The games begin in earnest Thursday, but not everyone has chosen a QB1. Naturally, you have questions…
(Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
What do you make of the Michigan QB situation? The timing of announcing that both guys will get a game before a decision is made coinciding with the heart of Week 0 action seems like some sort of PR play to keep these guys happy. What is there to learn vs. Colorado State and the Rainbow Warriors? And how do you see it playing out? — Andrew
Though Jim Harbaugh has denied this, the way he’s handling the competition between Cade McNamara and J.J. McCarthy sure seems like the way an NFL coach — which Harbaugh was at one time — might handle a similar situation in the preseason. Let one guy play with the starters in one game, then give the other guy time with the starters in another game. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was going to use this method this preseason while deciding between Geno Smith and Drew Lock, but Lock came down with COVID-19 before his scheduled start against the Bears in Seattle’s second preseason game and had to miss the game.
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On Monday, Harbaugh said the reason for his method comes not from the NFL coach’s playbook but from the Old Testament of the Bible. “No person knows what the future holds,” Harbaugh told reporters, referencing Ecclesiastes 8:7. “It’s a process, and it’s going to be based on performance. But we’re not going to withhold any good thing. Both have been tremendous quarterbacks. We think that both are capable of leading our team to a championship anyway.
“Some people have asked, ‘How did you come to that decision? Was it based on some kind of NFL model? No, it’s really based biblical. Solomon, he was known to be a pretty wise person.”
King Solomon purportedly wrote Ecclesiastes, but needless to say we had a lot more fun on the podcast comparing this situation to the story of judgement of Solomon in the book of Kings.
The Cliff’s Notes version: Two women had newborns. One rolled over in bed and killed her child. She then stole the other woman’s child and claimed the baby was hers. Needless to say, the other woman wasn’t going to stand for that. So the two women went before King Solomon, who ordered one of his guards to cut the baby in half and give a piece to each woman. The child’s real mother begged the king to just give the child to the other woman so the child might live. At this point, Solomon knew which woman was the child’s actual mother and reunited the two.
With McNamara and McCarthy, is the starting job the baby? Is Harbaugh hoping one will beg him not to split the reps because having a defined QB1 will help the team? Is one of the quarterbacks the baby? Is Harbaugh waiting for an offensive lineman to cry out “Don’t cut Cade in half,” thus proving the team wants McNamara to start? There are so many questions.
But the answer probably is the thing Harbaugh denied. The Wolverines have three games (Colorado State, Hawaii, Connecticut) to start the season. It looks almost exactly like an NFL preseason. And since the Wolverines should be able to win these games without perfect quarterback play, it offers a chance to evaluate them in this way.
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And make no mistake, this is a much better way to evaluate QBs than splitting series during the same game.
Harbaugh now doesn’t have to worry about a QB looking over his shoulder waiting for the hook if he misses a throw. He doesn’t have to worry about one player missing reps because he left in a QB with a hot hand. Harbaugh gets a chance to watch both players work with the first-team offense under normal conditions, and he gets to decide which QB leads the team the best. And if the first two games don’t answer the question, the third remains available for further evaluation.
The conspiracy theory that immediately popped in my head when Harbaugh announced this plan Saturday on Jon Jansen’s podcast was that this allows McNamara — who led Michigan to a Big Ten title last season — the chance to be the opening-day starter. But it also allows Harbaugh to name McCarthy — whose ceiling may be higher — the starter after game No. 2. As colleague Ari Wasserman put it, it allows Harbaugh to “soften the blow” if a change was on his mind all along.
Either way, the particular layout of this season’s schedule allows Harbaugh to get the best look at each QB in a game situation. So he should have all the information he needs.
And no one has to get cut in half.
