This is why I love Mike Leach...

Aside from how much he whines, he might be more entertaining than Spurrier.

From Mike Huguenin at Rivals.com (story):

Third, Leach was incredulous that Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee – who was a reserve for much of his senior season – was drafted in the fourth round by Dallas (and Tech quarterback Graham Harrell – who led the nation in passing – wasn't drafted at all): "The Dallas Cowboys like him more than his coaches at A&M did."

Fourth, after Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman talked on back-to-back days about Leach's comments on McGee, Leach let fly again, with tongue firmly planted in his cheek: "I've always known A&M had great players. The fact that they have the luxury to put a third- or fourth-round draft pick on the bench, to me, identifies what a truly great team they are. It's an honor for us at Texas Tech to have the opportunity to play them. There are numerous players on our team that will never get a look or play a down in the NFL, so you can imagine how exciting it is for me and them to go play a team the magnitude of Texas A&M and look over there on the bench and see third- and fourth-round draft picks."

Four reasons to wonder whether race plays a role in head coach hiring decisions

Sean,

Just throwing out a few reasons why I think it's plausible that racism plays a significant role in keeping black head coaches out of head coaching positions in FBS college football.

1. You're right that the kind of probabilistic reasoning that I was engaged in will never prove that a particular decision not to hire a black man is racially motivated. The fact that African Americans are represented in lower numbers among the ranks of FBS head coaches than they are among the population at large doesn't prove anything. But it does lead us to ask for reasons why such a disparity might exist. It could be that white guys generally possess qualities that would make them better college head coaches, just as nobody seems to bat an eyelash if you draw a conclusion that young black men must generally have qualities that make them better football players than young white men, since they are overrepresented on the football field. But I don't think that my concern has been answered just because other possibilities are plausible. Speculation is all we have at this point, but I'd prefer to answer the question with data, if it were available.

2. You write that you can't think of a single instance in which a head coach hiring decision stuck out to you as being racially motivated. I think it would be surprising if one had. Your observation is salient for what it is, but it doesn't preclude use of race as a "tiebreaker." That is, assuming that a black candidate and a white candidate are relatively equal in terms of merit, a hiring committee still might systematically choose the white candidate. As long as the true basis of the decision is hidden, no one could reasonably accuse that particular hiring committee of racism. But if the same methodology is applied at a number of schools, the numbers would begin to look suspiciously like the ones we in fact encounter.

3. Racism could be outsourced to smaller schools or less pressworthy positions. Everybody knows that hiring a new head coach at a major conference school attracts lots of press scrutiny. This is less true at mid-major schools or in the FCS, and also of coordinator positions, position coaches, and the rest, on down the line. If race is used as a factor at those levels, it is less likely to be detected since people are less likely to crunch those numbers. But the results would still be felt at the head coach level because policies like these would yield fewer qualified black candidates at the coordinator level, or as head coaches at mid-majors.

4. You write that it's inconceivable to believe that anything matters to a hiring committee more than W's. Actually, I think you mention something that could matter more to them: $$$. You write as though there's a one-to-one correspondence between wins and profits, and certainly that correlation is very strong. But money comes from other places; in particular, from booster fund raising. If the hiring committee fears that the boosters will not take well to a black head coach (which would not be an unreasonable concern here in the South), then they might pass over a more qualified black coach on that basis alone, unless the expected profits from his greater number of wins would outstrip the losses the school would suffer from decreased booster support.

More on racism in college football.

Much has been made of the relatively small numbers of black head coaches in NCAA 1A football. While I remain skeptical of how much racism is a factor, I certainly concede that it's a possibility, and despite my skepticism, I generally don't make much of this discussion. The big difference between this case and the Auburn case is that even though fingers were pointed in both, nobody was targeted specifically, and since there's no target, it's hard to make a case one way or the other.

