hatfield take control of the program, in spite of putting the Razorbacks back on the map in the late 80s with a pair of SWC titles. Hatfield was forced out to take the Clemson job in 89… outside of a short run of success under Bobby Neck Brace, Arkansas has been awful.
Texas A&M:
- RC Slocum - 9 wins - The Aggies firing RC Slocum, their best coach since Bear Bryant, basically wrote all of the aggy jokes we still like to make today.
Texas:
- Mack Brown - 10 wins - they gave him four years after the appearance in the 2009 title game to turn it around… and those last three years really weren’t that bad… they just weren’t good enough. They ran off a good coach and they’ve been paying for it since.
7 Likes
This
.
you didn’t even mention the best one,
Tech post Leach
granted he told Kent Hance to go f himself so he forced their hand but still.
1 Like
I tried to only include coaches that averaged 9 wins… Leach was at 8.
So Gundy has been more successful than everybody’s favorite football coach…
2 Likes
Although broadly in agreement, two nitpicks:
Arkansas was fairly successful under Houston Nutt.
Georgia fired a coach averaging 9.5 wins and have gotten an extra win a year out of it.
We’re more similar to the teams who haven’t recovered than the only obvious one who has improved their lot.
I think where there’s some friction here (and in general) is how people are defining ‘success’.
If success is just sheer number of wins, Gundy has been fantastic. 9.4 wins a year is legit and absolutely should not be discounted. Full stop, 100+ at a program is elite and I freely admit that with no qualms whatsoever.
If success is titles of any kind, though, it’s different. In those 14 years, OSU has won a total of one conference championship (2011) and one divisional title and finished 2nd four times, 3rd three times, and 4th or lower five times (including twice in 5 years). Those numbers tell a very different story.
The question is, then, how are we defining success? If it’s purely wins, there is zero argument there. He has won and he has won a lot - period. If it is meaningful wins, well, there’s room for debate there. The Fiesta Bowl (and I’ll count the Big 12 title with that), the two wins against OU, and (arguably) the four straight wins in Austin definitely count. Other than that? It’s hard to say. Essentially, if your perspective is that success = total wins, you can absolutely call him a success without reservation. If your perspective is that success = meaningful wins/titles, you can make the argument that you’re justified in taking a different approach. I think, ultimately, that’s where we’re all getting tripped up.
3 Likes
I agree with this. It’s why there are actually two pretty stable sides of the Gundy debate. I almost always fall on the “keep Gundy 4ever” side, but I do understand the opposite argument here.
3 Likes
And here one of my complaints about Gundy is that half of his bedlam wins are essentially meaningless. Sure it got us to bowl eligibility, but that’s it. If he’s going to win so few give me one of the years that had more on the line.
3 Likes
I agree with you there. It was only meaningful because we beat OU. In terms of the season itself, it did very little. Still, a Bedlam win is a Bedlam win, but you’re not wrong in that perception.
Houston Nutt averaged 7 wins per season.
Another example is Oregon. Mike Bellotti averaged 8 wins per year, stepped down to promote Chip Kelley who took them to the next level.
I’ve seen it argued that if Gundy was actually grooming someone to take over, this could be the model… In theory, Gleeson could be that guy… timeline is similar… heck, experience levels are similar between Gleeson and Kelley… but I don’t want a guy who is going to be awesome for four years, go to the NFL, and put us back in the desert.
1 Like
Plus 3 division titles.
I’ve asked before if OSU fans would be happier on the Malzahn train where the highs are higher and the lows lower.
1 Like
It’s an interesting thought. Would you trade two or even three of those 10-win seasons for a national title in 2011 or 2016 or 2017? It’s…difficult to say no to that but, again, that depends on how you view success. If sustained wins matter more than titles, you’re not going to make that trade. If those meaningful wins (e.g. a natty) matter more than sustainability, you are.
I agree with you whole heartedly on all of this. I think people just have differing definitions.
1 Like
I love the consistency that we’ve enjoyed since my sophomore year in Stillwater. I think that’s way more valuable than having two more titles, but four more losing seasons.
Of course I want him to be better against OU… but, as I’ve mentioned a ton, OU is kind of an unattainable target not just for OSU… but for everybody except for Alabama, Clemson, and Georgia… maybe Ohio State.
2 Likes
Of course… I know a solid majority of our fanbase would trade our 52 national titles for a national title in football this season… So I’m probably in minority on preferring consistency.
1 Like
I would definitely not trade titles from other sports! Those are marks of pride for sure and those kids earned those. I wouldn’t dream of taking those chips away. But getting a natty this year in exchange for the 10-win seasons of 2015 and that disastrous Sugar Bowl and 2016 with the dark day of CMU? That would be a tougher call to turn down, honestly.
I get it but the overall point…
Don’t fire the goat
See if somebody told me “hey you can win one national title every 20 years, and the in between years are going to be tumultuous with at least 6 losing seasons… Or you can win 10 games every year for the rest of the history of football, and you’ll play for several national titles but never win one” I would take option 2.
3 Likes
Would you trade all the wins to go 6-6 every year, but a natty in 2011?
Cause I might. That could be the fatigue of knowing the best a season could be and the worst. There’s really not much drama. It’s somewhere between 6-10 wins in the regular. Maybe 11 if we catch lightning in a bottle but that required Dana at OC, power run OCHC Gundy will always trip up an extra game and peg us down to 10 wins.
1 Like