http://breastfedmoonshine.com/home/the-greatest-coach-ranking-in-history/Tom Dienhart, possible animal rapist and columnist for CNNSI, recently wrote a column ranking the SEC head coaches. The list was, as is to be expected from national sports journalists, rife with innacuracies, and generally retarded. So, as I have nothing else pressing to do, I sat down and did my Sagarin thing, and created an algorithm for judging coaches.
My formula is imperfect, to be sure, as it is impossible to factor in things like “Poor bastard coaches at Vandy” or “Attacks his own players”. It is, however, preferential to many rankings in that there are no extra points here for being a nice guy, having funny press conferences, or being King Lord Bullshitter. This is a list based SOLELY ON RESULTS. You coach at a perennial underachiever with no resources to speak of? Tough shit, talk to Jim Grobe. You graduate your students? That’s nice, but National Championships are nicer.
I included only years coached at D-1A (FBS if you’re a tool) schools, and tried to accurately weigh the things coaches are supposed to do…win games, get to and win bowls, make and succeed in BCS bowls, finish ranked, and win national championships. My numbers came from the great bastion of accurate information, Wikipedia, and “rankings” refers to final AP rankings.
If you are interested in how I got my numbers, the formula is at the bottom. But if you actually ARE interested enough to take the formula and check the numbers, you should stop wondering why you never get laid.
1.) Urban Meyer
breastfedmoonshine.com Coach Index Rating (BCIR) : 50.674
You can’t tell me you’re surprised. This sumbitch has two of the last three national championships, and went undefeated at Utah, winning a BCS game before it was the fashionable thing for mid-majors to do. Meyer has 5 bowl wins in 8 years and has performed at the highest level at 3 different schools. Honestly, if he had not finished first in this ranking, I would have scrapped my formula on the spot.
2.) Mark Richt
BCIR : 44.915
This one looks pretty strange at first glance, as Richt ends up in front of 3 coaches with National Championships. The reasoning is that my formula by it’s nature gives extra weight to consistency by factoring in total years coached. Richt is the only coach on the list to make a bowl in every season coached, and has an outstanding W/L record. It also doesn’t hurt that he has the second most bowl wins of the group to Spurrier, who has one more bowl win in 7 more years as a coach.
3.) Steve Spurrier
BCIR: 39.270
It wasn’t THAT long ago where Spurrier would have been a consensus top 3 guy nationally, but a mediocre tenure in South Carolina has taken some of the luster off of The Ol’ Ball Coach. It is probably worth noting that the Cocks have been more or less shit for their history, and that even Lou Holtz’s spittle couldn’t make a winner in Columbia. Regardless, Spurrier has coached 15 bowl teams and has that elusive National Championship and spent the better part of a decade fighting for titles. It’ll be awhile before that will ever be forgotten.
4.) Les Miles
BCIR: 35.001
Look, I’ll be honest with you…I’m not really comfortable with this one, either. But, this list is, again, about results and pure numbers, and the numbers at least support Trucker Hat, even if my opinions do not. In 8 seasons, Miles has 5 bowl wins, including TWO in the BCS, and a national championship. He has won and won often, and never really had a season that was TOO down…last year was a down year for Hat, and all he did was win 8 games and a bowl. Not too shabby. He’s still kind of an assclown, though.
5.) Nick Saban
BCIR: 29.698
This is where I expect the biggest dissent from my rankings to originate. Coach Satan is pretty much hated universally outside of Tuscaloosa…but then, Alabama is pretty much hated universally outside of Tuscaoloosa, and you can’t deny their history (though you can deny about 45 of their self-given titles). The debate is, how could Saban fall below Miles and Spurrier, two guys who would generally be agreed as being Saban’s present-day inferiors? While the two BCS wins and the National Championship are good stuff, Saban still has only 4 bowl wins in 13 years as a head coach. Had his Tide defeated Utah this last offseason, Saban would have at least made ground on Miles. As it is, he’ll just have to wait for some overweight trucker from Birmingham to give him a title.
6.) Bobby Petrino
BCIR: 28.295
Petrino is one of those that you could go round and round on. After all, he got most of his wins in Conference USA and the Big East, which many (mainly Ole Miss fans) will tell you doesn’t count now that he’s in the SEC. The obvious counter is that he was competing in the Big East and Conference USA with a Big East and Conference USA team fielding Big East and Conference USA athletes. And if he did indeed benefit from a weaker league, that still doesn’t erase the BCS win or the 4 bowl games in 5 seasons. I could make emotional arguments for both Petrino and against the next guy on this list, but this isn’t about bias…this is about results on the field, and those results land Petrino at 6 for now.
7.) Houston Nutt
BCIR: 12.953
Spit. It’s no secret I hate this lying piece of shit, but we’ll leave that aside for now. This is where the math put him, so this is where he’ll go. In twelve years as a head coach, Nutt has reached 9 bowls (he only coached in 8 due to being fired at Arkansas before his final one there, but I have given him credit for the 9 since he coached the 07 team to 8 wins), won 3, and generally won more than he’s lost. He has yet to make a BCS bowl, which does his final tally no favors, but the expectations are in full force that his Rebels will contend for one in 09. I think we’ve all seen this show before, but I’ll let you see how it unfolds for yourself.
8.) Rich Brooks
BCIR: 3.912
Brooks has a lot of miles under his shoes, and probably is unfairly dinged here by taking two seperate programs on that just weren’t that good. To his credit, he greatly improved both, but improvement is unfortunately for Brooks not included in the equation. 7 bowl games in 24 years as a coach and only one season finishing in the top 25 doomed the head Cat to the lower strata of the ratings.
9.) Bobby Johnson
BCIR: 1.542
Speaking of “not fair”, Johnson has actually done a hell of a job in Nashville, turning what may be the most inept BCS-conference program in the nation into at least a mediocre team, and actually getting them to a bowl, but facts are facts..and the facts are that Johnson is 26-57 lifetime, has been to only one bowl and has never finished ranked. That said, if I were making this list based on who I think was better than whom, no way would Bobby be 9th. He defines the term “more with less”, and I think should be commended for his wok with the hapless Dores.
10.) Gene Chizik
BCIR: 0.000
Maybe I should have just left Chizik off, but I thought it would be funny to have a 0 on here.
So there they are. You can disagree if you want, but you’re disagreeing with numbers, and that’s just moronic. It’s not how I would list them if I was listing them, but it’s how they stack up by success on the field, and that’s what they get paid for.
And now, The Greatest Formula Ever Created To Figure Something Out That 30 Seconds Of Looking At The Numbers Could Have Told You -
BCIR = 10[(w/g)+(o/c)][(b+s+3n)/y][(25l+25i+f)/25t]
where
g = games coached
w = games won
c = conference games coached
o = conference games won
b = BCS game appearances
s = BCS game wins
n = National Championships won
y = seasons coached during bcs era
t = total seasons coached
l = bowl games coached
i = bowl games won
f = final ranking total*
* final ranking total is found by taking a final ranking for a season and subtracting it from 26 (making a #1 ranking worth 25, and a #25 ranking worth 1), and adding them up for all seasons coached
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