As evidenced by the last three Super Bowls, there are clearly good black head coaches (although it might be a stretch to assuming good NFL coaches are roughly equivalent to college coaches). Like the Auburn case though, I started looking for other instances in which possibly more qualified black coaches were overlooked. Several web searches later, I hadn't come up with anything substantial.

About 25% of Americans are black, so you'd expect around 30 black coaches based solely on that. Furthermore, only six coaches in division 1A haven't had college playing experience, and easily more than 25% of college football players are black. It wasn't always this high, but in 2001, over 55% of college football players were black. Honestly though, it's a little strange to be talking about racial breakdowns at all in my opinion. If it were that simple, we could also say that black players actually benefit from racism. Saying that blacks are more fit to become football players isn't entirely different than saying whites are more fit to become coaches.

Being an SEC fan, I rarely pay attention to up and coming coaches. Most SEC schools don't have the patience to take chances on unproven coaches, although it happens on occasion. Looking just over the major conferences, no recent coaching hires have stuck out to me, at least from a racial perspective. Most schools take a conservative approach and hire the most successful head coach they could land from Div 1A. Occasionally, a top coordinator gets a head coaching shot. For the most part though, new coaching blood comes from the non-BCS conference schools, and I don't really know where those coaches are coming from.

One thing that I have noticed though is that there haven't been many decent black coaches in the mid-major schools lately. I can list several of the most successful mid-major programs of the past few years, and none of them have had black coaches. On top of that, perhaps the two black coaches with the most impressive resumes were fired last season. I think I'd still rather have Tyrone Willingham or Sylvester Croom than Turner Gill.

Perhaps I'm naive, but it still seems strange to me that head coaches could be chosen by any other criteria than the number of games they would be expected to win. I know there are academic considerations, but race has nothing to do with that. If I'm an athletic director, the one thing I'm asking is, "How many wins can you get for my program?" With most football programs more than paying for themselves, more wins equals more money and more prestige for the university. If there's a coach that can get one more win every couple of seasons, or even every fourth season, than the next best guy, I don't care what his race is. As far as I'm concerned, if he's black, you even get good press coverage as a bonus.

Racism in College Football

Much has been made of Auburn's decision to rehire former defensive coordinator Gene Chizik over Buffalo head coach Turner Gill. At first glance, this deal seemed a little dubious, considering Chizik's recent record as the head coach at Iowa State, but I neglected to make a first impression. After further researching Chizik, and remembering that he was the very successful defensive coordinator for Auburn's undefeated run in 2004, and he immediately followed that success by leading the defense of the 2005 national champion Texas team.

His career as a head coach has been rocky in the emerging Big 12 north, but it wasn't hard for me to justify hiring a defensive mastermind with SEC coaching experience over any MAC coach. Certainly, there have been some coaching gems to come out of non-BCS conferences, with Urban Meyer being the most notable. Still, Meyer was much more accomplished when he was offered the head coaching position at Florida than Turner Gill is now, leading Utah to an undefeated season in a stronger conference and a BCS bowl victory. On the other hand, there have also been some successful head coaches plucked from the defensive coordinator position at major conference schools (such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops).

My conclusion: no grounds for racism charges.

I didn't stop thinking about it there though, especially when I recently stumbled across some Auburn students discussing the issue on a web site I frequent. Not being huge football fans, they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other about whether racism affected the hire, but they weren't happy with the reputation their school has received from the incident. Just looking at the argument before, I hadn't considered the apparently lasting effects that this issue would have on the reputations of the school and its students. I know that in the long run, this too won't last, but for the time being, the media has falsely perpetuated the racist southern stereotype at Auburn.

