CEO Chizik

WarBlogEagle has an interesting post on where Gene Chizik fits in the realm of CEO coaches. Chizik is an interesting case to me. He became a head coach on the strength of good work as a defensive coordinator for Central Florida, Auburn, and Texas, but the defenses of the teams for which he has been the head coach have been underwhelming. This raises a few possibilities.

The first possibility is that Chizik hasn't figured out to involve himself in the defense while still handling all of the tasks of being a head coach. After all, Nick Saban's Michigan State defenses weren't overly impressive, nor were his initial defenses at LSU. Mark Richt would also seem to fall into this category, as he won at Georgia in his first five years despite underwhelming offenses. Richt was either spending all of his time on other head coaching functions or he was overrated as an offensive coordinator when he was at Florida State.

A second possibility is that defense is more about talent than coaching (it's easier to scheme around talent issues on offense because the offense has the initiative) and Auburn is suffering for Tommy Tuberville's diminished recruiting in his last several years on the Plains. Again, the Saban example is instructive. Nick's defenses weren't great until he had time to recruit at LSU, at which point his career took off. (He won a national title in year four.)

The third possibility is that Chizik was overrated as a defensive coordinator. Yes, he won a national title with Texas in 2005 and produced a very good defense, but is it really that hard to produce a good defense with Texas's talent relative to that of its opponents? His 2006 defense was pretty good, but nothing special. (The Horns finished ninth in the Big XII in pass efficiency defense that year. I'll admit that I don't remember Texas's defensive talent in 2006 and that would be a major consideration. Even in Austin, it's possible to have to make chicken salad from chicken s***, relatively speaking.) Chizik's defenses were very good at Auburn, but he was coaching under a defensive ace in Tommy Tuberville. WBE makes this very point:

Tubby was widely regarded as a Miles-type CEO (and Elkon seems to echo this viewpoint) whose success rested on whoever he happened to have hired as his offensive coordinator, but I think this does a disservice to Tubby’s incredible defensive record. When you consider that it didn’t matter who the DC was–Chizik,
Muschamp, Rhoads, whoever wasn’t David Gibbs–the defense was going to know its business. You ask me, Tubby was quietly more Saban or Meyer than Miles in his affect on his team’s on-field performance.

I am often leery of coordinators who are successful on the side of the ball on which the head coach has obvious expertise. (For this reason, I was not as enamored by Kirby Smart as many Georgia fans were. Dan Mullen will be an interesting test case for this.) If this is the case, then Chizik falls into the George O'Leary category: a coach who isn't especially good at his specialty, but who succeeds anyway because he has a great coordinator in his weak suit. Chizik will therefore be defined by how long he can keep Gus Malzahn and then whether there is a good replacement when Malzahn gets a head coaching job. The luck/timing element comes into play again.

WBE's discussion of Tuberville is interesting because he is going through the same re-evaluation of Tuberville that I am. Several summers ago, I started (but didn't finish) a series of posts comparing SEC coaches to World War Two generals. Tuberville was going to be Eisenhower: a successful general whose skill lay more in managing the egos of his subordinates than in directing divisions here and there. After the Tony Franklin debacle, a different picture emerged. Tuberville and his position coach buddies had asserted themselves to the point that Franklin wasn't able to do what he wanted. In retrospect, Tuberville's consistently good defenses indicate that he had an active role in that area. If I had to do the series now, Tuberville would be Hitler (minus the whole genocide thing): had success early, gained the reputation of a gambler, ultimately undone by meddling too much.

And for the hell of it, here is the rest of the SEC (minus the coaches who have not yet coached a game at their schools):

Spurrier/Guderian: an innovator, but exposed when faced with opponents with more of everything.

Saban/Zhukov: ruthless, brutal to subordinates, headstrong, very successful, saved an empire on the verge of collapse.

Meyer/Patton: great offensive mind, sharp at understated parts of the job, successful in multiple theaters, problems with the media.

Nutt/Wingate: crazy man on the periphery

Petrino/Rommel: top offensive mind, doesn't always pay attention to defensive issues, questionable loyalty.

Richt/Bradley: unassuming, competent, likable, loyal to subordinates, upstaged by Patton.

Miles/Montgomery: early success, followed by strange vacillation between conservatism and aggression. Market Garden and the last drive of the Ole Miss game seem to fit together in the realm of disasters.

