The coach curse is real

Nice article to sum up our last 6 coaching hires. Has it been 6 already in 17 years?

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two main points:

  1. Houston is a good job, it pays well, the facilities are good, great recruiting base

  2. Winning at Houston does not make you a genius. When you compare us to our counterparts in the AAC in terms of competitive advantages (ie. facilities, money, administrative support, recruiting base) we are at the top of the pile. But the fact of the matter is we underperform in relationship to our advantages. Winning at Houston doesn’t make you the next great coach, we should win. The greater mystery is why we don’t win more often.

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UH’s best years, starting with Briles, were with stepping stone coaches. Worst years, with the exception of CDH, were with internal hires. Ironic that the most expensive coach and staff have the worst record.

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I wonder if having a new coach every 3 years on average is part of it. What would have happened if one of those coaches had stayed or had not been fired. If Briles had never left would our record be much different? Would inconsistency at the head coach position be part of our inability to have winning seasons?

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Exactly! Our egos are measuring the quality of the job on the desire of a coach that wants to stay instead of the proof that our program grew leaps and bounds by a coach who used us to prove he deserved a better job by elevating us in the process.

Dealing with a coach that stays 2-4 seasons should be something we internally view as a given and work around that "constant " because we are growing the program.

Instead we’d rather digress with stable coaching decisions.

Ironically, the only way to really get a coach to stay is to become so valuable that a coach would not want to leave when given options to leave for 98% of the other programs

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That second one needs to be emphasized and I hope that bigger programs pick up on that.

Art Briles is the only coach above who needed brilliance to win at UH. Everybody else was carrying a lit (or recently lit) torch.

We fired 40% of the coaches over that time so some of that inconsistency is on us.

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No doubt about it. Briles is/was a football genius. If you win at Houston (at that time) and Baylor (at any time) you are a very good coach.

Sumlin was excellent at creating coaching staffs. He was one of my least favorite and least approachable coaches that we have ever had. But the dude could create coaching staffs.

Herman if he had stayed could have milked his schtick with high 3 stars and low 4 stars into a perennial top 25 team. But alas… now the curtain is pulled back and we have seen who is behind the curtain.

But it is time now for us to take Uncle Dave’s advice and demand more. We have the IPF, we have the new stadium, we have administrative support, we have a good conference. What is our excuse now?

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Agree, we are an “A” tier program in the AAC along with Cincy and UCF. That is why I kept saying a 7-8 win coach at West Virginia (no where close to A tier Big 12) would win 9-10 games here consistently. Need to get coaches to at least stick around 4-5 years or we may never get back on track.

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Honestly, I think we should have stuck with Lavine. I didn’t think so at the time, but I wish we could have let that play out a little bit.

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Levine was not good in hiring assistants. He thought he can be a ceo which is great if you can hire assistants like kliff kingsbury. Overall it was close to disaster. Only beaten by applewhite. Holgorsen cannot be judged yet. He had two bad years but I feel is that corona did not help to build the culture he could have. It is okay for established teams to play through corona but not possible for a 1 year coach.

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He had so much unwarranted faith in Travis Bush.

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I am a CDH supporter, but I liked the man that is Levine. I wonder if the on field product would have been different if he had the finances to get those better assistants…

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He didn’t have the Rolodex to have used any extra money effectively.

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There are a few people who can make demands, I doubt any are us posters.

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Agree, his assistant budget was solid his last couple of years. It wasn’t a budget issue.

Gibbs, Meachum, Spavital.

Also true…

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Levine was a terrific recruiter and person.

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Spav was a holdover from Sumlin’s staff but obviously the right decision to keep him. Meach and Gibbs were very good hires.

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Bring back Gibbs!!!