Getting An Elite D1A Job - Step One

My Christmas gift this season to all of the Gridiron Dynasty junkies is a series of articles to help coaches that have a New Year's resolution of getting a job at a D1A elite program. The first step in this adventure is to do some review of your recruiting skills, game planning skills, and scheduling skills. To do this for myself I built an Excel spreadsheet where I merged my GUESS coaching histories in each world with my WIS results. The most important data for me is a column where I compare my final WIS Ranking to my GUESS Full Roster Rank over several seasons.

I'd like to share my Bryant D1A data first:

Here are a few things that I found interesting about my Bryant data:

(1) I was able to build Texas Tech into a program that played in the Big 12 CC game for the final three seasons I was there. Beating out Texas and Oklahoma to go to the CC game three consecutive seasons took me playing 13, 14, and 13 WIS Rankings above my GUESS Full Roster Ranking. I scheduled perfectly, was running my proven defense, and had built an offensive game plan that gave my conference elites problems.

(2) My S130 Texas Tech team had a GUESS Avg Rating of 76.23 and I took over a Michigan team with a 75.98 rating. I left a non-elite with a better roster to take over an elite program. If you want an elite job - build an elite program at a non-elite school.

(3) I built a Texas Tech team that played in 3 straight Big 12 CC games and 2 Level 5 bowls with Recruit Class rankings of 40, 14, 18, and 31 for my final four seasons at Texas Tech. I recruited high potential high work ethic players and gave them a lot of playing time early. They had above average growth and were studs their Jr and Sr seasons.

(4) My S135 Michigan team won the National Championship with the #16 GUESS ranked team. I ran a very lethal offense that consisted of (a) a main offense that ran the ball every time except 3rd and long, (b) a deep passing offense I would run late in each half. I was able to beat several humans by controlling the clock and getting TDs off of deep passes against subbed-in secondaries that were primarily Fr and So. I had better rosters in S134 and S136 but didn't even make a L5 bowl.

(5) The last column shows me that there were five seasons my WIS Ranking finished worse than my GUESS Ranking, seven seasons that were better, and two seasons the rankings were the same.

Here is my Rockne D1A data:

Here are a few things that I found interesting about my Rockne data:

(1) I won the Conference Championship my first season at Central Florida. I had the #62 GUESS rated roster(SIMs) running the Shotgun with very low formation IQs. I remember that season well because I knew the human coaches in the conference didn't have the DBs to hang with me if I could figure out decent ball distribution on short and medium passes. The shotgun allowed me to play 30, 19, and 25 WIS rankings above my GUESS Full Roster Rank.

(2) I over performed my first seven seasons at D1A in Rockne, especially the three seasons at Central Florida running the shotgun. A large component of this over performance was I never scheduled a non-conference game that I knew I couldn't win. Scheduling was a large part of my success.

(3) I was able to build Texas A&M to be very close to the roster ranking of the Florida team I took over: 76.16 to 76.82.

Here is my Leahy D1A data:

Here are a few things that I found interesting about my Leahy data:

(1) I am just getting going at Temple but I have been able to improve my Avg Player Rating each season as well as winning back to back CCs with Full Roster Ranks of 14 and 13.

(2) While I think comparing rosters to other worlds can be a bit flawed, my Temple 77.40 roster is very comparable with my rosters at Michigan, Florida, and Oklahoma in other worlds. My Temple roster is currently better than my Bryant Michigan roster, and within 0.19 Avg Player Rating of my Rockne Florida roster.

The final data is my Wilkinson D1A data:

Here are a few things that I found interesting about my Wilkinson data:

(1) My Texas Tech Avg Player Rating in S108 was 75.43 and my Oklahoma Avg Player Rating in S109 was 72.84. As was the case in Bryant, the Texas Tech team I built had a better roster than the elite job I took.

(2) My first two seasons at Oklahoma might be my two best coaching performances at the school. S109 I was able to take the GUESS rated #41 roster and turn in a WIS ranking of #21. I followed that in S110 by winning the Big 12 Conference Championship and finishing the season with a WIS ranking of #13 with the #40 rated roster.

(3) To win early at Oklahoma I was using a heavy run offense in ND Box with a 4-4 and Nickel defense. In S124 I stopped using all of these formations to become a NC contender. I went into Pro Set and 3-4 with very low formation IQs. S124 and S125 were rough, but I was able to get back to Very Secure in S126.

(4) I have underperformed my GUESS roster rank the past several seasons. I've had 12 straight rosters with a GUESS roster rank in the top 10 and one National Championship. My game planning and scheduling hasn't been very good the past several seasons.

(5) Seasons 105-107 were challenging because my job was In Jeopardy at Texas Tech. I know there were a couple seasons at Texas Tech where I expected to get fired. I'm still not sure how I turned that around to get an elite job 2-3 seasons after being In Jeopardy.

As I review all of my data there are a few things that stand out:

(1) Having a unique formation and game plan can be worth 20+ WIS Rankings over GUESS Roster rankings.

(2) Scheduling is usually the biggest factor for me when I perform -10 WIS Ranking over GUESS Roster ranking.

(3) Some of my best recruiting classes have been lower GUESS ranked classes. Playing high potential and high work ethic players a lot as Freshman and Sophomore will turn them into studs their upper class seasons.

(4) Build a non-elite team roster that is higher ranked than an elite roster to get a job at an elite school. We will discuss this further in the next article.

Conclusion

I think it can be a helpful exercise for coaches to build a quick spreadsheet to find out how your GUESS Team rankings compares to your WIS rankings. Look for seasons that were +10 or -10 and determine what caused the discrepancy. Did you over schedule for your negative results? Were you using unique formations or game plans for your positive results? Can your game planning results consistently match your roster/recruiting results?

We will discuss recruiting in greater detail in the next article. Building an elite roster at a non-elite won't be possible if you have serious issues with scheduling and game planning. Start working on those issues today!

Happy Holidays!