Take a gander at this.
Was he drunk? Not paying attention to results on the field? Allow Connelly to explain:
Gauging overall performance is easy enough. You could simply look at win percentage, and it would tell you quite a bit. From 2015 to 2024, the active coaches with the best FBS win percentages (minimum 30 games) were Day (.870), Lanning (.854), Swinney (.850) and Smart (.847). All ranked high in the May rankings. I tend to want to get fancy and use my SP+ ratings whenever possible, and they tell a similar tale. Looking at average SP+ ratings for the past decade, the top active coaches are Day (30.4), Smart (27.0), Lanning (22.3), Swinney (21.9), Franklin (20.3) and Freeman (19.0). They’re all in the May top 10 too.
Again, though, all of those coaches are employed by college football royalty. (Granted, Swinney gets bonus points for helping Clemson turn into college football royalty, but still.) Isn’t it more impressive to win 11 regular-season games at Indiana, as Curt Cignetti did in 2024, than to go 10-4 like Swinney did? Isn’t it probably harder to finish 12th in SP+ at SMU, as Rhett Lashlee did in 2024, than to finish fifth like Franklin did?
I’ve begun to incorporate teams’ performance against long-term averages into my preseason SP+ projections, and it seems we could use a very similar concept to evaluate coach performances. For each year someone is a head coach, we could compare his team’s SP+ rating for that season to the school’s average from the 20 previous years. (If the school is newer to FBS and doesn’t have a 20-year average, we can use whatever average exists to date. And for a program’s first FBS season, we can simply compare the team’s SP+ rating to the overall average for first-year programs.)
By this method, the 10 best single-season coaching performances of the past 20 years include Art Briles at Baylor in 2013-14, Jim Harbaugh at Stanford in 2010, Mark Mangino at Kansas in 2007, Bobby Petrino at Louisville in 2006, Greg Schiano at Rutgers in 2006 and Jamey Chadwell at Coastal Carolina in 2020 — legendary seasons of overachievement — plus perhaps lesser-remembered performances such as Gary Andersen at Utah State in 2012, Matt Wells at Utah State in 2018 and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati in 2007.
As far as single-season overachievement goes, that’s a pretty good list. And if we look at a longer-term sample — coaches who have led FBS programs for at least nine of the past 20 years — here are the 15 best performance versus baseline averages.
So Heupel is doing more with less, is what I’m reading here. Still, I have to posit the question: would Georgia have won two national championships with Bobby Hill as the head coach instead of Smart?
Curious for your thoughts.
No.
Gaskilldawg
Silly season at its worst. No Marcus Freeman at all?
Has Freeman won as many playoff games as whoever the fuck jeff traylor is?
Case closed!
The problem with including Heupel is that Tennessee’s prior 20 years were unusually (and blissfully) terrible. But to say they were not a top program – or incapable of returning to that level – is ridiculous. Extend that number to 30 or 40 and he’d drop like a stone.
He found some numbers liked and went with them,
I saw this list before the post and thought Connelley cherry-picked his data to get to a conclusion that would drive engagement.
Mission accomplished.
Anyone who thinks Bobby Hill is a better coach than Kirby Smart doesn’t know ball.
100
that is some next level inspector clouseau analysis
Mais oui!!
damn i totally missed Dannie Mullen at #6
The decline of journalism is everywhere and just easier to spot in sports journalism.
Saying stupid stuff to get attention seems to be a media tradition.
I can’t figure out if he is overthinking or just ate up with the dumbass.
Ate up with dumbass
I initially heard of Connelly through the Senator. I suspect Bluto would not be enamoured of fart-sniffing takes like this latest one.
His SP+ analysis was always stupid to me. I’m old school, and the only stat that really matters is the final score. We are doing okay by that stat notwithstanding last year.
When Mr. Connelly sold his soul to the wwl, his thought process went in the shitter….GO DAWGS!!
Last I checked, roster building & management was a pretty big part of the job. The hillbillies can keep Bobby. For that matter, everybody else can keep whoever they’ve got roaming the sidelines. We’re just fine with Kirby, thanks.
Exactly. The question isn’t “how does Bobby Hillbilly do more with less?”, it’s “WHY does Bobby Hillbilly always have less?”
By that standard, every 3rd or 4th year Mark Stoops is a fecking genius. Fortunately for him, that usually coincides with contract negotiations.
If the 2019 seccg has a different ending, just say UGA football wins vs lsu, does CKS push for the hiring of the “mad scientist”…that ass whipping helped paved the road to Back2Back titles….GO DAWGS!!
Kirby is undoubtly the best. Before he came to UGA, I said Georgia is never going to beat Bama until both Richt and Saban are gone. Well, I was wrong. It was a double win for UGA when Kirby came home because he was now our coach, but just as important, because he was no longer the Defensive Coordinator for Bama.
If I’m not mistaken Kirby was not at UGA in 2015. Pick a different time frame and the names shift.
THIS GUY IS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.
I would ask Connelly, if Heuple is doing more with less, isn’t he responsible for them having less? How does he factor in recruiting and raising the talent base of the program?
The fact that he has Dan Mullet even on this list nullifies any base in reality.
Kirby should be at the top, after that, I don’t really care too much, but Kirby has better wins and a better record than Ryan Day and Josh Heupel combined. If Kirby left, there’s not too many in this list I would even be excited about as second best option. James Franklin above Dabo? I wonder if Clemson would be willing to trade coaches with Penn State? Bill Connelly is apparently a hack that needs to find a new profession because he just wasted a lot of people’s time with this garbage.
but he generated some good comments on this format….. I can’t understand how Kalen DeBoer can be so low. His coaching track record is ridiculous even thought so much of the winning is not in division I. He brought Washington back from the dead to a national championship game. I think he will do fine at Bama… regrettably.
Any best coach list that includes Ryan Day, Dan Mullen, James Franklin, and Josh Heupel near the top does t deserve serious discussion.
Cocaine’s a hell of a drug…
Clearly crack cocaine
The absurdity of these mental gymnastics is truly mind boggling. This is purely engagement farming and he accomplished his goal. But, to anyone with a functioning brain cell, it was readily apparent and immediately dismissed as pure nonsense.