Photo of Mark Richt by Larry Wynn.
I think we can all safely say that I was right. Recent events have proven beyond any doubt that firing the successful head coach with a solid tenure and occasionally great teams was a mistake.
Things have just never been quite the same. The team hasn’t achieved like expected for a very long time. It was so obviously a mistake to relieve the successful long-term head coach of his duties just because he wasn’t winning at the level a few somewhat crazy donors believed he should be.
And a recent home loss to Georgia Southern proves all of that to be true.
Okay, so maybe I lied to you a little bit and pulled something of a bait-and-switch. Before you tune me out entirely, though, let me explain.
When Mark Richt was fired as the head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs after a wonderful road victory against Georgia Tech, capping off yet another 9-win regular season, I was full of consternation.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Richt’s departure came just a week after a stunning overtime win against Georgia Southern…that should have never been that close.
My concern was primarily because getting the right coach is never a guarantee, and making the wrong hire, or even the right hire at the wrong time, can doom a program for years to come. We’ve seen powerhouses like Tennessee and Florida and Auburn all whither away because they put the wrong guy in charge. Georgia even struggled through a couple decades of irrelevance because the head coach just wasn’t quite right.
In 2015, Tennessee had just finished languishing under Derek Dooley after the one-year tenure of Lane Kiffin. Kiffin looked like the right hire, but he bolted immediately, and that left UT scrambling. Auburn was still searching for direction after the firing of future US Senator Tommy Tuberville (that’s still a weird sentence), even though the next two coaches both made trips to the BCS National Championship game. Oddly enough, I would argue that the coach who lost his championship appearance, Gus Malzahn, was a far better choice than Gene Chizik, the guy who actually won one with a transcendent quarterback in Cam Newton.
All of these factors were sitting in the back of my mind, making me extremely nervous about the future of UGA football.
Admittedly, the most prominent rumors ended up to be the truth. It was expected from Day One that Kirby Smart would be pulled away from the machine he helped build at Bama under Nick Saban to return his alma mater to glory.
In 2015, even if Smart had ultimately been the hire, none of the anticipated outcomes were a foregone conclusion.
Smart was the young buck assistant who had built a legacy at another program before becoming the next head coach of a hopeful blue blood. He was going to follow in the footsteps of such prominent legends as Charlie Strong, Will Muschamp, and (later down the road) Tom Herman.
These three coaches were all, at one time, seen as sure-fire bets to become great head coaches. Strong flamed out at Texas after only a few years, in part due to poor recruiting and an unfavorable booster club. Muschamp’s tenure at Florida was spotty, at best, with a very strong 2012 season that saw the Gators go 12-2. He was out the door just two years later after going 4-8 and losing to…Georgia Southern? I see a trend.
And we look at Texas again for Tom Herman. With all of Herman’s success in-state, he was as close as it comes to having guaranteed success at Texas. But, it just didn’t work out.
In this case, “it didn’t work out” equates to “a lot of people at Texas were tired of Herman.” His teams were often good, but never great. His willingness to let players be socially active wasn’t popular, especially when it lead to the banning of a fan-favorite school song. And, personally, Herman just kinda rubbed people the wrong way.
We’re giving Georgia Southern way too much good press in this piece, aren’t we? So here’s a picture of Sony Michel’s game-winning OT touchdown in 2015. (Photo by Larry Wynn)
He never lost to Georgia Southern, though, so that’s a positive.
I say all of this to bring the issue back to the real target, Nebraska’s now-former head coach Scott Frost.
While it may seem ridiculous right now to compare Georgia and Nebraska, the picture in 2014 was much more similar.
When Bo Pellini arrived at Nebraska as head coach in 2008, he won three straight Big 12 North division titles and played for the Big 12 title three straight seasons. They easily could have won the Big 12 in 2009 against the Texas team that eventually lost to Alabama in the national championship game if not for a bizarre final second.
When Nebraska migrated to the much tougher Big Ten “Legends” division in 2011, they only took a slight step back. Their overall record didn’t change very much, as the Huskers were still winning nine or 10 games every season, but they only won the division once to play for the Big Ten title in 2012.
Then consider the fact that Pellini’s Cornhuskers faced Richt’s Bulldogs in consecutive bowl games, losing to UGA in the 2012 season’s Capital One Bowl and defeating the Dawgs in the 2013 season’s Gator Bowl.
Then both teams said goodbye to their similarly successful head coaches within a single season of each other. Pellini was ousted in 2014 after finishing yet another 9-3 regular season and coming in second in the newly renamed Big Ten West division.
Neither Richt nor Pellini were abject failures. Richt won several games for UGA and, despite the constant whining of a subset of fans, some of those were pretty big games. He admittedly never won “The Big Game,” and I’m not speaking euphemistically about the Super Bowl here, but he still won a lot of football games.
Pellini had Nebraska in their best position since the Osborne days, yet it was said about him that he didn’t win enough of the big games.
And this is where the two schools diverged.
See, my angst about replacing Richt with Smart was well-placed. Just at the wrong school.
Obviously everything Smart has done at UGA has turned out well. He is constantly recruiting some of the top classes in the country. He has built UGA into a juggernaut that people just don’t want to play, no matter how many times they chant “We Want Georgia!” Oh, and he finally brought a football national championship back to the Classic City.
And what has Nebraska done since getting rid of their successful coach? They have since fired two other coaches who never really amounted to anything, including another “surefire success” in Scott Frost…after losing to Georgia Southern.
There’s that name again. Georgia Southern.
Coach Smart is the exception, not the rule. Ignore the fact that only one coach can win the national championship every year, and ignore the fact that one guy has won about half of the last 13 championships. It’s true that great success in college football is sparing. Only so many teams can be the top Dawg at any given time.
Most of the time, if you have a winning coach, your odds of increasing your winning percentage by firing that guy are slim. Even if it’s only due to the statistical unlikelihood of being one of those top-winning programs to begin with. When you have a coach who knows how to do that, he’s usually worth keeping.
I have always been cautious about replacing a successful coach. We’ve seen it blow up more often than not. You fire a coach who consistently wins double-digit games in a single season just so you can, what, hope to make .500 the next four years?
Now admittedly, Pellini is not Richt. Pellini has an abrasive personality that can get on people’s nerves. He burned some bridges at Nebraska on his way out to the point where, even with his record, I doubt anyone really misses him. He’s got some of that Tom Herman disease going on.
But let the saga of Nebraska and Pellini and Frost be the warning to you. When you move to replace a winning coach, make sure you consider what’s waiting on the other side. Even if the next guy is a “sure thing,” the only certainty in football is that everything changes once toe meets leather. And, in the world of coaching, the carriage might turn into a pumpkin long before the games actually get started.
Everyone remembers Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, but we should really be more concerned by Mr. O’Leary’s bull. (Photo by Quaritsch Photography on Unsplash)
Remember George O’Leary? Yeah…
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