UNC Football Catch-all | Bill Belichick Era underway

[superrific]

Yeah, I don't think our disagreement here (to the extent we even disagree on much here at all) is based on facts, as much as it is on differences of opinion.

I think we are both saying something akin to "when you hear hoof beats think horses not zebras". But in our case is more like you're saying "when you hear baaing noises think goats, not sheep" and I'm saying "when you hear baaing noises think sheep not goats". Could really be either.

But what bothers me here is in the above scenario sheep are deathly toxic and will damage our university. Hence my suggestion we stay the hell away from anything that makes a "Baaing" sound.

I'm saying it could be goats or sheep or even some other animal you and I have never heard of.

I take your point about the toxicity, but there's also the counterpoint of competing in college football. Who do you think has authored more human rights violations: a random Saudi noble or Phil Knight? Or the Waltons for that matter?

I guess my view is that it's pointless for me to try to have an opinion when I know so little.

 

[CFordUNC]

Without contradicting your point (which I don't think is wrong), it is worth considering that you will always come out looking bad if you compare yourself to the champ.

I would say the better comparison would be Indiana over the last 30 years, or even better, the coterie of schools with similar profiles to us. Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, etc. Some of those schools have had halting success in fits and starts (UCLA used to be a power, a long time ago), and so have we.

Which isn't to say that we're doing well but let's at least keep the proper comparisons.

I hear you for sure, and I can’t speak to UCLA because I very much believe that they too, like UNC, are a tremendously perennial underachieving program. The other two you mentioned, though, Kentucky and Kansas, I think serve to reinforce my point a little bit. Mark Stoops has done a heck of a good job at Kentucky. The fan base only wants him fired because SEC fan bases at places like Kentucky have completely unrealistic expectations for how good their football program should be relative to schools like Alabama, Georgia, Texas, etc. I would absolutely kill for a Mark Stoops type coach to come to UNC and produce Mark Stoops at Kentucky type results.

Same with Kansas. Lance Leopold is the exact type of coach I would advocate for UNC to hire, but we never will for the reasons I’ve already articulated.

The problem at UNC is that we have poor football culture. The problem at Kentucky and Kansas is that they have no natural homegrown recruiting base for football talent. North Carolina has no such problem. I would argue that Kansas and Kentucky are punching generally above their weight in football results, and I would argue that Indiana is absolutely even more so.

I’m sure I’m doing a terrible job of articulating my point, but I’m just trying to say, UNC‘s problem is never, has never, and will never be a shortage of financial resources, or a shortage of talented football players willing to play here. UNC‘s problem is always going to be that for whatever reason our administration and our top boosters who call the shots inexplicably value style over substance, and when given the opportunity, will always hire style over substance. There is a reason that Bubba Cunningham, who is probably the most widely respected director of athletics in all of college sports, wanted nothing to do with the Bill Belichick or the Mack Brown hires.

 

[superrific]

It is absolutely a blueprint.

1. Go hire someone who has actually had recent success at the collegiate level, even if it’s the G5 level. In other words, don’t go hire somebody who has been out of college football coaching for seven years and whom nobody else would hire, OR don’t go hire someone who quite literally never stepped foot on a college campus in a coaching role in their 7+ decades of life.

2. Have your administration do whatever it takes to provide enough of a good vision that the biggest and most generous benefactors and supporters get on board with surrounding the coach with the financial resources that he needs to be successful.

3. Articulate a strategic plan and vision to the fan base, to the donor base, and to any other important stakeholders about how the coach is going to build his roster and construct his program.

4. Win football games.

Indiana didn’t win the lottery. Nobody, probably not even Curt Cignetti himself, would have said that Indiana won the lottery by hiring the coach from James Madison. They simply hired a good football coach. Why in the world should it be hard for UNC to do it, too? Jon Sumrall was right there for the taking. Matt Campbell may have been had we not been running an absolute circus of a coaching search. There are other Curt Cignetti’s out there- UNC just does not have the desire to find them because it’s not flashy.

That's a blueprint for possibly having success. For getting one's foot in the door. Lots and lots of schools have done this exact same thing and have gotten nowhere. Because it's really difficult to identify the great football coaches from the ones that merely had some success in their early years.

