re: OFFICIAL 2020 Head Coach Search thread

You need to add a little bit of context to your analysis, which you'll find is actually pretty important.

FIU literally started playing football in 2002 - that was their first season EVER. Mario Cristobal inherited a team that went 0-12 the year prior to his arrival. Dan Strock, the coach that Cristobal replaced, never won more than 5 games in a single season and compiled an overall record of 15-41 (5-41 after the school vacated 10 wins due to NCAA sanctions under his tenure). To state that Cristobal walked into a complete basement dweller would be an understatement. In his 6 seasons at FIU, he achieved the first winning season in program history, as well as the school's first conference title. His 36% overall winning percentage at FIU looks really bad - but its actually considerably better than both the coach that he replaced (Dan Strock - 26%), as well as the coach that followed him (Ron Turner - 25%). His record is also significantly weighed down by that first 1-11 season, which again, came after inheriting a team on sanctions that had went 0-12 the year prior. Butch Davis would go on to post the first overall winning record at FIU in program history after he replaced Turner, but lets note that they're 0-5 this season and were only 6-7 last year. Even Butch Davis will likely finish his tenure with a losing record. The school is NOT easy to be competitive at in the least - as I'm sure you can understand for a program whose inaugural season came in 2002.

Now, what did Matt Campbell walk into at Toledo? The team was 8-5 and 9-4 (with a conference title berth) in the two seasons prior to Campbell getting the job under Tim Beckman, who wasn't fired - he left because he got hired UPWARDS at Illinois (ie: he was doing WELL at Toledo). So Campbell already inherited a winning program, and in actuality, Toledo has an entire history of being a pretty damn good program. Go look at Toledo's coaches - everyone thats coached there going all the way back to 1991 (I don't feel like looking any further) has posted an overall winning record. Gary Pinkel was there from 1991-2000 and his overall record was 73-37-3. Tom Amstutz followed that up with a 58-41 record, and Tim Beckman went 22-16.

Now, I actually like Matt Campbell as well and would have absolutely no problem with him as our coach as he looks to be very competent - but you can't just pull coaching records from two entirely different schools and pretend like there's no context that needs to also be looked at. Gus Malzahn's record would look completely different if hypothetically he took over Alabama next season, than it would if he took over Vanderbilt. There is no comparison to be made record-wise in comparing a coach who walked into an already winning team at, at a program with a long history of winning, to a coach that walked into an 0-12 situation at a program that started playing football 18 years ago. Cristobal's achievement at FIU is actually impressive - an 8-5 season might look like nothing special, but it is when the prior coach never even put up one winning season and left the team on sanctions.