I dont think the strength of a Head Coach is with one on one coaching
Recruiting and good assistant coaches is more important
Agreed.
He is sort of the CEO model with extra flash. So like a cooler Mack Brown or Dabo or kind of Bobby Bowden at times. shoot, PJ Fleck is kind of in that mold.
He seems like a super high ceiling version of that with tremendous flame out potential
This pretty well sums up my thoughts. If he can hire and delegate well this could work REALLY well. He has the high ceiling due to his name recognition / cool factor. OTOH, if he can't then this could be a mess.
he was wildly successful as a Texas HS coach. Then he was wildly successful as a small ball college FCS coach at an HBCU no less.
He’s already been making moves on the ‘crootin trail that basically no coach in the history of Colorado ever has. Travis Hunter was the #1 player in his class. From Georgia. Cormani McClain was a top 10 player and #1 CB in his class. From Florida. I can guarantee you Colorado has never signed kids like that- let alone ones from the south.
If I were a betting man I wouldn’t bet against Deion. Especially in a PAC that is losing the LA schools and will be tissue paper soft.
Agreed. He is pulling guys that Colorado would NEVER have pulled in the past. If that keeps up in a PAC without USC/UCLA that should make the Buffaloes an annual co-favorite along with the Ducks and whoever is having a good year beyond that.
Your theory may be accurate w.r.t. average performance. But it's a stereotype. Even when stereotypes are based on actual reality across a large population, they're basically worthless when it comes to individual performance.
It's like the simple stereotype that jocks are dumb and nerds are weak. The stereotype exists because at the FAR end of the bell curve where you're looking at selecting for only one thing, you completely discount anything but what is being selected for. So if you can run a 4.3 and cover a WR, nobody gives a damn if you can't read. And if you can build Microsoft, nobody cares if you're a bookish dweeb. But oddly enough, there is a POSITIVE correlation between intelligence and athleticism (and attractiveness, and height, and a bunch of other things we consider positive). In general, smart people are more athletic than dumb people, and athletic people are smarter than unathletic people. But we build stereotypes based on the outliers.
Someone who works harder because they have fewer physical gifts MIGHT become a better coach of those skills because they didn't have that golden spoon of elite athleticism. But that doesn't mean that someone who HAS those physical gifts also can't understand technique and skills in such a way as to pass them on to someone w/o the same gifts. And it doesn't mean that because someone didn't have those gifts that they're assured success in coaching because they had to work harder. Ability to coach is orthogonal to whether you had those gifts IMHO.
So even if your theory is 100% accurate re: averages, you can't use it to predict Deion's individual success or failure.
I agree with all of this. Statistically it is like saying "Men are taller than women". It is demonstrably true wrt averages (5'-9" for men vs 5'-4" for women) but that 5" difference in AVERAGE height still leaves a lot of women taller than particularly short men, a decent number of women taller than the average man, and even a few women taller than a very tall guy like yourself.
LoL @ "So if you can run a 4.3 and cover a WR, nobody gives a damn if you can't read." Same with the "dumb blonde" stereotype.
I think my theory is based on two things. I articulated one of them above:
That a guy who was successful at major college / NFL football without ridiculous athletic gifts HAS to have been good at playing their position whereas a guy who was successful at major college / NFL football WITH ridiculous athletic gifts MIGHT actually not be all that good at the mechanics of their position because they just didn't need to be.
The second part is harder to explain. I think it might be difficult for someone who DID have, in Deion's case ridiculous speed, to teach someone without that how to cover a WR. Deion never had to cover a WR that was faster than him so what does he know about that? I didn't mean to suggest that this would be insurmountable, just that I think it is a thing that has to be dealt with.
I agree that there will be exceptions so even if my theory is 100% correct there will still be mediocre athletes who are NOT good coaches and great athletes who also are great coaches.
I think Neon Deion is going to do well at CU.
The truth is he doesn't NEED to do it. He doesn't need the money and he doesn't need to cement his legacy somehow. So chances are he's doing it because he likes it or otherwise feels some personal compulsion.
That tells me he's going to put a ton of effort into it.
It's definitely interesting to watch.
Agreed.
We all agree he will up their recruiting. We all agree they are in a weaker conference. I think if he gets a rather good QB and good OC/DCs, he'll do pretty well. He's the feature, he needn't be the Man in Charge in day to day decisions. If they do better than expected this year, say 8-5ish, he'll garner more positive notice ... if they go 3-9ish, maybe some of the allure/novelty starts to diminish.
We probably wondered this idly when he started at the HBCU and he did well there immediately as I recall.
I agree and he is coming off of back-to-back SWAC titles at Jackson State but the competition is about to ramp up in a MAJOR way. Mentally I sorta discounted his success at JSU because I figured that his recruiting bump alone probably accounted for a good portion of that.
Will he be responsible for teaching kids how to tackle?
LoL.
Thank you for your thoughts all. I agree with
@utee94 , it will definitely be interesting to watch!