As Hegel said, the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

 

[CFordUNC]

That's a blueprint for possibly having success. For getting one's foot in the door. Lots and lots of schools have done this exact same thing and have gotten nowhere. Because it's really difficult to identify the great football coaches from the ones that merely had some success in their early years.

As Hegel said, the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

I guess my whole thing is, somebody is going to hire the next Curt Cignetti or the next Dan Lanning. That person may be a Jon Sumrall, or a Matt Campbell, or a Kenny Dillingham, or a Glenn Schuman, or it may be someone none of us have ever heard of yet. But he is out there. And I have very little confidence that UNC will be the one to find him because we are obsessed with celebrity hires that make our big money boosters feel like their ego has been sufficiently stroked.

 

[Ddseddse]

I'm saying it could be goats or sheep or even some other animal you and I have never heard of.

I take your point about the toxicity, but there's also the counterpoint of competing in college football. Who do you think has authored more human rights violations: a random Saudi noble or Phil Knight? Or the Waltons for that matter?

I guess my view is that it's pointless for me to try to have an opinion when I know so little.

Dunno. I trust my gut instinct. Can it be wrong? You're damned right it can. Over my lifetime has it proven right way more often than wrong? Yes, it absolutely has.

I'm fully self aware my gut instinct, among many virtuous things, also contains a seething mass of implicit biases and ignorant blind spots.

But it also has a proven track record of being correct more often than not. Absent any additional information (which will hopefully be forthcoming soon), my gut tells me to stay the hell away.

I 100% agree that I want much more information about who is giving this gift and the motivation for it. But if that information is not forthcoming, it will just reinforce my initial gut reaction.

 

[superrific]

The problem at Kentucky and Kansas is that they have no natural homegrown recruiting base for football talent. North Carolina has no such problem.

I've made this point before, but it's worth repeating. Our geography puts out football program at a disadvantage. While Kansas isn't a fertile recruiting base, it belongs to KU and KSU. I suppose Oklahoma is there too, but it's still a fair bit away and Oklahoma tends to look south for recruits.

One reason, I think, that schools in our area have never been good at football is that there are too many schools for the talent base. We compete with NCSU, Dook, Wake, UVa, Va Tech, Clemson, Tennessee and that's before we even get to not-that-far-away programs like Georgia. Athens is closer to Charlotte than Norman is to most of Kansas.

Not all of those schools are good at the same time, which is kind of the point. There's not enough local talent to go around for all of us to be good at once. I mean, even ECU can nab some quality recruits out East.

This is why, I think, that the SEC and B10 schools have traditionally been better at football than basketball -- or at least one reason. In basketball, you can recruit nationally, because you only need 3-4 players per class. You can certainly recruit regionally. So being the only school in your state isn't as much of an advantage because another power school can come in and snag the best recruit in your state.

In football, though, where the class size is 20 or more, only the very top powers can fill their classes with recruits nationally. Almost everyone recruits has to recruit in state. And thus the amount of competition is important.

For instance: Penn St. They are the only big football school within 300 miles. Between OSU and PSU, they control recruiting in PA, OH, NJ and even parts of NY. So even if that talent base is worse than NC/SC, it divides two ways, not seven. In fact, if you look at the traditional powers in football, they typically come from places with few major programs, right? Alabama has Bama and Auburn and who else? LSU is Louisiana. Historically, UGa was Georgia. Nobody else in Tennessee. Texas has multiple programs but it is a huge state.

Meanwhile, SC has some the same problems NC does, and hence the lack of consistent excellence there. Clemson is the closest and they have been good recently, but they weren't so good in the 90s IIRC. USC is not good. And while UNC could probably thrive if we established ourselves as a major power, the getting there is the problem, right?

 

[superrific]

I guess my whole thing is, somebody is going to hire the next Curt Cignetti or the next Dan Lanning. That person may be a Jon Sumrall, or a Matt Campbell, or a Kenny Dillingham, or a Glenn Schuman, or it may be someone none of us have ever heard of yet. But he is out there. And I have very little confidence that UNC will be the one to find him because we are obsessed with celebrity hires that make our big money boosters feel like their ego has been sufficiently stroked.

