Success stories in G5 ranks that took a decade to build?

[ragtimejoe1]

As soon as you fellas are done, let me know. We'll start listing failed coaches who did not succeed in 4 years and more importantly coaches who were highly successful and succeeded in first 4 years. That ought to give the fanboys weeks of excuse making of why that is not relevant to WYO :rofl:

:thumb:

All kidding aside, this is actually kind of interesting. After listing all the examples for all sides, I wonder if there really is a trend in successful ingredients?

 

[laxwyo]

Well, it shows that patience can pay off. Most of those coaches would have been fired here

 

[cowboyz]

As soon as you fellas are done, let me know. We'll start listing failed coaches who did not succeed in 4 years and more importantly coaches who were highly successful and succeeded in first 4 years. That ought to give the fanboys weeks of excuse making of why that is not relevant to WYO :rofl:

I agree, who was the fanboy that started this thread anyway?

 

[alyssa]

SMU is such a bad example because the program was not allowed to try like other programs (The Pye Penalty).
So after things like the DP and the Pye Penalty it has only been in the last few years that SMU relaxed entry standards but June Jones did not recruit. He would not go down the street to visit the closest high school etc.

The 2016 recruiting class will be SMU's first since the DP where the school is giving it's best try with a serious HC etc.
And is working on making it better.

I actually thought Hayden Fry/SMU was the best example, as it showed a coach that won 4 games and then the next year he won only one, but a couple years later had the team up to 8 wins, which is where this thread started. It was also a roller coaster for years after that, losing season, winning season, but it shows that you can take a step backward and still build a competitive program. All of this was before the death penalty.

Yeah but the guy wanted BCS era examples. And back then the SWC was what is a power conference today. In some years it was the best conference.

 

[kansasCowboy]

SMU is such a bad example because the program was not allowed to try like other programs (The Pye Penalty).
So after things like the DP and the Pye Penalty it has only been in the last few years that SMU relaxed entry standards but June Jones did not recruit. He would not go down the street to visit the closest high school etc.

The 2016 recruiting class will be SMU's first since the DP where the school is giving it's best try with a serious HC etc.
And is working on making it better.

I actually thought Hayden Fry/SMU was the best example, as it showed a coach that won 4 games and then the next year he won only one, but a couple years later had the team up to 8 wins, which is where this thread started. It was also a roller coaster for years after that, losing season, winning season, but it shows that you can take a step backward and still build a competitive program. All of this was before the death penalty.

Yeah but the guy wanted BCS era examples. And back then the SWC was what is a power conference today. In some years it was the best conference.

My examples are late 90's early 2K. BCS era...

 

[stymeman]

Help Wanted: an experienced college football coaching staff, serious inquiries need apply, contact The University of Wyoming

 

[laxwyo]

If we had just hired the right coach, we'd be in playoff birth talk

 

[ELKMT]

If we had just hired the right coach, we'd be in playoff birth talk

I like your style :lol:

 

[fishouttawater]

Navy is a unique example of a school that has risen from the depths of the bottom 10 and for the last decade plus has been a perennial winner. During their turn around they had no conference affiliation and had more flexibility with their schedule as an independent, but this was just about the only advantage they had. As such, I would argue that their success was driven largely by the fact that they hired the right coach at the right time more than anything else.

Their hire was Paul Johnson, a 1AA coach (Georgia Southern) that won several 1AA championships running a conservative offense before jumping up to the big time (sound familiar?). He inherited a team that won a grand total of 1 game in two years and took them to a bowl game in his second year with the same athletes that previously couldn't figure out how to win a game. He did it at a military service academy in the wake of 9-11 and at the onset of the Global War on Terrorism.

