Pace of Play or Efficiency?

[gawntrail]

Yup. That one. You have to remember how awesome Miami used to be.

Coker basically won with the team Butch Davis re-built after the Erickson sanctions.

His fault were not how well he coached the team, but that he completely blew it when it came to talent evaluation. It is widely documented (I don't have the link handy) that the staff admitted that they relied too much on the ratings services instead of doing their own evaluations.

Consequently, their real on the field talent degraded and they ended up with a slow-rolling disaster, with every year of his tenure worse than the year before:

year 1 - NC, undefeated
year 2 - runner up, 1 loss
year 3 - BCS win, 2 losses
year 4 - peach bowl win, 3 losses
year 5 - blowout peach bowl loss to LSU, 3 losses including a head-scratcher to unranked GT.
year 6 - had to beat Nevada in the MPC Computers Bowl to salvage a winning record. 6 losses.
Fired.

So yah, he looks good on paper unless you put it in context.

Miami has never really recovered from the damage Coker inflicted on the program.

I did not realize it was Coker 'recruiting' it in to the ground.  I thought it was a combination of Central Florida and Southern Florida eating into Florida's talent pool and Shalala wanting to put her mark on the University, thus firing Coker.

I did see his record but, did not know the particulars.  Good info.  Thanks.

[31to6]

So you are saying that he and Mack Brown (later in his career) have something in common?

Yah. Quite similar. Crushing the recruiting rankings but suffering all the downsides of bad evaluation: high attrition, bad fits, not addressing depth and need, all of it.

But Coker's fall was much faster. There's a reason why a guy with a NC ring had to cool his heels for 3 years to land a job at powerhouse UTSA.

[MuskogeeHogFan]

Yah. Quite similar. Crushing the recruiting rankings but suffering all the downsides of bad evaluation: high attrition, bad fits, not addressing depth and need, all of it.

But Coker's fall was much faster. There's a reason why a guy with a NC ring had to cool his heels for 3 years to land a job at powerhouse UTSA.

Well this just makes the case even more for the coaching staff that you have under you. BP dominated his staff and had his hand in everything that we did on both sides of the ball. I speculate, but I think that's why they completely fell apart when he departed.

Bielema understands the value of having a very competent staff, that he guides from his position as the CEO of the football program. He still has his input, but for the most part he attempts to hire very competent assistant's who can run their own positions of responsibility that he oversees. He can't get too involved as the head coach of the program in any particular position on the field because if he does, he can lose sight of the big picture for the entire program. A HC is only as good as his assistant coaches.

[31to6]

I did not realize it was Coker 'recruiting' it in to the ground.  I thought it was a combination of Central Florida and Southern Florida eating into Florida's talent pool and Shalala wanting to put her mark on the University, thus firing Coker.

I did see his record but, did not know the particulars.  Good info.  Thanks.

His Rivals Rankings:

2002 class: #8
2003 class: #5
2004 class: #6
2005 class: #7

On paper he had all the talent in the world.