That's fine. But the relevant comparison is this:

Stupid UNC has 0% of finding the next star coach. Smart UNC has a 5-10% chance. The latter is better and that's your point, but I think you exaggerate the alternative. Lots of schools who hire the next Cignetti end up with the next Fedora.

 

[SnoopRob]

There's a game tonight, right?

The good news is that it will likely be a break in the fighting about the program. The bad news is that it will likely be another point to argue over within the fighting about the program.

 

[Calheel]

It is absolutely a blueprint.

1. Go hire someone who has actually had recent success at the collegiate level, even if it’s the G5 level. In other words, don’t go hire somebody who has been out of college football coaching for seven years and whom nobody else would hire, OR don’t go hire someone who quite literally never stepped foot on a college campus in a coaching role in their 7+ decades of life.

2. Have your administration do whatever it takes to provide enough of a good vision that the biggest and most generous benefactors and supporters get on board with surrounding the coach with the financial resources that he needs to be successful.

3. Articulate a strategic plan and vision to the fan base, to the donor base, and to any other important stakeholders about how the coach is going to build his roster and construct his program.

4. Win football games.

Indiana didn’t win the lottery. Nobody, probably not even Curt Cignetti himself, would have said that Indiana won the lottery by hiring the coach from James Madison. They simply hired a good football coach. Why in the world should it be hard for UNC to do it, too? Jon Sumrall was right there for the taking. Matt Campbell may have been had we not been running an absolute circus of a coaching search. There are other Curt Cignetti’s out there- UNC just does not have the desire to find them because it’s not flashy.

We followed that “blueprint” with Mack Brown 1.0 and Fedora. Indiana didn’t give extraordinary support to Cignetti until he won.

There is no magic formula to cfb success. Sometimes hiring an NFL coach works: see Carrol and Harbaugh. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring a P4 head coach works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring a G5 head coach works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring an elite coordinator works, sometimes it doesn’t.

If there were a real blueprint, every school would copy it. CFB is nothing but imitation.

But as MacTTP has shown, almost all coach hire strategies have between a 33% and 43% hit rate - in other words, almost all strategies fail more often than they succeed.

It is very easy to Monday Morning QB hiring decisions and suggest path A is the obvious correct path. The reality is that it is a crapshoot and Indiana absolutely lucked out.

 

[CFordUNC]

That's fine. But the relevant comparison is this:

Stupid UNC has 0% of finding the next star coach. Smart UNC has a 5-10% chance. The latter is better and that's your point, but I think you exaggerate the alternative. Lots of schools who hire the next Cignetti end up with the next Fedora.

See, I actually think that Larry Fedora was a great hire at the time. Alongside Kevin Sumlin, he was the hottest available G5 head coach on the market. Bubba did a great job by making Chris Peterson and Urban Meyer say no first, but Larry was a great hire at the time given that we were under a crippling multi-pronged NCAA investigation and facing sanctions. That, and we were looking to make a dramatic departure from the no-offense, ball-control, “boring” style of the Butch Davis era and seeking the hurry up, no huddle, sling it around spread offense that was the flavor du jour.

I think that Larry accomplished exactly what you would hope any UNC coach could accomplish. The 2015-2016 seasons were exactly what I think UNC should, and can, accomplish: compete for a spot in the ACC title game (obviously we did a 2015 and appeared to be well on our way to doing so in 2016 before we collapsed at Duke). Fedora’a undoing was that he stopped being able to recruit the state of North Carolina. UNC football will never be successful if it can’t recruit at home. But overall, I think Larry was a great hire at the time, accomplished more than any UNC Football coach since Mack 1.0, and is a model for how UNC should try to make hires in the future- by that, I mean land a solid G5 head coach and try to surround him with enough financial and infrastructure investment to give him a chance.

 

[CFordUNC]

We followed that “blueprint” with Mack Brown 1.0 and Fedora. Indiana didn’t give extraordinary support to Cignetti until he won.

There is no magic formula to cfb success. Sometimes hiring an NFL coach works: see Carrol and Harbaugh. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring a P4 head coach works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring a G5 head coach works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiring an elite coordinator works, sometimes it doesn’t.

If there were a real blueprint, every school would copy it. CFB is nothing but imitation.

