As I see it, how a team does is a function of several factors:
1. The team location, history, conference affiliation, and facilities - Teams in recruiting hotbeds have a big advantage, as do teams in desirable locations. Team with a strong history also have a strong attraction to recruits. Similarly, teams in power conferences have a major recruiting advantage, as well as more money to work with. Teams with better facilities also have an advantage.
2. The staff's sales ability when it comes to recruiting - If you have a master salesman, he will be able to get the recruits he wants, and better players presumably mean more wins.
3. The coaching staff's ability to coach players up, to come up with strategies for attacking the other teams, and to call plays.

Factor #1 tends to change slowly. A coach can affect it a little by building new facilities, and he can slowly build a tradition of winning, but other than that, there isn't much he can do. Factor #2 we can evaluate by looking at the recruiting rankings. How about factor #3? It occurred to me today while posting on the recruiting thread that we can isolate factor #3 from the others by using the recruiting rankings for the last several years to predict the quality of athletes that each team has, and then compare that to the results on the field. If a coaching staff is good at the items in factor #3, they should do better than you'd expect from recruiting rankings. If they are poor at factor #3 they will do worse than you'd expect from recruiting rankings.

Sooo, I did exactly that. I predicted the rank of each team based solely on recruiting rankings, and then compared it to how they are actually doing. Here is the result. Positive numbers indicate coaches doing well at factor #3, and negative ones indicate coaches that may be better salesmen than coaches. From best to worst:

Navy +75
Ga. Southern +52
W. Kentucky +49
Utah St. +48
Boise St +47
Toledo +45
App. St +42
Kansas State 37
Louisiana Tech +37
Utah +37
Georgia Tech 36
Memphis +34
MTSU +32
Duke +31
Northwestern +31
BYU +28
NIU +28
TCU +27
Air Force +27
Ohio +27
Army +26
Iowa +25
Wisconsin +24
Baylor +24
Buffalo +23
BG +22
UNLV +21
Houston +20
Temple +19
San Jose St +18
W. Virginia +18
Stanford +16
Akron +15
NC State +15
Lousiana Monroe +15
E. Carolina +12
CMU +12
Old Miss +12
BC +11
Louisville +11
Oklahoma +9
Ball St +8
USC +8
California +7
Illinois +7
Clemson +6
Iowa St +4
Colorado St +4
Michigan +4
Oklahoma St +3
N. Carolina +3
Pitt +2
Texas San Antonio +1
U. Mass +1
Alabama 0
Idaho -2
Miss. St -2
Tulsa -3
Notre Dame -3
Georgia St -4
UTEP -4
Texas A&M -5
Michigan St -5
EMU -5
Kent St -5
Georgia -5
Tex Tech -6
Syracuse -6
WMU -6
Troy -7
Washington -7
Ohio St -8
Cincinnati -9
Tennessee -9
Arkansas St -9
Arizona St -10
Nevada -10
S. Miss -10
UCLA -10
Florida St -12
FIU -12
Old Dominion -12
Arkansas -12
Florida -12
Wyoming -13
LSU -13
Marshall -13
S. Alabama -13
Wk Forest -14
Arizona -14
Rice -14
Missouri -15
Minnesota -15
U. Conn -15
Charlotte -15
Texas St -16
Nebraska -16
New Mexico St -17
Indiana -18
Louisiana Lafayette -18
Fresno St -20
New Mexico -21
UCF -21
Hawaii -21
Oregon St -21
N. Texas St -21
Miami Ohio -22
Tulane -22
Virginia Tech -22
Colorado -22
Penn State -23
San Diego St -24
Washington St -25
Kentucky -26
Purdue -26
Vandy -27
FAU -29
Oregon -30
SMU -30
Miami Florida -37
Auburn -39
S. Carolina -40
USF -46
Rutgers -46
Maryland -49
Virginia -52
Kansas -55
Texas -63

How do I interpret this?
A. Teams from the middle down: If they are doing well, they are doing well primarily because of recruiting. If they are doing poorly, the coach may be looking for a new job.
B. Teams near the top: If they are doing well, it's because they coach well. If they also recruit well for their conference, they will be prime candidates to move up. If they are not doing that well, they coach well, but need to improve recruiting.

Note that this is a one time picture, and a mid-season snap-shot only. To get a better picture, I will do this again at the end of the year, and then track it for a few years, and then I can compute a multi-year average, and identify coaches that do well over a number of years.

As I said, I think you'd need a few years of data for this to be reliable, but even in this quick snapshot seems to make a lot of sense. Coaches that I think of when I think of sound coaching and fundamentals come out significantly on the positive side. For example, I would have expected positive numbers for Solich, Snyder at K-State, Fitzgerald at Northwestern, and Johnson at Georgia Tech, and I got those. If Grobe was still coaching, I'd have expected positive numbers for him as well. As far as new coaches, I did expect positive numbers for Leipold at Buffalo and Bonemego at CMU, and got those as well.

The flip side is coaches who I think of as better recruiters than coaches. That might include Martin at Miami, Fleck at WMU, Golden at Miami, even Martin at New Mexico State (The guy that brought talent like Dri Archer and Roosevelt Nix to the MAC, but never won, and whose successor used that talent to win the MACC and a job at Purdue). I expected negatives for all those coaches, and wasn't surprised.

On the other hand, there were a few coaches who didn't end up where I would have expected. I wasn't particularly expecting positive numbers for Ferentz at Iowa, and I suspect that if I used a sample over more years his numbers wouldn't look this good, and he'd be about a 0. Similarly, Jerry Kill at Minnesota shows as a minus number, and I'd have expected him to be neutral or slightly positive, and I think on a longer sample he wouldn't be minus.

