The new head coaches begin to fill out their cabinets
The big Midwestern hires Luke Fickell and Matt Rhule have hired offensive coordinators to execute their respective visions. Do those visions make sense?
There’s two different moments which occur when a big program makes a hire at head football coach. First there’s the “is this guy good? What did he do before and how does that translate at his new job?” analysis which may or may not even go as deep as the second sentence.
Then there’s the more telling moment and conversation which follows when the coach hires his staff. Ultimately a head coach at a big job is something of a CEO. I think this used to be less true when “Mack Brown is a CEO coach” was an argument in favor of the Longhorn legend. Nowadays with the scope of recruiting, the transfer portal, NIL collectives, etc…it’s definitely true the head coach has to be something of a generalist with the ability to hire people he can delegate and manage to go execute his vision for the football program.
With everything on his plate, who the coach hires to implement his vision is everything.
It’s like when a President is elected and he starts appointing people to various agencies and slots in the cabinet. Whatever the guy (or gal, hypothetically) ran on, who he appoints tells you what’s really up and how things are going to go.
One of the most famous examples would be when George W Bush ran as something of a populist…
“If we are to have peace in the world, we need a more humble foreign policy.”
…but then put National Security State people in positions of prominence up and down the cabinet. It was probably no surprise to anyone who knew anything about those appointments when the American response to 9/11 was broad expansion of the Nat-Sec state and the invasion of two countries.
The recruitniks get really excited by who on the staff has a reputation for really putting in hours and making good pitches on the recruiting trail. In the NIL era that’s surely still important but we’ll see how things evolve there. Coordinator hires always stand out to me as my expertise lies more with evaluating team strategy.
The two new Midwestern bosses Luke Fickell and Matt Rhule are deeply advanced along in putting together their staffs and each one, as defensive-minded coaches, have made the big decisions about who’s running their offenses.
So let’s figure out how these guys really intend to govern at their new stops.
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