But as MacTTP has shown, almost all coach hire strategies have between a 33% and 43% hit rate - in other words, almost all strategies fail more often than they succeed.

It is very easy to Monday Morning QB hiring decisions and suggest path A is the obvious correct path. The reality is that it is a crapshoot and Indiana absolutely lucked out.

That’s all fair, but I think it is a little bit more formulaic than you’re letting on. I agree that the “hit rate” is less than 50% but I disagree that it’s a total shot in the dark. Cignetti is a good ball coach but he isn’t some savant- he was given a chance at a program with P2-level resources and given an opportunity to do his thing. Obviously it worked, and obviously there was no guarantee that it was inherently going to work, but I remain convinced that it is a formula that can in fact be replicated. Just because somebody like Jon Sumrall or Dan Lanning or Matt Campbell won’t necessarily be the next great coach, doesn’t mean that that’s not the formula that UNC should be trying over and over until it works. JMO.

 

[superrific]

See, I actually think that Larry Fedora was a great hire at the time. Alongside Kevin Sumlin, he was the hottest available G5 head coach on the market. Bubba did a great job by making Chris Peterson and Urban Meyer say no first, but Larry was a great hire at the time given that we were under a crippling multi-pronged NCAA investigation and facing sanctions. That, and we were looking to make a dramatic departure from the no-offense, ball-control, “boring” style of the Butch Davis era and seeking the hurry up, no huddle, sling it around spread offense that was the flavor du jour.

I think that Larry accomplished exactly what you would hope any UNC coach could accomplish. The 2015-2016 seasons were exactly what I think UNC should, and can, accomplish: compete for a spot in the ACC title game (obviously we did a 2015 and appeared to be well on our way to doing so in 2016 before we collapsed at Duke). Fedora’a undoing was that he stopped being able to recruit the state of North Carolina. UNC football will never be successful if it can’t recruit at home. But overall, I think Larry was a great hire at the time, accomplished more than any UNC Football coach since Mack 1.0, and is a model for how UNC should try to make hires in the future- by that, I mean land a solid G5 head coach and try to surround him with enough financial and infrastructure investment to give him a chance.

Well Larry was 45-43 at UNC, which is pretty much the definition of mediocrity. He had one good year.

 

[Icky Mettle]

I've made this point before, but it's worth repeating. Our geography puts out football program at a disadvantage. While Kansas isn't a fertile recruiting base, it belongs to KU and KSU. I suppose Oklahoma is there too, but it's still a fair bit away and Oklahoma tends to look south for recruits.

One reason, I think, that schools in our area have never been good at football is that there are too many schools for the talent base. We compete with NCSU, Dook, Wake, UVa, Va Tech, Clemson, Tennessee and that's before we even get to not-that-far-away programs like Georgia. Athens is closer to Charlotte than Norman is to most of Kansas.

Not all of those schools are good at the same time, which is kind of the point. There's not enough local talent to go around for all of us to be good at once. I mean, even ECU can nab some quality recruits out East.

This is why, I think, that the SEC and B10 schools have traditionally been better at football than basketball -- or at least one reason. In basketball, you can recruit nationally, because you only need 3-4 players per class. You can certainly recruit regionally. So being the only school in your state isn't as much of an advantage because another power school can come in and snag the best recruit in your state.

In football, though, where the class size is 20 or more, only the very top powers can fill their classes with recruits nationally. Almost everyone recruits has to recruit in state. And thus the amount of competition is important.

For instance: Penn St. They are the only big football school within 300 miles. Between OSU and PSU, they control recruiting in PA, OH, NJ and even parts of NY. So even if that talent base is worse than NC/SC, it divides two ways, not seven. In fact, if you look at the traditional powers in football, they typically come from places with few major programs, right? Alabama has Bama and Auburn and who else? LSU is Louisiana. Historically, UGa was Georgia. Nobody else in Tennessee. Texas has multiple programs but it is a huge state.

Meanwhile, SC has some the same problems NC does, and hence the lack of consistent excellence there. Clemson is the closest and they have been good recently, but they weren't so good in the 90s IIRC. USC is not good. And while UNC could probably thrive if we established ourselves as a major power, the getting there is the problem, right?

Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado.