Andy, this Scott Frost situation in Nebraska has me wondering: What are we to make of major conference programs hiring alumni as head coach? The reviews seem very mixed at best. Kirby Smart, Mike Gundy, and Jim Harbaugh (if he stays on his current trajectory) are all huge successes, but only Gundy really built his name at his alma mater. Pat Fitzgerald and David Shaw are very up and down, and Ole Miss, Missouri, Texas Tech, Miami and now Nebraska have whiffed big-time. Am I reading too much into this, or does it add unnecessary pressure and sentimentality to an already difficult job? — Benjamin
When I met Stephen Prather, one of the founders of SportsSource Analytics, one of the first things he told me was that being an alum of a school essentially is a negligible factor when it comes to the success of a head football coach. Prather had been studying the numbers for years while creating presentations for clients, and nothing suggested it made jobs any easier or any more difficult.
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I asked Prather this week if his opinion has changed, and he said no. Then he sent me the data on the past 24 alumni hires. Of those, 14 had a lower win percentage than the previous five-year win percentage at their programs.
That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing to hire an alum, either. In some of these cases — Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, for instance — the data set for the alum coach is small and it’s quite possible he surpasses that previous win percentage given some time. Meanwhile, Kalani Sitake is winning at a 3.8 percent lower rate than Bronco Mendenhall did in the five years prior to Sitake’s ascension. One more good season can put Sitake on the plus side.
The truth is that for every Mike Gundy or Kirby Smart, there’s a Randy Shannon or Scott Frost. While the alum almost always understands the culture of the school and the program, that knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to wins.
It certainly hasn’t for Frost. The incredible statistic making the rounds after Nebraska’s loss to Northwestern gets no less mind-blowing no matter how many times you see it. Frost could win his next 50 games in a row and still would have a worse record than Bo Pelini had at Nebraska.
None of us thought Frost would fail at Nebraska when he was hired. He had played for Tom Osborne. He had learned under Chip Kelly at Oregon. He had led UCF to an undefeated season. There was no indication of the disaster to come. But I don’t think the situation would be any more or less of a disaster if Frost had done all the same things at Nebraska but been a Texas A&M graduate. The biggest difference probably is he wouldn’t have gotten another year after last season. Sentimentality afforded him one more season.
Conversely, Smart didn’t win a national title at Georgia because he played at Georgia. He won a national title at Georgia because he probably would have won a national title at any school with similar resources, that recruiting footprint and a willingness to give him exactly what he wanted. That could have been Alabama, LSU, Ohio State or maybe Florida, Auburn or Florida State. Remember, Smart could have been the coach who replaced Gene Chizik at Auburn following the 2012 season, but Auburn officials understandably were reluctant to have their head coach working for Alabama for a month before taking over full-time. Georgia had no such objection in 2015, but it should be noted that one of the reasons the Bulldogs fired Mark Richt that year was a fear that Smart might take the South Carolina job. Would he have won the national title there by now? History says probably not.
Where the alumni connection might help is in retention of a good coach. Would Gundy still be at Oklahoma State if he didn’t have such a long history with the program? If he’d still been a former Cowboys quarterback but found similar success as a first-time head coach at Texas Tech or Baylor, would he have said no to Tennessee or any of the other programs that considered him for their jobs?
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I’m curious to see how this plays out in the case of Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith. Smith played for the Beavers, and anyone who understands the degree of difficulty of the Oregon State job knows Smith has been excellent since becoming head coach in 2018. Given the uncertainty in the Pac-12 and Oregon State’s usual place in the college football universe, would Smith be willing to move on from his alma mater if a program with a historically higher ceiling and a more stable conference situation came calling?
One thing is for sure: No matter what jobs open this season, someone will ignore these numbers and push an alumnus purely because that person is an alumnus. Don’t fall into that trap, particularly if you’re the athletic director whose job rides on the success or failure of the hire.