Mullen/Ridgway: looks promising for the next war.

I'm drawing a total blank on Chizik.

Ranking Coaches

I'm as much of a sucker for a good list as anyone, but coming up with a list of the top ten coaches in college football like Mark Bradley does is a difficult proposition. First of all, we would have to define what we mean by "best coach." Are we playing the "if I had to win one game, this would be my guy" game? Does longevity matter? (This is obviously an important consideration when evaluating Nick Saban and Bobby Petrino, both of whom go higher on any list that isn't about finding a coach for the next decade.) Do I imagine that I'm the athletic director at a major program? A smaller program?

These last two questions are important because we cannot rank Paul Johnson and Mark Richt without them. Johnson runs a funky offense and has had great success at smaller programs that operate with less talent than their rivals. He's a perfect fit at Georgia Tech. If I were the athletic director at a school like Northwestern or Kansas, I would much prefer Johnson over Richt. On the other hand, Richt is a good recruiter, he runs a pro-style offense, and he does a good job of managing egos. A major program is often looking for a caretaker CEO type, which makes Richt a better fit at Georgia. UGA should not necessarily be looking for a coach like Johnson who can take overlooked recruits and put them into an offense that maximizes their talent; it should be looking for a coach who can use his own style and Georgia's profile to bring in top tier talent. If I were the athletic director at Ohio State or USC, I'd prefer Richt.

To use a military history analogy, Dwight Eisenhower was not a great general. If you plopped him down in a battle in which he has equal or lesser forces than his opponents, then he probably wouldn't be a great success. You certainly wouldn't want someone like Eisenhower leading a guerrilla force. However, he was a perfect fit in the role he was handed in World War II: keeping a bunch of talented, but disagreeable generals happy and pushing in the right direction.

I digress. Regardless of which standard you apply, Bradley makes two choices that are very hard to defend:

1. Mack Brown over Bob Stoops.

Brown and Stoops are at peer programs, with Brown at the somewhat more attractive school because he does not need to convince players to leave the state in order to assemble a talented roster. Brown and Stoops are in the same conference and play each other every year. Stoops has won six Big XII titles in ten years. Brown has won one Big XII title in eleven years. Case closed.

2. Pete Carroll behind Brown, Jim Tressel, and anyone not named "Urban Meyer."

Bradley writes that Carroll loses too many games that he shouldn't? Even so, he has the best winning percentage this decade. Are we going to punish him for assembling so much talent that his teams should never lose? In other words, are we going to punish Carroll for being a great recruiter? Carroll's record in big games is stellar, so if the question is "whom do I pick for one game," he'd be hard to pass up. Yes, Mark, Mack Brown did beat Carroll in a Rose Bowl, but calling the defense-less 2005 Trojans Carroll's "best team" is indefensible. Did Herbstreit and May really infect your judgment that season?

And Tressel over Carroll? Are you mad? Tressel is an OK coach and all, but he's coaching in a top-heavy conference in which one of his two major rivals is coached by the Queen of England and the other has been undergoing a transition from Lloyd Carr (who had one foot out the door for several years and was never a great coach to begin with) to Rich Rodriguez (who brings a radically different system). I suppose you can make the same argument regarding Carroll and the Pac Ten, but Carroll can point to numerous big wins outside of the conference. Tressel has the win over Miami and...?

Anyway, it would be unfair for me to gripe at Bradley's list without making my own. If I were a major program athletic director hiring a coach, here is my contact list:

1. Urban Meyer
2. Pete Carroll
3. Bob Stoops
4. Nick Saban
5. Bobby Petrino
6. Frank Beamer
7. Mike Leach
8. Rich Rodriguez
9. Brian Kelly
10. Mack Brown
11. Mark Richt
12. Jim Tressel
13. Houston Nutt
14. Mike Riley
15. Les Miles

Because Posting Video of the Wehrmacht Marching under the Arc du Triomphe would be Uncomfortable...

Mel Gibson's oeuvre ought to come in handy in later rounds.



This will be a little awkward if Henry hits the winner.

You Click on this Page for Tortured WWII Analogies, Right?

