I said, “Let me tell you what I’m looking for in a fuckin’ tree. I’m looking for a tree that you can tell is alive even if you don’t know shit about trees.”
-Ron White

With the uninspired and uninspiring Clemson baseball season at a recent end, my mind has wandered to the subject of coaching expectations (and today’s Block-C post reminds me of the subject). It occurs to me that our expectations are frequently far too-short sighted. They’re adjusted and readjusted after every game (after every win we expect great things, and after every loss we know that the future is doomed). We even re-adjust expectations season after season. However we rarely write down, in advance, just what it is we expect over, say, the next three years. This lack of clarity, I think, leads to the Tommy Bowden situation where his retention could constantly be justified despite the fact that he really wasn’t accomplishing things that he should have been. All this leads me to ask: for Dabo to keep his job at the end of his 3rd season, what must he accomplish? Perhaps the best follow up question is, are Clemson fans willing to create and stick to such a list of accomplishments?

Now that we’re beyond the championshipless years of the Tommy Bowden era, I feel we’re definitely looking for more than just being an above average football team. Using that as something of a guide, I have only two requirements for Dabo.
1.) Make it to at least two bowl games
2.) Make it to at least one ACC championship game
If the team doesn’t do those two things, then I’ll be ready to move on.

Aside from the changes in the coaching staff, the season kind of ended how it began, didn’t it? The offense was largely stagnant and the defense just wasn’t good enough. Sure we didn’t get beat as badly by Nebraska as we did by Alabama, but Nebraska isn’t as good as Alabama, either.

Per ESPN, the offense mustered

14 1st Downs
3-16 on 3rd down
1-3 on 4th down
210 Total Yards
206 Passing Yards
17-37 Comp-Att
4 Rushing Yards
26 Rushing Attempts
2 Turnovers
25:49 Time of Possession

Four goddamn rushing yards!

Now, since the rushing total against Alabama was only zero, the relative improvement is infinite, but still, FOUR GODDAMN YARDS!

If I were the AD, I’d watching the Orange Bowl right now and thinking to myself, “maybe I can still get that Cincinnati coach for next year.”

Scout is reporting that Muschamp isn’t going anywhere.

Mack Brown, at his weekly press conference, announced today that defensive coordinator Will Muschamp has agreed to be the Head Coach in waiting.

The scenario is very akin to the coaching situation at Florida State where Jimbo Fisher has been announced as the heir apparent to Bobby Bowden.

The timeline for the succession plan is not known at this time. The new contract calls for Muschamp to earn $900,000 annually starting January 1, 2009.

Oh well. I’m not too worried about this.

I’ve compiled, as best I can (anyone got the defensive stats for Valdosta State for 2000? Or any national stats pre-2000?) a rough metric of the defenses Will Muschamp has been in charge of. As I had suspected, his defenses have been pretty good. Also as I suspected, the defenses were pretty good before and/or after he left. That doesn’t automatically mean he’s a bad defensive coordinator, but it does mean that is difficult to differentiate his performance from that of the people with which he surrounds himself.

I’ve highlighted where Muschamp was the DC.

At LSU, the defense got worse his first year before being very good for three years. But notice that it stayed very good for 3 more years after he was gone.

Auburn had a pretty good defense in the years before Will Muschamp arrived. In the two years he was there, it didn’t really improve.

And this year we see that the defense of Texas isn’t all the great and is positively middle of the pack.

So what should we look for in a new HC? I’ve had some thoughts on the matter, and now that I happen to have read Moneyball and The Blind Side in the last few days, I have more thoughts on the matter. Right now there are 4 things I think, and this is me talking on hunches, that we (or any team trying to hire a coach) should be wary of.

First, let’s call this the “anything you’ve done in the past year can and will be used against you” rule. Basically, any accomplishments made over the last year don’t count, but anything bad that happened does. I mention this because too many names appear just because the coach happens to be hot at that moment. Last year, mid-season, a lot of people wanted the coach from USF. A few losses later no one was so excited. Earlier this year, many people, myself included, put Bobby Johnson’s name on the watch list. Now no one is so excited about the coach of the 5-4 Commodores. Now a lot of people are listing Mike Leach because Texas Tech is 10-0. Sure they’re having a great season, but I think the odds are after this season his team will revert to the mean and be good but not great. Hiring a coach who comes off such a great season will be like buying dot.com stocks in the late 90s. I’ll give an exception to young coaches who may have only 1 year of HC experience.

