Out of some idle curiosity this morning, I took a look through the 2015 coaching carousel. There were 12 new P5 head coaches in that cycle. Of the other 11, Fuente outlasted 7:
- Muschamp at USCe
- Odom at Mizzou
- Cubit at Illinois
- Durkin at Maryland
- Claeys at Minnesota
- Helton at USCw
- Richt at Miami
Hilariously, Fuente even outlasted one of the replacements of the above coaches, and is likely to be joined shortly by a second:
- Lovie Smith at Illinois
- Diaz at Miami
Of the four remaining coaches hired that season, one is somewhat on the hot seat:
- Babers at Syracuse
Finally, of the 12 coaches hired during the 2015 carousel, only three have lived up to their relative expectations:
- Smart at Georgia
- Mendenhall at UVA 🤮
- Campbell at Iowa State
... I don't know what to do with this information, other than to say that coaching searches are hard. I just thought it was interesting that so many names on the list had already come and gone, while we've been yelling about Fuente for over 3 years now.
Comments
Probably just shows that Whit gives his coaches long leashes, most others are out pretty quickly after failing
The long leash was good move by Whit from this perspective - he can now preach stability and patience with the new coach he's trying to get. VT isn't a school that will fire you in two seasons, that elevates the perception of the program to potential coaches.
In hindsight, Campbell would have been the correct choice despite not having any ties to the region. You could argue Rhule but if he had the same level of success at Baylor as he (hypothetically) would at Virginia Tech, he would have left for the NFL and we would be in the same spot again (albeit with VT football being in a munch better state)
VT would've been in a much better financial position if Ruhle had bolted for the NFL, we'd have received some sort of financial windfall from breaking his contract instead of paying nearly $9m for Fuente to leave.
Oh definitely. But I think I would rather have the stability that Campbell provides over Ruhle who would have been a short-term, Buzz on steroids type option.
What is the long term appeal of Campbell? His only season winning more than 8 games was last year during the COVID season. He has a strong chance of only winning 6 this season.
The only exciting thing he has done is taken a program that is historically among the worst in P5 and turned them into an annual bowl team that occasionally contends for conference championships.
This year is certainly a regression towards the mean, but let's not pretend that he doesn't have that program running well above its station.
How much of that is Campbell and how much is it that the Big12 has been wildly inconsistent?
I'm not convinced that Campbell would have done any better than Fuente. A rebuild is different than where we were (although Fuente was noted for that at Memphis).
Fuente is Case Study A on why any hire, even one that looks great on paper, could go south for any number of reasons. I still think Fuente is a perfectly capable head coach, but like pretty much any candidate we could hope to sign he has some serious flaws. In Fuente's case, his flaws were incompatible with building a sustainable program in Blacksburg, and we have to find someone whose flaws can be mitigated within our particular situation.
All of that is to say I'm also not "convinced" that Campbell would have done better, just providing reasons for the appeal. He absolutely could have done better, if he could have built a similarly-good staff on the somewhat higher budget we could provide than ISU does, where "good" is a somewhat subjective term that depends on a great many factors specific to our school and football program.
Agree 100%
I think the enthusiasm behind Campbell is similar to that of Clawson.
They both have taken Programs with limited resources and made them play well above their expected level. The idea being that if you transplanted them to a Program with more resources, they would succeed at even greater levels.
Clawson has done it more places and longer than Campbell but ISU is a very tough place to win. Whether either can/will succeed at more prestigious Programs remains to be seen, but the logic is similar.
Edit: to add a little perspective--if Campbell wins 2 more games this year he will be 3rd All-Time in Wins at ISU. He has coached 63 total games there to-date. The #1 and #2 Coaches coached 141 and 99 games respectively.
At his current winning% if he coached 141 games at ISU, Campbell would be 1st by a big margin with 78 wins--far surpassing the current #1 Dan McCarney's 56 wins.
Seems like the safest hire are guys who have built programs or been a part of stable programs for a long time. (This is a theme overall in coaching hires not just from the 2015 year).
Sh*t man the fact that you went and got it is good enough for me.
For the other posters upthread that made a similar point, yeah, I do like the fact that we went for 6 years. I've been on the '5 year plan' bandwagon from day 1, so the 6th year was more than I would have given but given what happened globally in year 5 I wasn't about to argue with keeping him another year.
Giving a head coach 5+ years to get it all together is arguably generous when most programs are ridding themselves of 'bad hires' after 3. I'm content with the way it has gone and just hope that we aren't going to become FSU or Tennessee.
Unless that includes having Hendon Hooker as our starter.
F***!