Michigan State came into the Citrus Bowl (I refuse to use the new name) in a position not unlike the one that Japan in 1940-41. MSU was opposed by a slumbering giant, an opponent that was complacent and unprepared for war at the outset, but an opponent with far greater talent and capacity for a long-term fight. Isoruku Yamamoto, the planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, famously predicted that a successful operation at Pearl Harbor would buy Japan six months. At the end of those six months, if Japan had not won the war or reached a favorable settlement with the U.S., then Japan had no prospect of success. Yamamoto's plan worked perfectly at Pearl Harbor, save for the inconvenient fact that none of the American carriers were home. Japan racked up success after success in the early months of the war before losing badly at Midway (almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor). They spent the last three years of the war unsuccessfully trying to invent ways to make commitment to the cause trump technology and numbers.

Michigan State could be confident of two things going into the game yesterday. First, Georgia would not be excited to play in the opening stages. The Citrus Bowl is as good as it gets for Michigan State; it's a worst-case scenario for a Georgia team that was playing in the Sugar Bowl one year ago and came into this season as the AP #1. Second, Georgia can be pounced upon by an aggressive opponent. Florida and Alabama both shut the Georgia offense down early and jumped on the Dawgs, negating Knowshon Moreno as a running threat and forcing UGA to play from behind.

Confronted with these twin realities, Michigan State opted for the equivalent of Japan declaring war on the U.S. and then erecting a big fence in the Pacific. Georgia's offense was as sluggish at the start of the game as could be expected. The Dawgs turned the ball over twice in the first half, but the Spartans' vanilla offense was only able to turn the mistakes into three points. Michigan State was only going to win the game by jumping on Georgia early, so a 6-3 lead at the half for MSU was the equivalent of a surrender.

I didn't watch every play of the game, but Georgia's offense drove me crazy in the first half, mainly because I was counting too many instances in which Georgia was in a three-wide formation, Michigan State had seven in the box, and Georgia was running the ball at them anyway. I assume that Matt Stafford has the authority to change the play at the line, so I'll direct this comment to Stafford, but it should also go to Mark Richt and Mike Bobo: why are you running when Michigan State outnumbers your blockers? When State had three linebackers in the game, two deep safeties, and no one over your slot receiver, you knew exactly what the defense was before the snap. The defense was certainly zone and most likely cover two. There are plays that work against that defense, especially when you have two great receivers on the outside. Instead, you kept running Knowshon into seven man fronts with six blockers. I'm starting to understand why Georgia scored three points against Florida and Alabama in the first half. Maybe you caught some of the Rose Bowl, but if you didn't, please pick up a tape and watch what USC did to exploit Penn State's cover three zone. The Trojans didn't wait until the third quarter to start scoring. They don't treat the first half as a feeling out period.

Those complaints aside, Georgia did a very good job on offense in the third quarter. I particularly liked the two plays that led to Georgia's first touchdown. First, Georgia correctly guessed that Michigan State would blitz and hit Caleb King on a screen to the side from which the Spartans blitzed. On the next play, Georgia used a cover-two killer - fake throw to one side to draw the safety and then a deep throw to take advantage of the out-of-position safety - to take the lead. It was beautiful playcalling. It worked against Michigan State because the Spartans made little effort to take the initiative in the game.

Other random thoughts:

1. Either Michigan State's offensive line is suspect or Georgia's defensive ends got a lot better in bowl practices. The repeated sacks from a four-man rush have to be a major source of encouragement for Dawg fans.

2. ESPN flashed a stat early in the third quarter that encapsulated all the problems with Georgia's offensive approach in the first half: Stafford had thrown a grand total of three balls at Massaquoi and Green.

3. Stafford's throw on the first touchdown reminded me how much I'm going to miss a quarterback who can get the ball down the field with a slight flick of his wrist.

4. Mark Dantonio is Jim Tressel without the talent base. Exhibit A: punting in the first quarter on 4th and 1 from the Georgia 39. Exhibit B: an offense built around running the same guy over and over between the tackles. (At least Tressel came out of the dark ages with Troy Smith.) Exhibit C: a kicker who attempted 25 field goals this year. Exhibit D: an on-field personna that makes Ben Stein's character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off look like Sam Kinison. With the way Dantonio's team approaches offense, I'm constantly reminded of the Japanese officer who said in 1944 that Japan didn't need radar because its soldiers could see perfectly well.

Tuberville Raus!

In the customary five thoughts format...