Dear Andy, am I crazy to think Brian Harsin is the perfect fit for Nebraska? The Big Ten West is a developmental league, which is much more aligned with how he wants to run his program. From Nebraska’s perspective, he won’t win you a national title with the roster he builds, but I’m not sure anyone could nowadays with the lack of local talent, but he can probably get you back to 9-3 with the occasional B1G championship game appearance. — Peter
This isn’t crazy at all, though I’m sure Harsin still wants to try to make things work at Auburn. I would point out that there isn’t likely to be a Big Ten West after 2023, so making the Big Ten title game likely will require actually being the second-best team in the league.
I do think most Nebraska fans have accepted that the Cornhuskers probably won’t return to the level of dominance they enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s. A level of success similar to Iowa or Wisconsin probably is the goal. And I think Harsin could do that at Nebraska.
He isn’t a bad coach. He’s just the wrong coach for Auburn. To have any chance at Auburn, a coach has to be willing to go head-to-head with Alabama and Georgia for recruits. Even before the attempted coup by donors, Harsin hadn’t shown a propensity for doing that. But the Nebraska coach won’t be expected to beat Ohio State and USC for players regularly. Development and the establishment of a tough, disciplined identity — just like Iowa or Wisconsin — would be the primary goals.
Given what we saw Saturday, there is a good chance Frost will give the Nebraska administration an opportunity to choose a new leader for the program. Harsin would make sense, though knowing what kind of money the Big Ten is about to distribute, I imagine there are a lot of coaches hoping to get in on that sweepstakes.
Rank college football head coach game day attire. Are you a quarter-zip guy? Hoodie? Fleece vest? Short-sleeve wind-breaker? What about the pants? Are you an all-khaki-all-the-time guy? Or a school-color golf pants guy? — Travis
I used to think coaches should wear suits or blazers on the sideline like Bear Bryant or Howard Schnellenberger, but the older I get, the more I feel like everyone should be allowed to work in athleisure as often as possible.
I have several pairs of the Lululemon pants that Harbaugh wore on the sideline when he had the unfortunate incident with the space heater at Penn State last season, and I recommend that style of pant to anyone. They’re as flexible as sweatpants, but they scream “I’m a somewhat responsible adult.”
Recently, I acquired two pairs of joggers from Rhone that scream “I’m a somewhat responsible adult, but I also have sexy ankles.” These also would make for highly functional sideline attire. And of course a discerning coach should mix in school colors whenever possible. Derek Dooley didn’t get much right at Tennessee, but those orange chinos were spot-on.
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As for the top, I’m not a quarter-zip guy. I try to teach my children that in our family, we don’t quarter-ass anything. What kind of example would I be setting if I only had to zip my shirt a quarter of the way? I’m a full-zip person. (Mostly because it doesn’t mess up the particularly problematic cowlick on the back of my head.)
I know some coaches just want to sweat, but in September, the sleeves need to stay short. There’s nothing wrong with a nice polo, and the good news is team uniform suppliers Nike, Adidas and UnderArmour all have either sweat-wicking or mesh polos for just such an occasion. There are other tops available, but there’s no need to complicate things. The idea is that form should follow function, and after watching the officials ignore Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald yelling for a timeout last week against Nebraska in Ireland, I definitely think coaches need to be dressed to move in case they need to get their hands in front of a line judge’s face as quickly as possible.
A Random Ranking
Jonathan would like me to rank Lord of the Rings characters. With “The Rings of Power” debuting on Amazon on Friday, that is a fine idea.
- Samwise Gamgee
- Gollum/Smeagol
- Gandalf
- Gimli
- Sauron
- Frodo Baggins
- Boromir
- Saruman
- Arwen
- Aragorn
(In this Dec. 3, 2017, file photo, Newly hired Nebraska head NCAA college football coach Scott Frost, right, shakes the hand of athletic director Bill Moos during a news conference in Lincoln, Neb. Nebraska’s 68-year-old athletic director has pulled off two of the splashiest hires in college athletics in the 18 months since he arrived. He brought Frost back to his alma mater after he coached Central Florida to an unbeaten season in 2017. This week he hired former Iowa State star player and coach Fred Hoiberg. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