2000: 1-10
2001: 0-11
2002: Paul Johnson Hired 2-10...Most of his recruits attended the Naval Academy Prep School and had no impact on this season
2003: 8-5 This was remarkable because most of his recruits were true freshman after spending a year at the prep school. He went to a bowl game with juniors and seniors that previously won only 3 games
2004: 10-2
2005: 8-4
2006: 9-4
2007: 8-5 Paul Johnson leaves for bigger job (Georgia Tech) after the regular season
2008: 8-5 Johnson's successor keeps the gravy train rolling
2009: 10-4
2010: 9-4
2011: 5-7
2012: 8-5
2013: 9-4
2014: 8-5

It's not like Navy has been doing this loaded with 3 and 4 star recruits. To say they've been operating with a recruiting handicap is an understatement...no juco transfers allowed, restrictive academic requirements, medical restrictions for military service, weight restrictions, 5 year military obligation, military lifestyle, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Wyoming really has no business using its remoteness or affiliation with a less than prestigious football conference as much of an excuse in light of what the service academies have to deal with to get kids to commit.

Navy's turn around was entirely about coaching. For them, it didn't take all too long for the turn around to take place. 11 bowl appearances in fifteen years is pretty stellar if you ask me. They join the American Athletic Conference next year, so they'll start vying for conference championships in the near future if they sustain their decade of success.

The biggest challenge for Bohl to turn this thing around is getting the young players on this team as many meannigful game reps as possible so they'll be in a better position to actually compete at the tail end of this season and into the next. This is what Paul Johnson had in his second season at Navy...a locker room full of kids tired of losing with enough game experience to take advantage of good coaching. Unlike Johnson, the cupboards are bare at Wyo, it's a complete reboot. Also unlike Johnson, however, Bohl had a chance to stock those cupboards with about 10-15 juco players as a stop gap to get his freshmen time to grow and develop into D1 ballplayers ala Bill Snyder's modus operandi at K-State.

 

[alyssa]

Navy is not a good example either.

I remember the 2004 article by Bill Pennington titled "Formations Begin in Prep Schools for 3 Academy Teams".

I can't copy and paste right now.

 

[Wyokie]

Navy's turn around was entirely about coaching. For them, it didn't take all too long for the turn around to take place. 11 bowl appearances in fifteen years is pretty stellar if you ask me. They join the American Athletic Conference next year, so they'll start vying for conference championships in the near future if they sustain their decade of success.

Navy joined the AAC this year, not next.

 

[fishouttawater]

Army prep sure has worked for West Point football over the last 20 or so years. What a great advantage they have there.

The fact is that the service academies utilize prep schools for non-academic qualifiers to get their grades up. Sure, they get one year of development, but the academies have a strict, tax payer funded, four year curriculum. This means no redshirting at an academy unless an athlete qualifies for a medical redshirt at which point the cadet literally leaves school for a semester and returns at the start of the next academic term. Service academies also accept transfers in the rare instance that a perspective cadet is willing to forfeit previously earned college credit and start over as a plebe (freshman) at one of the service academies.

Academies theoretically use their prep schools as a redshirt year, so the argument that this is some type of advantage is bunk. How many redshirt freshman, sophmores, juniors, and seniors are playing for Wyoming right now? Right...service academies have something similar with a year of prep school time a player may have.

For the record, service academies may indeed stash players at their respective prep schools for a year but also run the risk of having their prime athletes recruited away by other schools without the athletes losing a year of eligibility. Prepsters are not actually enrolled at an actual service academy. If the athlete is accepted to enter into the academy following their lone year at the prep school, a coach can't turn around and slap another redshirt year on them and have a guy stay for six years in a program because the athlete can only hang around at an academy for four years max. So a guy is struggleing with grades...a coach can't redshirt him to retain his eligibility even though the guy may have to sit out a year to get right with the dean of academics. Also, there's no grad school programs at the academies, that's why it's four years and four years only. No redshirts.

Although an athlete may attend the prep school, they are not part of the student body of their respective service academies and haven't actually started their clock for college eligibility since the athlete receives no college credit for taking prep courses.

