How many coaches started with 4 losing seasons and what happened to them (stats inside)

IrvMeep · Oct 21, 2021

EDIT: Frost has now achieved his fourth losing season, so no longer a hypothetical.

I’ve been curious about whether there are examples of coaches who started off with 4 losing seasons and went on to good careers at their school. I decided to dig into the numbers. (I will put a lot of the detail in a later post so you can skip it if you want).

I looked at every coaching tenure at every current P5 school + Notre Dame, starting with whatever coach was in the job as of 2001. I looked only at regular seasons, so a guy wasn’t punished for going 6-6 but losing the bowl. I also didn’t count interim tenures, when someone took over for a fired coach.

There have been 295 coaching tenures at Power 5 schools encompassing the years 2001 to present. Of those 295 tenures, only 18 (6.1%) started with at least 4 losing seasons.
Of those 18, only 3 were arguably successful coaching tenures by their ends, or 1% of the total coaching tenures going back to 2001. In looking for a coach who starts with at least 4 losing seasons and has a career that works out to some degree, you are truly seeking for a unicorn.
For coaching tenures during the last 20 years, the only programs who have, so far, kept a coach after starting with 4 losing seasons, are programs that have generally struggled:

Baylor
Cal
Duke (twice)
Indiana (twice)
Iowa State
Kansas
Rutgers
Vanderbilt (twice).

Nebraska would, by far, be the highest profile program to keep a coach with such a record.
Moreover, 13 coaches were terminated after starting with just 2 or 3 consecutive losing seasons, never getting a chance at a fourth losing season.
Also, for all the concern over NU’s coaching carousel, our 4 coaches starting in 2001 is fairly average. 25 schools have had more coaches in that time. Only 17 have had fewer.
The 3 coaches that achieved some measure of success after starting with 4 losing seasons are:

Dan McCarney, Iowa State, 1995-2006
4 losing seasons to start
7 losing seasons in 12 total seasons
56-85 career record
program had 2 winning seasons in previous 10 years, each with 6 wins

David Cutcliffe, Duke, 2008-present
4 losing seasons to start
7 losing seasons in 14 total seasons
77-92 career record
program had 13 consecutive losing seasons before his hire

Greg Schiano, Rutgers, 2001-2011
4 losing seasons to start
5 losing seasons out of 11 total seasons
68-67 career record
program had 2 winning seasons in previous 10, one with 6 and one with 7 wins
In 2020, he began with another losing season in a second stint at Rutgers

While none of these three programs had more than 2 winning seasons in the previous 10, Nebraska only had 2 losing seasons in the 10 prior to the start of Frost’s tenure.
Clearly Schiano is the class of guys who started their runs with 4 losing seasons. Is Frost capable of threading the needle to emulate the one guy in 295 who turned four losing seasons into a .500 record, and is that the level of success Nebraska fans are looking for?

More detail in the next post, if you want it.

IrvMeep · Oct 21, 2021