Second, beware the coach with a really good kicker. Somewhere there has to be analysis of what an awesome kicker, or set of kickers, can do for a team. They can control the other team’s field position, and they can give you 3 points when you’re nowhere near the end-zone. I’m thinking of Jim Grobe right now. I’m wondering how well Wake would have done the last few years with a crappy kicker. A coach with a great kicker shouldn’t be disqualified, but there should be a warning flag. Here I’ll give an exception to coaches who seem to be skilled at specifically recruiting great kickers.

Third, a coach needs more than personality. A coach’s primary qualification should be something other than “toughness”. A lot of the candidates for our HC position seem to be judged by some subjective measure of their attitudes and personalities. I suspect that there is little to no correlation between the AD’s feelings about how good a guy should be and how good he actually is. [Yes, that's pretty much straight from [Moneyball.]

Fourth and finally, beware the coordinators of strong programs. I’m thinking of Will Muschamp here. I’ve heard great things about his personality, but I have honestly heard zero about his qualifications. He was at LSU from ‘01-’04, Auburn from ‘06-’07, and now he’s at Texas. He’s been a part of winning teams, but how well can we back out his contribution? For all I know, he’s good at finding jobs where there is so much talent that it’s almost impossible to fail.

Hopefully the consulting firm that is assisting TDP will take such factors into consideration. I strongly hope that they aren’t just buying empty reputations.

Since Saturday’s loss, I’ve been thinking of just how to write what I wanted to write about why it’s time to part ways with Bowden. The situation has become more political, or perhaps more emotional than rational. LawtonFunk wrote to us before the game that he was “getting that Tommy West feeling [he] had back in 1997.” After the game I realized exactly what he meant. It’s just that instead of Tommy West, I’d use the name Larry Shyatt (just because I’m a little younger and wasn’t paying any attention during the Tommy West years). It usually felt like Shyatt’s teams could win any game. But deep down you just knew that they probably wouldn’t win the big ones, and you would never let yourself get too excited because you knew it wouldn’t be rewarded.

We’re in a similar era now. Nothing short of a miracle is going to bring back the faith and hope that most fans once had in Bowden. The only thing we can do now is make a change. And I know what change we have to make:

Barack Obama for Clemson Head Football Coach!

If you think I’m being facetious, let me tell you that I am, but only a little.

Let me also add that I think the Clemson beat writers, at least from what I have seen, have been doing a pretty good job in this situation. In particular, Larry Williams’ Trouble In Tigertown post from last night lays out thoughts very parallel to my own. This part about the little problems that continually recur is worth repeating:

For the 30th time in the last few years (slight exaggeration there), they saw a touchdown called back because of a penalty. They saw a litany of other mistakes cost their team the game…

Saturday was simply the latest in a long line of games in which critical errors — some would say boneheaded errors — sealed the Tigers’ demise. The fumbled punt by Jacoby Ford. The lost lateral on the screen pass. Not enough men on the line of scrimmage. The late hit by Xavier Dye…

Remember the 10-9 loss to Georgia Tech in 2005, when a touchdown was called back because the Tigers didn’t have enough men on the line of scrimmage?…

How about the 13-12 loss to Maryland in 2006? Remember that touchdown that was called back because — stop us if you’ve heard this one before — not enough men were on the field on a 4-yard touchdown run by James Davis?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure what to make of this information. Reportedly, by numerous media outlets, Tommy Bowden called Nick Saban after Clemson’s 34-10 thrashing to ask, “I see you got six months to study me, a guy like you, what did you see?” Now, fine, I can handle that. Asking a coach which was hyper prepared to deal with EVERYTHING Clemson football related is a good call. I don’t see any pride issues which need to be swallowed. I see a coach looking to fix some problems with his team and actively trying to remedy issues. My concern is this, Saban was not the only coach he called. Tommy called his dad (cute), called Georgia’s Mark Richt (huh?), and VT’s coach Beamer (WTF). Granted we do not play any of these teams, except FSU obviously, in the coming season, but this is without a doubt just a bit strange. If you’re reading this I would have to assume you are a working American which runs into problems at your job now and again, we all do. In my case, if I have an architectural issue I have to work though you can bet dollars to donuts I don’t call my firms competition for a solution! I would look like a fool…a bit more often than usual. I don’t get this? What does this say about Bowden’s coaching ability? This is not a post on should we fire Bowden, this is a call to question if contacting the competition for guidance is a smart move. College football is a business, I for one understand in business, you don’t call your competition for help.