I want some of that prep school secret sauce that we've been taking advantage of since the mid 1970s to start translating into wins...at Army. There's no racket going on with service academy prep schools. Coaches effectively utilize those places as a redshirt year their athletes wouldn't have otherwise if they were directly admitted into an academy. They do so at their own risk.

Did I mention that service academy coaches cannot have contact with their recruited athletes that attend a prep school? They're not in the D1 strength and conditioning program, they're not watching film with D1 coaches, they're not participating in D1 practice. Prep school football and academy football are two seperate entities that are mutually exclusive. You'd be suprised by the attrition and skimming of the best athletes that occurs at the prep school that adversly impacts the talent level at the service academies.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

So then, are you ladies and gents done? Since criteria apparently are a way to skew a debate (according to another thread), I assume you are not hypocritical and will not put more criteria in place. However, before I list successful G5 coaches that had success within 4 years, please let me know of additional criteria you might want. I will not point out your hypocrisy.

 

[kansasCowboy]

So then, are you ladies and gents done? Since criteria apparently are a way to skew a debate (according to another thread), I assume you are not hypocritical and will not put more criteria in place. However, before I list successful G5 coaches that had success within 4 years, please let me know of additional criteria you might want. I will not point out your hypocrisy.

If this is directed at me, I answered based on your "criteria" standard. If you don't like the answer I guess you'll just call me a Hypersensitive Fanboy...

 

[ragtimejoe1]

So then, are you ladies and gents done? Since criteria apparently are a way to skew a debate (according to another thread), I assume you are not hypocritical and will not put more criteria in place. However, before I list successful G5 coaches that had success within 4 years, please let me know of additional criteria you might want. I will not point out your hypocrisy.

If this is directed at me, I answered based on your "criteria" standard. If you don't like the answer I guess you'll just call me a Hypersensitive Fanboy...

Before i make my list, I'm just trying to figure out what criteria you want to add to the original post.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Northern Illin. Joe Novak:
1-10
0-11
2-9
5-6
6-5
6-5
8-4
10-2

Rocky Long at New Mexico
3-9
4-7
5-7
6-5
7-7
8-5


Darrell Dickey at North Texas
3-8
2-9
3-8
5-7 probably fired at WYO at this point
8-5bowl
9-4 bowl
7-5 bowl to bad we fired him to early... I'm bring a hypothetical here.

I'd add Brady Hoke Ball State to your list.

So, as far as I can tell, these are the three that seem to meet the criteria. Naturally, you must throw out your "sustained success" argument whatever that is; after all, Dickey hardly maintained success at North Texas. Rocky Long was a solid coach; I'll go with moderately successful (certainly consistently better than we've been but not a lot higher ceiling). Novak is a pretty solid example of your ideal program.

Now then, my turn. For some reason you refuse to state what you consider fair criteria are for the seasons leading up to a coaching change. Thus, I'll have to assume records of programs similar to the POKES prior to Bohl taking over. I think 3-5 years is fair.

Just to avoid the convoluted diatribe some want to instill; for the rational folks:
1)Criteria 1 was G5 ranks because it seems ridiculous to try to compare building a program at the G5 ranks with building a program at the P5 ranks.
2) In modern era of CFB. FFS, if an Ivy League school was in the T25, it probably isn't that relevant to today. The BCS label changed everything and was the first "formal" relegation to second class. Therefor building a program with the label (non-AQ or G5) is vastly different than building one before those labels.
3) 7+ wins within 4 years. This is a bit arbitrary but how success was defined: a true winning season within first 4 years.
4) Since the pre-arrival condition is extremely vital, adding a criteria of similar records for the 3-5 years before Bohl's arrival.

Those all seem pretty logical to me.

 

[kansasCowboy]

Northern Illin. Joe Novak:
1-10
0-11
2-9
5-6
6-5
6-5
8-4
10-2

Rocky Long at New Mexico
3-9
4-7
5-7
6-5
7-7
8-5


Darrell Dickey at North Texas
3-8
2-9
3-8
5-7 probably fired at WYO at this point
8-5bowl
9-4 bowl
7-5 bowl to bad we fired him to early... I'm bring a hypothetical here.

