🏈 Who will see the most success?

[LBS]

Polling your thoughts on four coaching moves that I find intriguing. As I see it, each has potential. But which do you think will be the most successful at their new school and why?

 

[UAgrad93]

Call me crazy but Butch Jones is my pick. He is a good coach that gets the best out of his teams. I think he does better than Holtz at South Florida, and Tubberville at Tech.

 

[alagator]

"Success" is defined differently at each of those institutions, so it is hard to be too definitive on a selection. But, I will give it a little discussion without actually voting.

I happen to believe Kelley, who left Cincinnati for Notre Dame, is a very good to outstanding coach and that it is most likely Cincinnati will see a slight decline in their program. I do not think they will crash mind you, but will not see a string of consecutive BCS games in the near future (unless the Big LEast is weak and they sneak in with 2- or 3-loss seasons as champion of a weak league).

Tubberville will NOT win the Big 12 at Texas Tech. And will most likely never even make the conference title game, having to emerge from a division that includes both Texas and Oklahoma (what are the odds both will be down enough in the same season to allow Tech to sneak by). And I am not so sure Tubberville's "Stallings Style" ball (defense first, defense second, defense third, kicking game fourth, defense fifth, offense sixth) will go over too well in Lubbock. I do not see Tubberville replicating the success enjoyed by Leach - nor certainly generating the fan excitement.

As someone who attends five to eight Florida games a year, I am not as impressed with Charlie Strong as is many. Good guy. Only a slightly better than average DC - what competent DC would not have achieved at least as much as he with all the talent at his disposal the last eight-or-so years. But, he is going into a league where the bell-cow of the last few years (Cincinnati) is undergoing a downgrade with their HC and where Dave Wannasdt (sic?) is the premier coach in the conference, so he might be walking into the best opportunity.

Skip Holtz was fired as the OC at South Carolina - by HIS FATHER. He did okay at Connecticut, but not nearly to the level as the current HC at UConn. And he never dominated (record wise) the friggin CUSA. USF enjoys the benefit of being able to admit just about anyone with functioning lungs, so he can pull in some pretty good players that the Big 3 down here cannot sign - and he might be able to supplant UCF as the fourth player in the state (I really thought Florida Atlanta or Florida International would reach that level first but they seemed to plateaued - at best).

If "success" is defined as doing significantly better than the last guy, I have to rank the foursome as Strong, Holtz, Tubberville, and Jones. This says more about the relative current states of the respective programs as it does about the abilities of the coaches.

If "success" is defined as winning conference championships, I have to go with Holtz, Jones, Strong, and Tubberville. Probably at least one of the first three should win league titles as they are all in the Big LEast and have to beat out only UConn, Pitt, or a rapidly falling West Virginia for a title.