I think that a good head coach can make a difference in one or two games a season. (That's in comparison to just an average, solid head coach. Against a bad coach, the difference may be three or four games.) I do think that a "program" coach will be more consistently successful than a "chaos" coach...though a chaos team will both win and lose some games they shouldn't.
One of my neighbors wanted to play QB at Alabama, but wasn't good enough. He was recruited by some of the smaller schools: Troy, Jacksonville State, North Alabama, Samford. But he had his heart set on going to Alabama, and his parents could pay his tuition, so that's where he went. He tried out for football as a walk-on, but...in his words...was invited to walk off. They did ask him if he would be willing to help the team out in another way, and he ended up putting in some work-study hours in the recruiting office. Like all large universities, Alabama has alumni all around the country. And whenever Alabama is interested in a player somewhere, they get some of the local alumni there to go to the player's games and send in little notes about the player's performance. My neighbor's job was to take those notes and add a player-specific note to an otherwise generic "keeping in contact" letter. He might write something like: "I'll bet that linebacker's ears are still ringing from the block you put on him in the third quarter that sprung your tailback for the 68 yard touchdown. Please save a few of those, because we sure do hope to see you throwing blocks like that here in Tuscaloosa in a couple of years!" Someone would review it, and then stick it in a big pile for Coach Saban to sign and mail. A lot of times the player would think that Coach Saban had actually flown up to Pennsylvania just to see his game that night. And you can imagine how that made a high school kid feel.
He also told me that one of Coach Saban's sayings was that...if you can get the 4 & 5-star linemen, you can win with the 3-star skill positions. I believe that, but I also believe that Alabama gets the 4 & 5-star skill players, too.
I like Kirby Smart, and I think he'll be a very good coach for us. Mark Richt had some strengths...very good recruiter, said the right things, and represented the university well in the public eye...but he also had some weaknesses.