I'd add Brady Hoke Ball State to your list.

So, as far as I can tell, these are the three that seem to meet the criteria. Naturally, you must throw out your "sustained success" argument whatever that is; after all, Dickey hardly maintained success at North Texas. Rocky Long was a solid coach; I'll go with moderately successful (certainly consistently better than we've been but not a lot higher ceiling). Novak is a pretty solid example of your ideal program.

Now then, my turn. For some reason you refuse to state what you consider fair criteria are for the seasons leading up to a coaching change. Thus, I'll have to assume records of programs similar to the POKES prior to Bohl taking over. I think 3-5 years is fair.

Just to avoid the convoluted diatribe some want to instill; for the rational folks:
1)Criteria 1 was G5 ranks because it seems ridiculous to try to compare building a program at the G5 ranks with building a program at the P5 ranks.
2) In modern era of CFB. FFS, if an Ivy League school was in the T25, it probably isn't that relevant to today. The BCS label changed everything and was the first "formal" relegation to second class. Therefor building a program with the label (non-AQ or G5) is vastly different than building one before those labels.
3) 7+ wins within 4 years. This is a bit arbitrary but how success was defined: a true winning season within first 4 years.
4) Since the pre-arrival condition is extremely vital, adding a criteria of similar records for the 3-5 years before Bohl's arrival.

Those all seem pretty logical to me.

Sure. Sounds good. I haven't had time to get on or spend any time thinking up criteria. Not intentional.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Troy Calhoun Air Force
Gary Anderson USU
June Jones Hawaii and SMU (if Rocky Long was successful, June Jones was too at SMU)
Urban Meyer Bowling Green (Utah had a little better record the previous 3-5 years before arrival than WYO and Bohl)
Jim McElwain CSU
Gary Paterson (not a real good example because TCU was trending upwards but still took them to heights rarely seen in the G5 ranks and did it very early; everyone can decide on their own if he is good fit)
Brady Hoke SDSU
Dirk Koetter BSU (huge part of launching their amazing run)
Clawson at Bowling Green (not as good example as the others but I think largely fits)
George O’Leary Central Florida
Brian Kelly Central Michigan
Pat Hill Fresno State (NOTE: HE TOOK OVER IN 1997 SO JUST OUTSIDE OF CRITERIA)
Mark Hudspeth Louisiana Lafayette
Sonny Dykes Louisiana Tech
Doc Holliday Marshal
Tommy West Memphis (not a great example but along the lines of Rocky Long)
Rick Stockstill Middle Tennessee State

This is almost as fun as when we compared FCS to FBS :lol: . All I have time for now--more later. Then we can do coaches who didn't achieve 7 wins within 4 years and ended up failing (assuming they received 5+ years at that school.)

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Frank Solich Ohio
Skip Holtz ECU
John L Smith Louisville
Al Golden Temple

I'll have to think about more.

Also, anyone else notice a trend in this list in terms of highly successful CFB coaches? Seems to be quite a few on here that aren't on the "other" exhaustive list.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Steve Kragthorpe Tulsa
Cubit at Western Michigan--sort of. Not really highly successful but strung together quite a few winning seasons (this one is a relatively weak example)
Turner Gill--sort of. Not a huge winning season (8 wins was best) but 8 win season came in his 3rd year at a school that normally only wins 1 to 2 games a season. Also appears to have laid a foundation that helped Buffalo build on. Again, readers will have to decide if he fits.

I can't think of anymore at the moment, but, as I've contended all along, there are far more successful G5 coaches who succeed (7+ wins) within the first 4 years than those who take over 4 years to reach that benchmark.

Not only that, but when looking at the best of the best, my list is filled with them which tells me that the best coaches win within 4 years.