040: Coaching tenures
Five of the top-25 longest tenured FBS coaches belong to the ACC.
Tenure in college coaching jobs, or really any job, feels like it’s getting shorter and shorter these days.
Change is constant. There is a high turnover in collegiate coaching, especially football. After a long tenured coach was fired in early July, lists started circulating of other coaches with the longest tenure.
Did you know that out of the top 25 FBS coaches with the longest tenure, five are in the ACC?
The table below shows coaches with at least four or more consecutive seasons at the same school. Current ACC coaches are highlighted in red.
The ACC actually has six active head coaches that have been on the sidelines for at least four consecutive seasons. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney (15 seasons) and NC State’s Dave Doeren (10 seasons) are amongst the top-10 coaches in tenure across the FBS.
Swinney took over for Tommy Bowden during the 2008 season. He has won a pair of National Championships and 80 percent of his games over the past 14.5 seasons. Swinney is the longest tenured head coach for the Tigers since Frank Howard’s 30 year run from 1940-1969.
Dave Doeren is the longest tenured NC State head coach since Earle Edwards. The Wolfpack won five ACC Championships under Edwards from 1954 to 1970. Doeren is six wins shy of surpassing Edwards’ 77 career wins as head coach.
Dave Clawson has coached nine consecutive seasons at Wake Forest. Clawson has won ~53 percent of games, the highest winning percentage for a Demon Deacon head coach since Peahead Walker (~60 percent, 1937-1950). Wake has gone from 13 seasons of Jim Grobe to the the last nine of Clawson.
Pat Narduzzi has coached eight straight seasons at Pittsburgh. Narduzzi has won 60 percent of 103 games as head coach for the Panthers.
Dino Babers has coached seven seasons at Syracuse. Babers is the longest tenured Orange coach since Paul Pasqualoni’s 14 year stint from 1991 to 2004.
Mack Brown has been the head coach for 168 games at North Carolina over 14 seasons that span the last three to four decades. Brown coached 10 straight seasons from 1988 to 1997 and returned to Carolina in 2019.
Under Brown, Carolina has won ~59 percent of games (99-68 overall, and 30-22 over the past four seasons). The five different head coaches between Mack Brown’s two tenures won ~48 percent of games (124-135).
Head coaching stability doesn’t always equate to success on the field. A lot of coaching changes can often spell out a struggling program though.
You can find the code for this table here. If you’re interested in another great looking chart on ACC basketball coaching tenures, check this out from Andrew Weatherman.
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And now for a quick non sequitur
Last week I was invited on the OVIES + GIGLIO podcast. You can listen to me stumble through trying to explain SP+ and percentiles. Either way, it was a lot of fun.
Ovies and Giglio cover local sports and talk to lots of different people, and I think that’s what I find most appealing in it. For example, they’ve interviewed the Governor of the state, the founder of the Shibumi Shade, and the jambroni writing this newsletter right now. That’s range.
If you’re interested in ACC Kickoff this week, I’m sure they’ll have you covered too.
As a reminder, this newsletter and any content I’m sharing is an experiment. I seldom have any idea what I’m doing.
I’m trying to practice communicating with data, and develop my technical experience to make charts and graphs. There is so much I don’t know, but want to learn. So, thanks for reading and subscribing 🤟