For a number of years we’ve fondly mentioned college football head coaches who have been Doing Good Things (DGT, for short) at their respective programs. With a decent chunk of the 2018 season complete it’s time to revisit the men laying down quality work, as well as some that are not DGT.
*S&P+ team rankings in parentheses
Doing Good Things
Josh Heupel, UCF 5-0 (8th)
Scott Satterfield, Appalachian State 4-1 (11th)
Jeff Tedford, Fresno State 5-1 (12th)
Matt Wells, Utah State 5-1 (20th)
Luke Fickell, Cincinnati 6-0 (31st)
Seth Littrell, North Texas 6-1 (42nd)
Bill Clark, UAB 5-1 (49th)
Lance Leipold, Buffalo 6-1 (50th)
Chad Lunsford, Georgia Southern 5-1 (74th)
Jeff Monken, Army 4-2 (75th)
How about 4 teams in the Top 20!!? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what Heupel can do at UCF once the Frost players cycle out a little bit, or more importantly, McKenzie Milton is gone. The Knights quarterback can come back next year so Heupel may be going into the 2020 off-season with a ton of wins under his belt.
Satterfield led the Mountaineers in their transition from FCS and is quietly destroying the Fun Belt. He’s 34-10 overall and 23-3 in league play since 2015 with 3 straight bowl wins. That’s damn good.
Tedford began his head coaching career at Cal back in 2002 and is still only 56 years old. With a 10-win season in his Fresno debut followed up by what we’ve seen in 2018 he’s probably in line for another Power 5 job soon if he wants it.
A few years ago Matt Wells was a hotter commodity winning the Mountain West and impressing at his alma mater. Then Utah State fell into a funk going 15-23 over a 3-year period. For 2018 they’re back! Utah State is scoring over 50 per game and fought Michigan State to the wire.
Things didn’t look too great for Luke Fickell last year with a 4-8 debut for Cincinnati. Perhaps he’s actually rebuilding the Bearcats for real, I know he was recruiting really well out of the gate. They did beat UCLA but have most of their tough games still remaining.
North Texas is probably the best program no one cares about. The Mean Green are 15-6 since 2017 and Littrell is in line to compete for back-to-back Conference USA West titles. This former Oklahoma running back has a really diverse Power 5 assistant history and at just 40 could be a quality hire for a bigger school down the road.
UAB returned to college football last year and barely missed a beat. Bill Clark has this team competing with North Texas above for their division title although they did lose to Coastal Carolina this year.
Lance Leipold faced an enormous rebuild at UB following his dynasty at Wisconsin-Whitewater. It didn’t look like it would happen (7-17 in his first 2 years) now he’s a MAC favorite with a huge game this weekend against Toledo.
The interim tag was taken off Chad Lunsford late last year after he won a couple games in a row following a 0-9 start to 2017 by the Eagles. Now, Georgia Southern is on a 7-2 run! Lunsford has been at GSU prior to this as an assistant for many years and could stick around for a while.
Not Doing Good Things
Scott Frost, Nebraska 0-6 (69th)
Chad Morris, Arkansas 1-6 (72nd)
Larry Fedora, North Carolina 1-4 (90th)
Bobby Petrino, Louisville 2-5 (98th)
Mike Sanford, Western Kentucky 1-5 (110th)
Chris Ash, Rutgers 1-6 (124th)
Brent Brennan, San Jose State 0-6 (126th)
Randy Edsall, UConn 1-5 (130th)
Now may be a good time to buy low on Frost and Morris as they struggle to 12 losses through mid-October. The advanced stats suggest they shouldn’t lose quite this many games. Good luck to them recruiting coming off this season.
Larry Fedora had some interesting comments during ACC media days and his whirlwind circus has continued right through the season coming off an awful coughed up lead against Virginia Tech.
The post-Lamar Jackson era is not going well for Bobby Petrino. From the looks of it Louisville fans are going to have to deal with it because Petrino would be owed three full years of salary if he was fired.
Once upon a time, Western Kentucky was one of the best Group of 5 teams in the country. Since arriving last year, Mike Sanford has done his best to destroy that reputation for the Hilltoppers. Worst of all, Sanford’s supposed offensive wizardry has WKU averaging 17.8 points (they averaged 45.5 per game in 2016!) per game this year while coming off a 26-point loss to Charlotte.
Chris Ash at least is getting $2 million a year to get embarrassed at Rutgers. Why anyone would take this job is beyond me. Their quarterback has thrown 177 passes for 758 yards and 3 touchdowns with 15 interceptions. Truly a historically bad performance for a Power 5 school.
San Jose State has had some lean years this decade. Under Brent Brennan it’s been a lot of dark days. They are likely to be blown out this weekend by San Diego State which would be losses in 18 of Brennan’s first 20 games.
Just under 9 years ago Randy Edsall was, and I’m going to actually type this out, somewhat of a hot commodity on the coaching market. He was underwhelming (to put it nicely) at Maryland and upon returning to UConn now has the Huskies positioned as the worst team in college football. I actually applaud the difficulty in having a defense giving up 53.7 points per game. Impressive!
So what you’re saying Eric, is that ND should fire Kelly and hire Jeff Tedford immediately. That way we can finally get the 2010 hire right.
Obvi.
4.3 yards per attempt at Rutgers (ya’ know, rounding up) would obviously be better if they were given credit for the return yardage following those 15 interceptions.
So Mike Sanford isn’t going to be our next coach?
