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If you were a good coach and willing to put in the effort, what is the top program you'd love to coach today (aside from yours)?

On the one hand, a Texas or USC would be fame and fortune, but pressure commensurate.  Or you could coach say K State for a mere $2 mil a year and have much less pressure.  Or say the Navy where you likely would not have kids misbehaving.

Stanford?  Northwestern?  Vandy?  Duke?  

The worst I think would be a place like South Carolina where the fan base is "unreasonable" (ha) and the potential very limited.

UNC could be an option, decent location, pretty good students in the main, reasonable expectations, overshadowed by another sport, 9-4 makes you a hero.

Bama, Clemson, or Ohio St.

those 3 are recruiting better than the others and have more talent on the roster


talent trumps all

so, Ohio St is number 3?

If Ohio State returns to being "just" Ohio State, UM should be able to upset them 3 times in 10.  Ohio State right now is closer to Bama and Clemson than OSU of yore.

And they still seem to be recruiting at the elite level, top five anyway, consistently.  Even a so so coach can produce great teams doing that. 

In all honesty, I think what OSU has accomplished over the past two decades is more impressive--but more fragile--than Alabama or Clemson.

OSU has sustained elite success across two consecutive [not counting interim] coaches. Bama and Clemson have one. Can you trust that Bama will still be Bama post-Saban, or that Clemson will still be Clemson post-Dabo? I think you *have* to expect that both programs will falter when they have to replace those coaches, although it's much more likely to happen at Bama because Dabo is young and probably not going anywhere unless he has NFL dreams.

That's why I am unsure what Day will end up doing. To have three coaches in a row pull that off would be insane. OSU had Tressel and then they brought in a sure-thing prospect in Meyer. Only sure-things aren't always as sure as you'd think, but in this case it was. Now they've got someone who has never had HC experience prior and threw him into one of the most scrutinized programs in the nation... Can he pull this off?

In my opinion the odds are against Day sustaining OSU at anywhere near the same level Tressel and Meyer performed.

In all honesty, I think what OSU has accomplished over the past two decades is more impressive--but more fragile--than Alabama or Clemson.

OSU has sustained elite success across two consecutive [not counting interim] coaches. Bama and Clemson have one. Can you trust that Bama will still be Bama post-Saban, or that Clemson will still be Clemson post-Dabo? I think you *have* to expect that both programs will falter when they have to replace those coaches, although it's much more likely to happen at Bama because Dabo is young and probably not going anywhere unless he has NFL dreams.

That's why I am unsure what Day will end up doing. To have three coaches in a row pull that off would be insane. OSU had Tressel and then they brought in a sure-thing prospect in Meyer. Only sure-things aren't always as sure as you'd think, but in this case it was. Now they've got someone who has never had HC experience prior and threw him into one of the most scrutinized programs in the nation... Can he pull this off?

In my opinion the odds are against Day sustaining OSU at anywhere near the same level Tressel and Meyer performed.

Lloyd Carr was anything but a sure thing, but he's the only coach to win an NC at Michigan since leather helmets were a thing.

Then they made 3 splash hires in a row, and are still getting their asses kicked by Ohio State, and by others who used to not be able to do it (like my school).

That may be more commonplace than weird.  Perhaps mediocre coaches cling because they are good schoozers and good promisers.

I'd take Texas, expectations - for now - are lower.  There is no reason Texas can't be elite again that I can discern, unlike say USC or Tennessee or Michigan.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t Texas‘s eliteness basically been tied to two coaches, one of whom was considered a perennial underachiever?

It’s weird because in theory Texas should be awesome, but exactly one coach in school history has got them to the level they expect. 

The Pirate is the type of coach that could bring national championships to Ann Arbor and not survive based on personality.

I kind of don't agree. Th Pirate is best served at an underdog. He has a habit of winning a few he shouldn't and losing some he should. That kinda flies at at outpost schools (maybe at MissSU), but not with the big boys. If he beats OSU a third of the time, but drops an IU or Purdue game every year, they'll be after him.

He reminds me of a passage from one of my favorite sports books, The Game. "there are good “good team” goalies and good “bad team” goalies—Gary Smith, Doug Favell, Denis Herron. The latter are spectacular, capable of making near-impossible saves that few others can make. They are essential for bad teams, winning them games they shouldn’t win, but they are goalies who need a second chance, who need the cushion of an occasional bad goal, knowing that they can seem to earn it back later with several inspired saves. On a good team, a goalie has few near-impossible saves to make, but the rest he must make, and playing in close and critical games as he does, he gets no second chance."

Leach teams are like bad team goalies.