As Purdue hits the marketplace for its first conventional football coaching search in more than a decade-and-a-half, it'll find much has changed since it got Joe Tiller in 1996.
Namely, everything.
Hiring coaches is hard. It always has been, but now more than ever.
As Bruce Feldman put so well in something he wrote for CBS Sports last week, "Three years is the new five years" for college coaches in new jobs. Translation: You get fired quicker now. Patience isn't an option as much as it used to be.
Coaches who are good enough to be in demand now have to be more judicious than ever, lest they run the risk of forsaking their successes and undercutting their career path.
Look at Danny Hope. Six years ago, he had his dream job. Today, he has no job. It's all an elaborate game of Russian Roulette, because sometimes when you get fired, it might not even be entirely your fault.
This is why even the highest-profile of jobs nowadays get turned down more than the sheets at a Holiday Inn.
Everything is so public now and when you're a sitting head coach at a winning program, you mustn't upset the delicate recruits. You must handle them carefully, like a carton of eggs. They mustn't be allowed the worry.
Interested coaches can very easily be chased back into current offices, like spooked rabbits dashing back to their holes.
So yes, it is hard to hire coaches now.
But the norms that might have been in place back when Purdue last had an open head coaching position ? and not just designs to crow-bar a coach-in-waiting onto an existing staff in a succession scenario ? have now been debunked.
There's no blueprint anymore.
A program like Purdue might want an experienced guy. Inexperienced guys are thriving all over. Age nowadays is truly just a number, as was evident when Lane Kiffin (yeah, I know) got the Tennessee job seemingly before he got his learner's permit.
And it was just six years ago, you know, that Chip Kelly ?- the man whose program is reshaping how we perceive both offense and fashion in college football -- was at New Hampshire. And he wasn't even the head coach. Today, he presides over an offense that moves faster than anything not equipped with seat belts and is probably about a month or two away from taking the NFL by storm.
Offensive innovators like Kelly are the cat's meow these day.
So where does Purdue go from here?
Does it want head coaching experience? Its past practices would suggest it to not be a deal-breaker. Paul Chryst didn't have any when Morgan Burke seemed to be all smitten with the former Wisconsin offensive coordinator. Oregon O.C. Mark Helfrich doesn't have any head coaching experience, but something tells me Purdue wouldn't stick its nose us up at him or the over-caffeinated, scary-as-hell, super-cool offense he'd try to bring with him.
It's an offensive game now and this hire is going to be just as much about selling tickets as winning games, not that the two are really mutually exclusive.
At a school known for quarterbacks and still benefiting from Drew Brees residuals, I'd take a long, hard look at Greg Olson if I were Purdue. Look at it this way: You've have given your left arm for Kevin Sumlin last year, wouldn't you have? They're cut from the same cloth.
But with all that was just written, there's still something to be said for netting an established head coach. Would Purdue have either the cache or the cash to pry somebody from a BCS program? Don't know.
But watch the BIG EAST, whose fading luster could send its better coaches running to conferences like the Big Ten for BCS access and BTN coin.
Butch Jones is Purdue's top choice. He might be other schools' choice as well. So will be Sonny Dykes, who Purdue would love to get, but won't.
Otherwise, there's always the MAC, the Midwest's coaching breeding ground. Be wary, though, of the soup du jour, coaches who are still winning with their predecessors' players.
In a perfect world, your sample size would be bigger than just a two- or three-year window, so you can see what a coach has done after their program is truly theirs.
Which brings us to Brock Spack.
After Hope struggled with the enormity of all that comes with being a Big Ten coach -- all the ancillary stuff not always football-related -- I would not anticipate Purdue hiring another small-school guy.
But Spack is different. No one knows this program better. He helped build it into what it was not so long ago and can be again, Purdue hopes.
Every job has its challenges, and Purdue is certainly no exception. The key is finding a guy who'll not only accept those challenges, but embrace them. There is one candidate in the entire coaching landscape who'd walk right in with a keen understanding of the ins and outs of this job and be able to hit the ground running.
That's Spack.
Will Purdue hire him? I don't know. It should have five years ago and didn't after a token interview.
But it would be foolish this time around, now that Spack has proven himself as a head coach, to not at least seriously consider him.
Whoever Purdue hires will have much on his plate. The first order of business will be to win games, the second to entertain. Purdue has to become both interesting and relevant again.
After what happened during the middle portion of this season, that might seem a long way off. But you'd have said the same thing in 1996 before Joe Tiller sucker-punched the Big Ten in 1997, then unleashed Brees on it.
Purdue has won and can win again.