Everyone who thought it was possible come forward now for your mocking.
I’d never say something so ridiculous. I was only in favor of hiring a rugby coach post-BVG to teach the defense how to tackle again. I will admit the Elko/Lea solution has worked acceptably well.
If I were Kelly I would bring this up for like the next 2-3 off-seasons to Lea and Long. Grass isn’t always greener in Conference USA…
This made me look to see how Elko is doing. A&M’s defense has jumped 45 spots in S&P+ since last year; back to back good hires by Kelly at DC after perhaps the worst coaching decision of his entire career.
“Chris Ash at least is getting $2 million a year to get embarrassed at Rutgers. Why anyone would take this job is beyond me.”
Ummm didn’t you answer your own question? Because you can suck and still get paid $2 million a year.
True but you have to weigh that against making $12,000 a year coaching high school football the rest of your life.
Hmmm yeah tempting alternative. Can we get an economist to run the numbers on 6 million (3 years of pre-termination terrible coaching x 2 million a year) invested conservatively vs the present value of 12k a year for 50 years?
6 million wins
Have you considered the tax ramifications? $6mm is really something like $3.5mm after tax. Then, factor in the virtually mandatory charitable foundation you and your wife have to set up, house on the lake, yada yada. You’re talking peanuts by the end.
So of all those DGT, Satterfield, Littrell, and Clark are the only ones that have had more than 1/2 of a good season?
Well Nick Saban too but we usually limit it to smaller schools or underrated guys or coaches in new jobs.
This made me chuckle
I’d like to nominate Polian for the NDGT list and Clark Lea to the DGT list
Speaking of Polian, this Sunday’s press conference was the first time I’d heard BK say that he now wants to kick the ball out the back of the endzone on kickoffs and we’re just not getting it done. At least he knows the solution to our current problem, now we just need to go appropriate soccer players until we can implement it.
VanGorder NDGT.
Petrino’s buyout at the end of this season would be between 12 and 13 million and I don’t think L’ville wants to pay it, so there’s still an outside chance VanGorder could make it to next September.
BVG clearly has a lot of blackmail material.
I mean, it’s Bobby Petrino. You or I probably could get good blackmail material.
It’s really a shame that Georgia Tech doesn’t get to play Louisville again until 2023.
I feel for Polian, seems like a matter of execution being very poor more than coaching.
Also never made sense to me why they didn’t let Yoon kick more. Didn’t he have tendonitis or something for a while? Worries about his strength? I don’t know enough about kicking to have an informed opinion but is like 5 more kicks a week really going to be so tough on him? He’s….a kicker. And a very good one. I get trying to save his leg for points and keep the other kid engaged but I don’t think it’s hindsight to suggest they should have been having Yoon kick since right after the Michigan game that saw an OOB and a bad low kick returned for a TD.
Meanwhile poor Polian getting all the anger. I’m sticking by my theory he’s just the convenient whipping boy for Kelly since the QB is finally playing well and the DC is competent so there’s no one else to yell at. Where’s an assistant strength coach when you need one?
“Where’s an assistant strength coach when you need one?”
In the weight room, working up the courage to challenge CBK to a fight
I’ve heard elsewhere that Yoon has experienced dead leg from time to time and they’re trying to prevent that by not overworking him
Yeah, I feel like that’s the knack on him. But he’s a senior. He has a strong leg for field goals. I just don’t see why adding a few kick offs should be THAT taxing for an experienced kicker.
If they don’t care about Coney and Tranquill grinding to dust by playing any other time they shouldn’t here either. There’s only a few games left deaden that leg if that’s what it takes. Beats the other guy.
He’s been injured almost every year of his football career, from high school to this season (he was seen limping on the sideline after his kickoff against Pitt) and has a history of tendonitis. I just think they’re more worried about a situation where Doerer ends up having to kick a game winning field goal because of Yoon’s knee.
I wonder if Polian (or an ND special teams coach under BK) is hamstrung by a limited amount of practice time dedicated to special teams? If I remember correctly, some of the articles covering summer camp alluded to little (and sometimes no) practice time dedicated to special teams.
Hamstrung. I see what you did there.
crazy how 5-1 GA So and 4-2 Army are lower in S&P than 1-12 Nebrarskansas
Frost feels like the most ready to turn it around on the NDGT list. Despite the occasional high profile win, Riley’s recruiting really fell off the last couple of years, especially on both lines. That’s going to be an albatross for a couple of seasons, probably. But Nebraska also probably isn’t as bad as they’ve looked so far, just got off to a bad start with a game canceled and then having their opener be Colorado’s second game.
I still have faith in Chad Morris for a bit too – he was excellent as Clemson’s OC and got SMU to not-awful, which is no small feat. On the other hand, he’s in a division with Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State. He could do a great job for Arkansas and still be no better than fourth in the division. That’s tough.
The rest of those guys… Woof.
No Chip Kelly for NDGT? His one-game winning streak must have bought a lot of confidence from you.
/s
Gotta think Scott Satterfield is coaching at Georgia Tech or UNC next year, right? That makes almost too much sense.
Would love to see one of these specifically how it pertains to ND and their next coach. I think you did as assessment post 2016, would like to see that comparison today. The 17-3 record since had me way more confident in the next coaching hire. Obviously not wishing Kelly away but no matter what happens we gotta be getting close to the end.
Considering Purdue’s 3 losses are by a combined 7 points and their national embarrassment of OSU, does Jeff Brohm go on the DGT list?