1. This is a dreadful miscalculation by Auburn. I've had a lot of "rank the coaches in the SEC" exercises with friends over the last several years and Tuberville invariably came out in the top half of the deepest coaching pool in the country. Tuberville made a mistake with his handling of the Auburn offense this year, but he also butchered the offense in 2003 (not quite to the same degree as this year, but still...) and rebounded the next year with an unbeaten season, the only unbeaten season by an SEC team this decade. Any head coach can make a mistake in hiring a coordinator for his weak suit. Rich Rodriguez made a mistake in putting together his defensive staff this year. Steve Spurrier made mistakes in hiring defensive coordinators before finding Bob Stoops. Pete Carroll has a still-uncorrected mistake on the offensive side of the ball. Bob Stoops struggled to replace Mike Leach and Mark Mangino before finding Kevin Wilson. The point is that Tuberville made a correctable mistake this year, but that doesn't change the underlying fact that he's a good coach.

The big variable here regards the discussions between Auburn and Tuberville about changes to his offensive staff. As a guy who constantly whined about Lloyd Carr keeping personal friends on staff who were substandard at their jobs (namely Andy Moeller and Mike Debord), I'm in no position to begrudge Auburn if they got annoyed with Tuberville putting his personal loyalty ahead of putting a top product out on the field. Tuberville handed his offense to Ensminger and Nall in 2003 and it was a disaster. He kept them as position coaches and they apparently became a major thorn in the side of Al Borges and Tony Franklin. If Tuberville was going to stick with them as a driving force in the offense, then this move makes a little more sense, although I would still direct some blame at Auburn for not trying to reach a middle ground. Sadly, we'll never know what really happened unless Tuberville and the Auburn decision-makers speak up and tell a relatively consistent story.

2. What does it say that two major programs in the South - Clemson and Tennessee - have made coaching changes this season and they guys they tabbed as their new head men have resumes that are completely inferior to the guy that Auburn just hired?

3. Tuberville's termination illustrates the danger of the coaching arms race going on in the SEC. As I've argued in this space before, the SEC has left the rest of college football in the dust in terms of turning increased revenue from football into brand name coaches. While an arms race can cause the participating nations to end up with vastly improved forces, it can also create major miscalculations. Country A is worried about the new tank being developed in country B, so country A abandons its current plans and goes hog wild in a new, uncertain direction. Or, country A foolishly invades country B because of fears that it won't be able to defend itself in a year's time from country B's new tank.

Auburn is overreacting to the fact that Nick Saban just had an unbeaten season at Alabama. Saban has proved himself (yet again) to be an excellent coach, but his success doesn't make Tommy Tuberville a bad coach, especially since Tuberville has a 4-3 record against Saban. Auburn's overreaction illustrates the danger of the SEC coaching arms race: program decision-makers getting too emotional and carried away by recent events and making irrational decisions as a result.

3a. Or maybe the lesson is simply that Bobby Lowder is a nut who always had it out for Tuberville and was going to axe him the moment he got a chance to do so. If so, good luck to Auburn convincing a new coach to come into this situation.

4. Auburn's and Tennessee's decisions to fire their coaches sure raise the stakes for coordinator hirings, don't they? The lesson coming out of this season may very well be that head coaches in the SEC cannot take risks on bringing in outsiders to make significant changes to their offenses.

5. In the summer of 2007, I started on a project comparing SEC coaches to World War II generals. I never got very far into the project, in part because of time constraints and in part because I didn't think there'd be much interest in such a specialized set of articles. The two posts that I did write compared Steve Spurrier to Heinz Guderian and Tuberville to Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was not a great general, but he was masterful at assembling a good set of men under his command and then managing those underlings. Eisenhower managed to keep Patton and Montogomery, two massive, headstrong egos, effective in the same theater. Eisenhower made mistakes in his managing of the generals below him, namely in letting Monty go ahead with Operation Market Garden, but his overall work in command in Europe was excellent. He didn't intervene and let the generals on the ground do their thing.

In the summer of 2007, this seemed to be a good way to describe Tuberville. He brought in excellent coordinators and then gave them space to operate. He made good personnel decisions, such as replacing Gene Chizik with Will Muschamp. Tuberville's demise reflects that he is no Eisenhower. Tuberville lost his job for mishandling the conflict between his offensive coordinator and his position coaches.