It just has to find the right guy.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
This post was edited on 11/26 5:12 PM by Alan_GoldandBlack.com
Namely, everything.
Hiring coaches is hard. It always has been, but now more than ever.
As Bruce Feldman put so well in something he wrote for CBS Sports last week, "Three years is the new five years" for college coaches in new jobs. Translation: You get fired quicker now. Patience isn't an option as much as it used to be.
Coaches who are good enough to be in demand now have to be more judicious than ever, lest they run the risk of forsaking their successes and undercutting their career path.
Look at Danny Hope. Six years ago, he had his dream job. Today, he has no job. It's all an elaborate game of Russian Roulette, because sometimes when you get fired, it might not even be entirely your fault.
This is why even the highest-profile of jobs nowadays get turned down more than the sheets at a Holiday Inn.
Everything is so public now and when you're a sitting head coach at a winning program, you mustn't upset the delicate recruits. You must handle them carefully, like a carton of eggs. They mustn't be allowed the worry.
Interested coaches can very easily be chased back into current offices, like spooked rabbits dashing back to their holes.
So yes, it is hard to hire coaches now.
But the norms that might have been in place back when Purdue last had an open head coaching position ? and not just designs to crow-bar a coach-in-waiting onto an existing staff in a succession scenario ? have now been debunked.
There's no blueprint anymore.
A program like Purdue might want an experienced guy. Inexperienced guys are thriving all over. Age nowadays is truly just a number, as was evident when Lane Kiffin (yeah, I know) got the Tennessee job seemingly before he got his learner's permit.
And it was just six years ago, you know, that Chip Kelly ?- the man whose program is reshaping how we perceive both offense and fashion in college football -- was at New Hampshire. And he wasn't even the head coach. Today, he presides over an offense that moves faster than anything not equipped with seat belts and is probably about a month or two away from taking the NFL by storm.
Offensive innovators like Kelly are the cat's meow these day.
So where does Purdue go from here?
Does it want head coaching experience? Its past practices would suggest it to not be a deal-breaker. Paul Chryst didn't have any when Morgan Burke seemed to be all smitten with the former Wisconsin offensive coordinator. Oregon O.C. Mark Helfrich doesn't have any head coaching experience, but something tells me Purdue wouldn't stick its nose us up at him or the over-caffeinated, scary-as-hell, super-cool offense he'd try to bring with him.
It's an offensive game now and this hire is going to be just as much about selling tickets as winning games, not that the two are really mutually exclusive.
At a school known for quarterbacks and still benefiting from Drew Brees residuals, I'd take a long, hard look at Greg Olson if I were Purdue. Look at it this way: You've have given your left arm for Kevin Sumlin last year, wouldn't you have? They're cut from the same cloth.
But with all that was just written, there's still something to be said for netting an established head coach. Would Purdue have either the cache or the cash to pry somebody from a BCS program? Don't know.
But watch the BIG EAST, whose fading luster could send its better coaches running to conferences like the Big Ten for BCS access and BTN coin.
Butch Jones is Purdue's top choice. He might be other schools' choice as well. So will be Sonny Dykes, who Purdue would love to get, but won't.
Otherwise, there's always the MAC, the Midwest's coaching breeding ground. Be wary, though, of the soup du jour, coaches who are still winning with their predecessors' players.
In a perfect world, your sample size would be bigger than just a two- or three-year window, so you can see what a coach has done after their program is truly theirs.
Which brings us to Brock Spack.
After Hope struggled with the enormity of all that comes with being a Big Ten coach -- all the ancillary stuff not always football-related -- I would not anticipate Purdue hiring another small-school guy.
But Spack is different. No one knows this program better. He helped build it into what it was not so long ago and can be again, Purdue hopes.
Every job has its challenges, and Purdue is certainly no exception. The key is finding a guy who'll not only accept those challenges, but embrace them. There is one candidate in the entire coaching landscape who'd walk right in with a keen understanding of the ins and outs of this job and be able to hit the ground running.
That's Spack.
Will Purdue hire him? I don't know. It should have five years ago and didn't after a token interview.
But it would be foolish this time around, now that Spack has proven himself as a head coach, to not at least seriously consider him.
Whoever Purdue hires will have much on his plate. The first order of business will be to win games, the second to entertain. Purdue has to become both interesting and relevant again.
After what happened during the middle portion of this season, that might seem a long way off. But you'd have said the same thing in 1996 before Joe Tiller sucker-punched the Big Ten in 1997, then unleashed Brees on it.
Purdue has won and can win again.
It just has to find the right guy.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
This post was edited on 11/26 5:12 PM by Alan_GoldandBlack.com
