What’s the goal for next Gamecocks football hire? Is long-term stability paramount?
Each year, at least 20 or so college football teams have to hire new coaches.
The majority of those decisions are made because someone didn’t do well enough, the rest because someone did too well. Around half are usually programs that know if they hire the right guy, they’ll be hiring again within the next five years — but those are mid-majors for the most part.
Most Power 5 teams that are hiring coaches are doing so for some kind of longer term. South Carolina appears to be looking for just that: a coach who will stick around.
We can see this because of the mantras thrown out. It wasn’t but a few days after Will Muschamp’s dismissal when a national writer mentioned the possibility of USC doing this again in five years if expectations aren’t met. A few folks, including some alums, mentioned the idea of not using the Gamecocks job as a stepping stone.
And that leads to an odd question: Would that be a bad thing?
To this point, South Carolina has only had one full-time head coach get another head coaching job after being at USC since World War II — and that was Sparky Woods going to VMI. If a coach came to Columbia, put up a gaudy-enough record that a richer school, probably with a richer recruiting area, dumped a pile of money at his feet, that would likely mean the Gamecocks had at worst the second-best stretch in program history.
It leads to a pair of questions, both worth exploring:
- 1. Does the USC program put a premium on avoiding upsets, even if the ceiling is lower?
- 2. How achievable is long-term stability?
To the first question, the fact is that South Carolina has some experience with teams and coaching tenures that featured wild swings.
Joe Morrison is widely respected for what he did at USC. He got the team to 10 wins in Year 2, averaged four wins the next two years and produced one of the strongest teams in the land the next season.
Steve Spurrier had a team that beat No. 1 Alabama but lost to unranked Kentucky a week later. He had teams that won 11 games but were denied trips to the SEC Championship by a mediocre Auburn team and a sub-.500 Tennessee team; and a 2007 team that beat 11-win UGA but lost to Vandy.
It leads to the questions if there’s a strong want to have a team that most of the time takes care of business, or if folks might trade that big win for a few weird losses. (Although it appears Hugh Freeze’s candidacy for the job is waning, he was the sort of coach who could beat Alabama but also lose to six-win Arkansas or Memphis).
The second big question comes down to how feasible it is to get long-term stability in the modern era.
At the moment, the second longest-tenured head coaches in the SEC are Gus Malzahn, who is on the hot seat at Auburn every other year; and Mark Stoops, whose Kentucky program is at peace with winning six to eight games a year. Each has been there seven years, and the only other coach even past five years are Nick Saban (best in the sport). Derek Mason was given a long runway of almost seven seasons before getting fired this week.
This sport isn’t much for the long term.
Florida has had four full-time head coaches since 2009. Georgia had a long-term coach it got tired of in Mark Richt. Missouri has had three since 2015 after a long, stable period. Florida State keeps rolling through guys.
To get a long-term coach, it seems a few different things have to come together. It helps if the guy is older and on the last ride of his career, though if doesn’t seem as if the Gamecocks are making moves toward any such coach. It helps if the coach goes supernova and changes the face of the program, but doesn’t have designs on potential NFL goals.
But in the end, most coaches who stick around for a while do so because they deliver enough. Most seasons are solid to good, some above that. Bad seasons are few and far between. Most long-term coaches are a variation of Richt, adjusted down from Georgia’s baseline.
And even that coach is unusually hard to find.
The mandate is usually to find the best coach and go from there. Maybe that coach’s teams beat who they’re supposed to, occasionally beat teams they’re not. Maybe they pull upsets and take upsets.
But the goal of hiring someone who establishes something is aspirational more than anything. It’s a goal, but one that rarely settles into a reality without a lot of factors falling into place.
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
