82gradDLSdad said:
Cal needs to set a precedent for firing their HC after year three no matter what (almost). The most exciting time for being a Cal football fan is when we get a new coach. With this info that extensions lead to worse results the decision to fire after year 3 is made easy. "We'd like to thank coach Smith for all his hard work and we think he's built a great foundation. Our heavy reliance on analytics tells us it's time to move on."
I tend to agree with this at this point. But I will admit that, up until now, I argued long and hard for stability in the coaching ranks, which is part of the reason to extend contracts.
However, since the office of the Cal AD clearly has no ability to gauge a coaches performance both before and after an extension, it saves Cal money to simply fire rather than extend.
Here is the situation when I would extend a contract: I would extend it when the HC has, within 3 years, shown the ability to compete consistently and successfully in the pac-12 conference. In year 3 the coach has to have a winning pac-12 record, no blowouts against the team, blowouts against the worse teams in the conference (generally this is WSU, OSU, Colorado and Arizona), balanced offense and no weak units on the team and a solid if not consistent assistant coaching pool. The coach also has to have very little off-field incidents with the team, including academic issues. And finally, the coach has to show the ability to consistently recruit at all positions at a level near the top 25 in the nation.
These are the conditions required to extend. But, keep in mind that, under Tedford, the HC pretty much fullfilled these condtions but still couldn't improve with the extention. Of course, we really don't need improvement if a coach is meeting these standards. We just need them to maintain these standards and JT couldn't. Part of JTs problem was that some of his best assistance left after 2005, including OC Cortez. Based on the above standards, technically JT failed because he had trouble with OSU. But that is being picky.
These conditions may make it hard to find a coach. But I think we need to change our approach on coaches. I think we should be hiring successful lower level coaches that are underpaid away from place like the Mid-American Conference etc. It is true that such places do not include the difficult academic factor but that does not mean we can't find some matches. Heck we could hire coaches away from the Ivy League.
Cal generally has better resources to pay football salaries than most of these places. The way to know a good coach is that they immediately and dramatically upgrade their teams performance wherever they go. This happens all over the country at all levels every year. We need to form a watch list of these and interview off of this list based on what type of person, football and background would make a good match for Cal and the pac-12. I think Troy Taylor is an example of this and we should try to hire him right away...even midseason if things get worse.