I don't think I've quite proved my point yet though. Going back to Turner Gill, I don't think he's a bad coach. I think it's entirely possible he's a better coach than Chizik. I'll be the first to admit that Chizik's head coaching career hasn't been the greatest success, but let's look at Buffalo. Gill gets a lot of respect for leading the Bulls to a MAC championship, but most people forget that Buffalo was hardly the best team in the MAC. In terms of overall regular season conference records, Buffalo was tied for fourth. They led their division, but four teams had regular season conference records as good or better than Buffalo's, and being in the much tougher division, those teams went through tougher conference schedules. The MAC western division went 14-4 against Buffalo's eastern division. Even Buffalo was 0-2 against western division opponents in the regular season before upsetting Ball State in the championship game.

Buffalo clearly didn't get any top 25 votes, but how well did they do in the computers? They finished at #60 in the Colley Rankings, fourth in their conference. In Massey, they finished at #76 (#68 MoV), third in the MAC. I'll definitely admit that Gill has improved Buffalo's program over the three years he's been there, but is a #60 finish in the Colley Rankings enough reason to think he could succeed in the SEC in the recently upgraded western division? Chizik on the other hand, while not the head coach, played a significant role in coaching two consecutive top 2 teams.

The correct choice remains to be seen. As it stands now though, I would rather stand with Chizik. He's done a great job so far pulling in an impressive recruiting class, always a difficult task for new head coaches. He also gets points for stealing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn from Tulsa. Malzahn, a former high school coach, has achieved great offensive success in his stints at Arkansas and Tulsa. I just hope this racist reputation Auburn has acquired is soon to pass.

Quantitative Analysts of the World Unite!

Just wanted to post a quick link to an article by Bill James, a statistician, advocating that quantitative analysts effectively go on strike by refusing to allow the BCS to incorporate their computer rankings in its algorithm. Among other things, he points out that the BCS limits the computer rankings' inputs to such an absurd degree that it's impossible for them to make unique and meaningful contributions.

More interesting is James' assertion that participation in the BCS actually hurts the reputation of the field of quantitative analysis, since rightly or wrongly, when the BCS malfunctions, the knee-jerk reaction from practically everybody is to blame the computers. He says statisticians should refuse to continue playing whipping boy for the BCS. The BCS can hang itself with its own rope.

Against Playoffs

The college football postseason winds down Thursday night when the Oklahoma Sooners and the Florida Gators finally meet in Miami. For a lot of people, the BCS national champion is going to be crowned illegitimately, because the system used to select the champion does not involve a playoff. The debate over a playoff in college football has raged for a long time, but as far as I'm aware, advocates of the system presently in place have always played defense in these debates. They say that the present system preserves the importance of the regular season; that it preserves the unique pageantry of the bowl season; they say that college football already has a playoff, and it's called the regular season.

What they don't say is that a playoff is a less efficient and less accurate method of determining the national champion than the present system is. Maybe they should.

The idea of crowning a champion is that we want to recognize the "best" team. Underlying this definitional matter is the assumption that each year, there is one, unique, "best" team. The hard part is identifying the best team. All systems will identify the wrong team as the best occasionally; the goal should be to maximize the percentage of seasons when the correct team is identified.

A playoff has its good points in this analysis. By giving more than two teams a chance to play for the title, a playoff increases the probability that the best team will make it into the mix. But there's a countervailing concern. The more teams allowed into the playoff, the more rounds it will require; the more rounds it requires, the more likely it is that the best team will lose.

That's right, because sometimes deciding it on the field means the better team loses. According to Coleman's rankings, which minimize the number of losses by a higher ranked team to a lower ranked team, the better team lost to the worse team no less than 9.22% of the time during the 2008 regular season. It's likely though that these so-called ranking violations occur more often than strictly mathematically necessary. Massey's consensus rankings—which are more in line with popular opinion than Coleman's are—place the percentage at 18.4%.

Note also that those numbers are across all games; where the opponents are more evenly matched, as they would be in a playoff scenario, the numbers would be significantly higher. So let's say that among the top 32 teams, the weaker beats the stronger with a probability of 32%. In each round, as the competition gets stiffer, the probability that the weaker beats the stronger increases by 4%, so that in the final round, the weaker team has a 48% chance of beating the stronger team. Obviously these assumptions are simplified (especially since they ignore the effects of seeding), but they seem reasonable enough.