 

[Calheel]

That’s all fair, but I think it is a little bit more formulaic than you’re letting on. I agree that the “hit rate” is less than 50% but I disagree that it’s a total shot in the dark. Cignetti is a good ball coach but he isn’t some savant- he was given a chance at a program with P2-level resources and given an opportunity to do his thing. Obviously it worked, and obviously there was no guarantee that it was inherently going to work, but I remain convinced that it is a formula that can in fact be replicated. Just because somebody like Jon Sumrall or Dan Lanning or Matt Campbell won’t necessarily be the next great coach, doesn’t mean that that’s not the formula that UNC should be trying over and over until it works. JMO.

I disagree. Cignetti is a savant -- or at the very least, the absolute perfect match of school and coach at the perfect time. What he has done at IU is absolutely unprecedented -- at least to date.

Certainly, a lot of schools will attempt to mimic the Indiana approach in the next hiring cycle (especially schools in the Indiana tier) but unless they get extraordinarily lucky, they will have nowhere near the success of Indiana.

 

[superrific]

Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado.

Well, none of those have been power programs for quite a while, if they ever have.

The high point for the plains programs was late 80s/early 90s when, IIRC, the Huskers, Sooners and Buffs were all good. But it was unstable; CO fell off quickly, OU faded and then eventually NE just collapsed.

It's not an exact point, of course. If I cared, I could do a regression pretty easily, but I don't. If someone wants a project, then they should regress winning % of a college football program against the number of schools within X miles.

 

[CFordUNC]

Well Larry was 45-43 at UNC, which is pretty much the definition of mediocrity. He had one good year.

Yeah, I definitely won’t argue that his holistic tenure ended up being mostly mediocre overall. I just meant that he was probably the best realistic hire UNC could’ve made *at the time*, and it was a good hire within the context of that time, IMO. I think that his first five years were a pretty solid run and indicative of what UNC football can reasonably expect: bowl game every year, occasional ACC title game appearance and possible playoff appearance. Larry’s downfall was the triple play of failure to onboard and groom a good quarterback after Mitch Trubisky, a weird setup where like three different people had offensive coordinating responsibilities, and the lack of ability to recruit in-state. But once it was time to move on from him, what UNC should’ve done is to try to hire the very best possible coaching candidate who was *currently coaching*. Instead, we let the boosters hire their old golfing buddy Mack Brown, who had been out of coaching for almost 7 years, who had been fired from his most recent job, and whom nobody else was giving the time of day besides UNC. Then, when that whole thing fell apart, we decided to let the boosters allow their politician buddies to hire another old, out of work football coach who had been fired from his most previous job and whom and nobody else was giving the time of day besides UNC.

The football coach hiring process is certainly complicated and not without a requisite amount of luck and timing, but it’s not nearly as impossible as UNC likes to make it appear.

 

[Calheel]

I've made this point before, but it's worth repeating. Our geography puts out football program at a disadvantage. While Kansas isn't a fertile recruiting base, it belongs to KU and KSU. I suppose Oklahoma is there too, but it's still a fair bit away and Oklahoma tends to look south for recruits.

One reason, I think, that schools in our area have never been good at football is that there are too many schools for the talent base. We compete with NCSU, Dook, Wake, UVa, Va Tech, Clemson, Tennessee and that's before we even get to not-that-far-away programs like Georgia. Athens is closer to Charlotte than Norman is to most of Kansas.

Not all of those schools are good at the same time, which is kind of the point. There's not enough local talent to go around for all of us to be good at once. I mean, even ECU can nab some quality recruits out East.

This is why, I think, that the SEC and B10 schools have traditionally been better at football than basketball -- or at least one reason. In basketball, you can recruit nationally, because you only need 3-4 players per class. You can certainly recruit regionally. So being the only school in your state isn't as much of an advantage because another power school can come in and snag the best recruit in your state.

In football, though, where the class size is 20 or more, only the very top powers can fill their classes with recruits nationally. Almost everyone recruits has to recruit in state. And thus the amount of competition is important.

For instance: Penn St. They are the only big football school within 300 miles. Between OSU and PSU, they control recruiting in PA, OH, NJ and even parts of NY. So even if that talent base is worse than NC/SC, it divides two ways, not seven. In fact, if you look at the traditional powers in football, they typically come from places with few major programs, right? Alabama has Bama and Auburn and who else? LSU is Louisiana. Historically, UGa was Georgia. Nobody else in Tennessee. Texas has multiple programs but it is a huge state.