Just to be clear, a "0" doesn't mean someone isn't a good coach. It means that their coaching and recruiting ability are equal. Positive or negative numbers don't make someone "good" or "bad", they simply show where they are stronger, in recruiting, or in coaching. Someone like Saban, who has had the #1 recruiting class every year, can't show up as a positive number; the best he can do is a zero, if he takes all those #1 classes and has a #1 team.

With your data last week 9 of 13 MAC schools have positive values. The glaring negative value is Miami. Miami thinks they can recruit their way back to glory and they are doing a good job. The problem lies in that other MAC schools are doing better at that strategy. If a program is making progress it starts with a huge improvement on side of the ball. Akron is doing it with defense. I don't think you can deny that Bowden has shown some improvement there. BG started with defense about 5 years ago and then brought in the offensive pieces. Fleck's case with Western Michigan is interesting. Western Michigan always had no worse than average talent for the MAC. Fleck may have tipped the scales enough in recruiting to have a winning season by year 2. Can those WMU classes develop into experienced talent in the two deep? Fleck's turnaround at WMU may be more like Holiday's at Marshall where there is yearly competitiveness but only 1 big year to be had in the tenure.

Well, after five years you'd think they'd have a better handle on that "side of the ball." ;-)

Whatever.

Try watching the games.

Why is WMU so high on the plus side? Reading comments on this board I had the impression that PJ had more 3-star recruits than any other MAC program as well as a few 4-star guys. Given their performance this year I would have expected a positive number, but one much lower than what was actually calculated. What am I missing?

OK. That makes sense. I hadn't taken into account the shortness of Fleck's tenure at WMU.

You are probably right that he'll take his oars to another river for next fall. I'll go out on a limb and predict that the fans on that river bank will have buyers remorse before many moons have passed. Kind of like those in Austin, Texas, are having now.

Yes, allen, but no two coaches have identical skill sets. Some are better at one than the other. This is a measurement that allows you to separate them. This is the first year I have made this calculation, but I expect the numbers to be relatively stable from year to year. In a few years I'll have a better idea just how stable they are from year to year. As coaches move from job to job, I'll also get some idea of whether they take their pluses and minuses with them. The more stable they are, the more useful these numbers are, and the less stable, the less useful.

I do find it interesting the strong correlation between the numbers produced by this measurement and the coaches that have been fired, and the coaches that have moved up. I wasn't expecting that, but it certainly seems to be a better predictor of who is likely to get fired than W-L records alone. The coaches with high negatives who have not been fired for the most part seem to be first or second year coaches, and even then they are all listed high on "Coaches Hot Seat" lists.

As an example, the firing of Richt surprised me, but he is -18 on this list, so maybe it isn't surprising after all. Similarly the discussion of firing Miles was surprising, but on this list he comes in at -13, barely better than what appears to the the break point, about -15. The rumor is that with another loss he'd have been fired, but, with another loss, he'd have also been lower than -15.

Great question: Say, one way or another, we're hiring a new coach.

Do we want the guy who's had the last four years that the current guy has had? Will that satisfy?

Why do you suppose the really good coaches at Ohio, like the WR coach you refer to, who have coached in the "football factories" decided to settle "in" not "for" Athens? I have little doubt it is because they have had their fill of "every" fan "knowing" "we need to do better." These good coaches at Ohio get to recruit beyond the 4.4. They get to recruit young men like Crutch, Carpenter, Kristoff, Brazill, Carrie, Wells, Sayles, Laseak that they themselves determine are men they wish to work with over four/five years. You think "we" need to do better. A lot of us are just fine, thank you. I think "the coaches" not "we" need to continue finding their Smiths, Reids, Balls, Belacks, Copes if they are the most likely to bust their butts for years as an athlete and not be a waste of time as a student. Again, it is about who "they" feel is the best fit and want to work with for those many years. Remember, these coaches are not trying to be one and done. The Crutch, Jovon, A.J., Provitt, Poling, Patterson and Carpenter types are fine. Thank you.

Richt's firing didn't surprise me as it has been rumored for several seasons. Still, his having won 75% of his games reminded me of two similar firings that didn't pan out as the ADs had hoped. One of course was Solich at Nebraska. His winning pct at Nebraska was .753. As I recall, it didn't take long for his successor to turn in a losing season.

The other such firing that comes to mind was Earle Bruce at OSU. He had won 75% of his games - and had winning records against Michigan and in bowl games - something that his successor, John Cooper, could achieve neither.

Whether it's hiring head football coaches or corporate senior execs or heads of non-profits, you can carefully study track records and scrutinize personalities, but hiring decisions remain a bit of a crapshoot.

I don't know what the method would have produced for Richt for prior years, but it appears from my numbers above that Richt was an excellent recruiter, but not able to get the most out of his players. If that is true, then I would say that Georgia has a very reasonable possibility of doing well with the coaching change. All they need to do is find someone that can get a lot out of the players, and who can still recruit reasonably well.

The Nebraska situation was very different. It's a difficult place to recruit to. There is not a large quantity of 5-star local talent, and the cold winters and corn are a tough sell to kids from Texas, Florida, and California. They can change coaches as often as they like, but those problems are not going to go away.

As for Ohio State, while Cooper wasn't better than Bruce, some of their later coaches have been. Like Georgia, there is a large pool of local talent, which makes it a lot easier.

FWIW, Paterno's 1982 team was the first national championship team ever that passed for more yards than it rushed.

That said, Paterno, was loyal to his assistants, almost to a to a fault. He also was hesitant to play talented Freshman and Sophomores over Seniors. Many PSU fans believe highly touted recruits like Michael Robinson and Larry Johnson would have been difference makers had they been inserted in their early years. Sound familiar?