So now let's estimate the probability that the best team will be included among those invited to the playoffs. Here, I'll fly a little more by the seat of my pants and say that the probability that the best team is among the top 2 is 50%; the probability that it's among the top 4 is 75%; the probability that it's among the top 8 is 87.5%; and so on.

So to calculate the probability that the best team is crowned champion, we multiply the probability that it has been invited by the probability that it wins all of its games once it's there. Let's see:

2 team playoff (current system):
P = 0.5 x 0.52 = 26%

4 team playoff:
P = 0.75 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 21.84%

8 team playoff:
P = 0.875 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 15.29%

16 team playoff:
P = 0.9375 * 0.64 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 10.48%

32 team playoff
P = 0.96875 * 0.68 * 0.64 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 7.37%

Based on my numbers, which clearly are open to debate and criticism, the current system gets it right more often than any of the extended playoff scenarios, crowning the correct champion a whopping 26% of the time. (One of the interesting things revealed by this exercise is just how pathetic even the best system is in the face of a problem this intractable).

A rejoinder from the pro-playoff camp at this point might be that the point of a playoff is not to crown the "best" team, but rather to crown the team that has accomplished something great, the team that is the last one standing atop a pile of defeated contenders. A playoff is a well-honed instrument for ensuring that this is the result: at the conclusion, one entrant is undefeated, and the rest have one loss. No arguments.

But that structure is wholly artificial. We all know that it's a mathematical impossibility to answer the question "Who's the best?" by answering the question "Who beat whom?" The regular season is full of contradictions and vicious circles that have to be wrestled into submission, not casually cast aside. A playoff is a machine that is not engineered to crown the best team; it is a machine engineered to put an end to arguments, without regard for whether the champion it produces is the best team or not.

What I will say for it, though, is that it would make for quite a spectacle.

John Chavis apparently in as Defensive Coordinator at LSU

ESPN is reporting that John Chavis, formerly defensive coordinator of the Tennessee Volunteers, is likely to take over as Defensive Coordinator for the LSU Tigers next season. So here's a question for you, Sean: how is it that we didn't come up with John Chavis's name when we were listing candidates for the open position?

The Tennessee fans appear to be split concerning whether he'll be a good hire for LSU. His reputation is that he's one of the best, but there's a persistent beef with him, that he prematurely deploys a prevent defense in close games, and Vols fans are blaming this tendency for a bunch of last minute losses.

The talent level at LSU should be better than it has been at Tennessee for the past several years. I just hope he can put the fear of God into some of the LSU defenders; maybe scare them into holding on to their tackles.

Another steady current of the comments to that ESPN story is this: that it was soooo professional of Les Miles to ensure that both LSU co-defensive coordinators had found other employment before the identity of their replacement was leaked. The idea is that his dilatoriness allowed each man to walk away with his dignity. I've heard this view espoused in casual conversations with other LSU fans as well. Maybe I could stand to be more sympathetic here, but based on the performance of the LSU defense this season, and the new jobs that these two men accepted, I'd have a hard time claiming that either walked away with his dignity intact. Peveto is moving on to a head coaching position at the greener pastures of Northwestern State University in Nachitoches, Louisiana ("The City of Lights!" proclaims its water tower). NSU went 7-5 this season, 4-2 in the Southland Conference of the FCS. Mallory is off for the University of New Mexico, one of several perennial doormats of the Mountain West, though by no means the most pathetic; it went 4-8 this season, 2-6 in conference.

What I will say is that, if you are willing to credit him with it, you might see some Machiavellian shrewdness in Les Miles' much-maligned decision to go with co-defensive coordinators in 2008. By refusing to fill the position, he created a situation that was sustainable for as long as he needed it to be in order to wait for a qualified candidate. Here's hoping that John Chavis was worth the wait.