Meanwhile, SC has some the same problems NC does, and hence the lack of consistent excellence there. Clemson is the closest and they have been good recently, but they weren't so good in the 90s IIRC. USC is not good. And while UNC could probably thrive if we established ourselves as a major power, the getting there is the problem, right?

A lot of the P4 schools (or even G5 schools) in our geographic footprint are not real recruiting rivals. When UNC has it going, only Clemson and UGa are a serious threat in out footprint.

Moreover, a key demographic point you are missing is the density of African American population and the cultural importance of college football. Georgia has the third largest AA population in the nation. North Carolina has the sixth largest. NY and Cal are 4th and 5th, but those areas do not prioritize cfb.

As a result, NC is an extremely fertile cfb recruiting area. Geographically, we are far more advantaged than schools like Nebraska, Colorado, Oregon, Notre Dame, etc., etc. The number of mommas who are in same-day driving distance of our campus is very large. Indeed, geography is one of UNC's great advantages going forward.

The reason UNC has not been good at football historically is because the university, and the state to an extent, has viewed it as too low brow. The state has historically focused more on cbb and other sports that do not require the institutional commitment (both financially and academically) of football. Obviously, that has changed today. But 75 years of history is hard to overcome in a sport that hews to historical norms more than any other. It is extremely difficult to break into the elite category in cfb as compared to cbb.

 

[superrific]

Yeah, I definitely won’t argue that his holistic tenure ended up being mostly mediocre overall. I just meant that he was probably the best realistic hire UNC could’ve made *at the time*, and it was a good hire within the context of that time, IMO. I think that his first five years were a pretty solid run and indicative of what UNC football can reasonably expect: bowl game every year, occasional ACC title game appearance and possible playoff appearance. Larry’s downfall was the triple play of failure to onboard and groom a good quarterback after Mitch Trubisky, a weird setup where like three different people had offensive coordinating responsibilities, and the lack of ability to recruit in-state. But once it was time to move on from him, what UNC should’ve done is to try to hire the very best possible coaching candidate who was *currently coaching*. Instead, we let the boosters hire their old golfing buddy Mack Brown, who had been out of coaching for almost 7 years, who had been fired from his most recent job, and whom nobody else was giving the time of day besides UNC. Then, when that whole thing fell apart, we decided to let the boosters allow their politician buddies to hire another old, out of work football coach who had been fired from his most previous job and whom and nobody else was giving the time of day besides UNC.

The football coach hiring process is certainly complicated and not without a requisite amount of luck and timing, but it’s not nearly as impossible as UNC likes to make it appear.

Right. Like I said: dumb has 0% chance of working, but smart has only a small % chance of working. I don't fault you for wanting us to be smart rather than dumb (this is my default position about everything and I'm hard pressed to think of exceptions), but being smart in itself ain't gonna get there.

This is why sports fandom can be extremely frustrating, especially in college sports where there's no draft or salary cap to spread talent.

 

[Calheel]

Right. Like I said: dumb has 0% chance of working, but smart has only a small % chance of working. I don't fault you for wanting us to be smart rather than dumb (this is my default position about everything and I'm hard pressed to think of exceptions), but being smart in itself ain't gonna get there.

This is why sports fandom can be extremely frustrating, especially in college sports where there's no draft or salary cap to spread talent.

Dumb has a 35% chance of working and smart has a 40% chance of working. I think your percentages are far too low.

 

[superrific]

A lot of the P4 schools (or even G5 schools) in our geographic footprint are not real recruiting rivals. When UNC has it going, only Clemson and UGa are a serious threat in out footprint.

Va Tech? I mean, not now, but they were.

I used to follow recruiting at least somewhat. I don't now. Even during Mack's best years, I don't recall there being any year when we hit all top 10 instate prospects. Maybe one or two years we hit 8. Long time ago. But I think NCSU will always be a rival because there are players who grow up ABC and liking NCSU. Tennessee recruits the western part of the state, and they were a power for quite a while.

Like I said, someone should run a regression.