Forde-Yard Dash: Pick Your Coaching Poison

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (“We Are … Last in the East” T-shirts sold separately in State College)

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THIRD QUARTER: PICK YOUR COACHING POISON

There are four coaches in the game making $8 million or more this season, and half of them got kicked in the teeth Saturday. They were the kind of losses that make everyone look and say, “Wow, that’s getting really ugly.” But the career arc of the two coaches is distinctly different.

College football fans, would you rather have see your favorite team have a Jim Harbaugh (21) tenure, or an Ed Orgeron (22) tenure?

On Saturday, Harbaugh’s Michigan Wolverines were upset by rival Michigan State, a team that couldn’t have looked more inept the week before in losing to Rutgers. For Harbaugh, this marked by far his worst loss in six seasons on the job—the Wolverines were favored by 21.5 points, yet they were outplayed and never led. In Harbaugh’s time at Michigan, he’d never lost a game when favored by more than 10.5 points.

This was new terrain in Harbaugh’s increasingly unsatisfying run in Ann Arbor. His track record prior to Saturday was winning almost all the games he’s supposed to win (47–8 as a favorite) and losing the games he wasn’t supposed to win (1–10 as an underdog or in a pick’em game). This was a new turn toward underachieving that brought many Michigan fans closer to the realization that the coach hailed as a conquering hero isn’t going to do anything truly heroic at his alma mater.

He’s 0–5 against Ohio State, with an increasing distance between the Buckeyes and Wolverines in the past four meetings: an infamous inch in 2016; an 11-point loss as a 12-point underdog in ’17; a 23-point defrocking in ’18 as a slight favorite; and a 29-point embarrassment last year. The losses to Ohio State underscore the fact that Harbaugh has never hit the high notes here the way he did at Stanford (a 12–1 season and No. 4 final ranking in 2010) and in the NFL with the 49ers (an appearance in the 2013 Super Bowl).

Harbaugh’s Michigan record is 48–19 overall, a .716 winning percentage that ranks slightly behind the best coaches in school history (Yost, Crisler, Schembechler, Carr) and ahead of most of the rest. The program hasn’t fallen apart on his watch by any means—it’s demonstrably better than where it was under Rich Rodriguez (23) and Brady Hoke (24). There have been no scandals on his watch.

But Jim Harbaugh wasn’t hired and paid all that money to be an average Michigan coach. The program’s all-time winning percentage is .729, which means that’s exactly what he is.

It’s hard to find a direct comparison to Harbaugh’s Michigan tenure. Among those that bear some resemblance, having been hired as saviors and then delivering something less than savior results:

Johnny Majors (25) at Tennessee. He came home to his alma mater after leading Pittsburgh to the 1976 national championship at the age of 41 behind the running of Tony Dorsett. After four seasons of struggle, Majors turned the Volunteers into a winning program but never seriously got into the national title hunt. In 16 seasons he won two SEC titles and shared a third, with a pair of top five finishes in the polls after bowl wins. Overall winning percentage: .645.

Bill Walsh (26) second act at Stanford 1992. After a pair of successful seasons on The Farm in the late 1970s, Walsh was lured up the Bay by the 49ers. You may have heard of his work there, which included three Super Bowl titles and modernizing the passing game. After four seasons away from coaching he surprisingly returned to Stanford, where the first season was very good (10-3 and a Top Ten ranking) but the next two were busts before Walsh re-retired.

John Robinson (27) second act at USC. The first stint (1976-82) included three top-two finishes in the polls, including a share of the 1978 national title. Then Robinson went to the Los Angeles Rams and coached them to six playoff appearances and a pair of NFC title game losses. The return to USC lasted five seasons in the 1990s, the best of which ended with a 1995 Rose Bowl victory and a No. 11 ranking.

When Orgeron’s LSU tenure reaches the 67-game mark where Harbaugh’s is currently, what will his winning percentage look like? Through 54 games it’s a sassy .778 — best in school history for anyone who coached 10 or more contests at the school. But the trajectory is potentially Chizikian (28).

When Gene Chizik was at Auburn, he captured lightning and Cam Newton in a bottle, producing a 2010 national championship and an undefeated season. Then the magic abruptly left: the Tigers went 11-14 the next two seasons and Chizik was fired.

After LSU’s 15-0 run last year, Orgeron lost his Heisman Trophy quarterback, his offensive play-caller, his defensive coordinator and a flotilla of other talent. This year’s team is 2-3, and it’s a baaaaad 2-3: the Tigers split their first four games against teams that currently have losing records, then were annihilated by a middling Auburn team 48-11 Saturday. That’s the program’s worst loss since 1996. Given the remaining schedule, 4-6 looks entirely possible, which would give LSU its first losing record this century.

“We’re not that far away,” Orgeron said Monday. “We’ve got to get better coaching. We’ve got to get better players. This is LSU and we’re going to do that.”

Can Orgeron get it back together in 2021? Sure, it’s possible. He’s recruited on a level that would actually make it difficult to not return to winning at a high percentage. But it’s also possible that things stay sideways and his LSU tenure ends (at some point) with one shining moment and a sour aftertaste.

In addition to Chizik, the comparison could be Larry Coker (29) at Miami. Like Orgeron, Coker was promoted from within after at least one high-profile head coach said no. Coker inherited perhaps the most talented team in college football history in 2001, and promptly won the national title. The next year he came within a controversial pass interference flag in the end zone of back-to-back undefeated titles. From there the results were 11-2, 9-3, 9-3, 7-6, and he was surprisingly fired.

Best Coker could do after that was becoming the first coach at UTSA, He went 26-32 in five seasons.

Back to the original question: fans would take the Orgeron/Chizik resume over the Harbaugh resume, right? You’d sign up for a few dark years if they followed an undefeated national title run. That’s preferable to a succession of seasons in which a team is always good but never great.

LSU fans living through the Orgeron Era will always have 2019. Michigan fans living through the Harbaugh Era will always have… what, exactly?

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