089: Wrong Questions
A look at college basketball coaching changes since 2019.
How many current NBA head coaches could you name right now?
My assumption is no more than nine or ten. Professional sports often pay the players more than the head coaches. And for this reason, it’s likely you don’t know the names of several head coaches unless you’re not a casual fan of the association1.
College basketball isn’t a full blown professional sport…yet. The players are now starting to earn money, but the head coaches are the ones with large salaries and popularity amongst fans.
Programs are changing head coaches frequently over the past six years. This past week we watched a Kentucky coaching search filled with drama, a head coach at mid-major accept an associate head coaching job at another mid-major, and a hall of fame head coach admit he has no team at his new gig.
How many programs have changed coaches at least once since the 2018-19 season?
Nearly 70 percent or 254 college programs have changed head coaches at least once since the start of the 2018-19 season.
Seven of the preseason top ten teams from the 2019-20 season have a different head coach today.
From 2009 to 2018, the following programs won a national title: North Carolina (2), Duke (2), UConn (2), Villanova (2), Kentucky, and Louisville. All six of those programs have a different head coach today than it did during that span when it won those titles.
Penn State, a team in a power conference, has gone through four head coaches in the past six seasons. The same is true for Utah State. The Aggies past three head coaches have bolted for jobs at Utah, VCU, and Washington.
Why are head coaches changing jobs so frequently?
One explanation is the times are turbulent. The 2020 season ended without a champion or NCAA Tournament. The following season programs tried to navigate a global pandemic and erratic schedules.
The transfer portal and name, image, and likeness are major factors in how teams construct a roster now. Players have an extra year of eligibility, plus the ability to transfer without penalty. It was the most experienced Final Four in quite some time.
For an example of how wacky the landscape is today, we now have odds on where a player might land in the transfer portal. Pay no attention because these odds are about as useful as looking at a weather forecast a month out.
Jay Wright, the former Villanova head coach with multiple titles, reportedly left the profession due to these turbulent times.
Other legendary head coaches like Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams also leaned into retirement. And some schools, like Louisville, made poor head coaching choices and tried to correct course with another new hire.
How do we determine if head coaches are successful?
As John Calipari left Kentucky earlier this week, pundits and media started to declare that Coach Cal’s methodology no longer works. Calipari won almost 77 percent of his games at Kentucky, put tons of players in the NBA, and won a National Title.
Was that not successful?
Of course, the Wildcats have failed to make a deep NCAA Tournament over the past few seasons. Kentucky last made the Final Four in 2015, and last made the Elite Eight in 2019.
Earlier this college season, I listened to Matt Norlander explain why we shouldn’t use the NCAA Tournament to validate the credentials of a coach or program on the Ovies and Giglio podcast.
A key criticism of hiring Mark Pope at Kentucky is he’s never won an NCAA Tournament game. I think the better way to frame that argument is Pope has been a head coach for nine seasons and his teams have made the tournament just twice.
NCAA Tournament success is not the only factor to determine if a coach is successful. Tournament results should matter to a degree though. After all, a coach’s contract has tons of incentives tied to tournament success.
The tournament is how we crown a champion of the sport. It has to matter.
Other analysts will point to the style of play of Pope’s teams to claim success. This includes his team’s finishes in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. Kentucky fans will even draw attention to his Twitter followers.
My assumption is we’re poor evaluators of what makes a successful head coach or even a successful hire. I suspect we latch on to recent results and fall into the trap of narratives all too often.
I do believe there are great head coaches and bad head coaches. I also feel like there are a lot of head coaches in the middle. Coaches that benefit from more resources or lucky breaks or suffer from bad administration or injuries to key players.
These are probably the wrong questions to ask.
I’m starting to think that the right question to ask is why are head coaches paid exorbitant salaries relative to other people around them?
Athletes might also be students, but it’s past time we stop referring to them as student athletes. These players should be employees.
And these employees, along with other support staff around the team, should be compensated more or at least relative to a head coach.
We shouldn’t be giving standing ovations2 to super boosters or publicizing pledges of millions of dollars in NIL to boost programs. You probably need a general manager and competent support staff to manage players, families, and boosters.
I’m not saying college programs should act like its Moneyball and recreate players in the aggregate, but I also don’t think the majority of a program’s money should be funneled to one person with a lifetime contract3.
I don’t think the head coach should be the most popular figure of a program anymore.
Of course, this might be the wrong question too.
Perhaps, the more interesting questions are . . .
How many programs today are paying a player just as much or more than its head coach?
And if you don’t think that is happening yet, when do you think it will?
Thanks for reading this far, and please subscribe if you haven’t already. I’m still working to cleanup and sunset a few projects from earlier this season, but you can find the code for the bar chart in this post here.
Have a lovely Sunday.
Did you know Kevin Ollie, yes the former UConn coach, is the interim head coach of the Brooklyn Nets.
Zac Brown Band’s Chicken Fried playing in the background as Arkansas fans cheer on Tyson Foods chairman John H. Tyson is a lot to take in.
The Kentucky drama deserves all the criticism. The 2019 release about Calipari’s lifetime contract is comical to look at today.
Now I know two NBA head coaches. #Pop