Bobby Pope: Coaching not a long-term deal
Frank Beamer is stepping down as the football head coach at Virginia Tech this year after 29 seasons in that position. In today's football world, Beamer would be classified as a dinosaur.
He was by far the longest-tenured head coach of the 128 men in the FBS who roamed the sidelines this past fall. Kansas State's Bill Snyder, with 24 years as head of the Wildcats, will now have the longest tenure, but his service spans two different periods. He held the top job at K-State from 1989 until 2005 and then took over again in 2009 and still is on the job today at age 76.
There was a time that it was common for a head coach to stay at the same school for 20-plus years, but that is not the case now. Joe Paterno was at Penn State for 46 seasons, Bobby Bowden at Florida State for 34, Woody Hayes 28 at Ohio State. Alabama's Paul "Bear" Bryant, Auburn's Ralph "Shug" Jordan, Georgia's Vince Dooley and Mississippi's Johnny Vaught all were at their respective institutions for 25 years, and Darrell Royal at Texas and Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech were at their schools 22 years apiece.
There are two head coaches who probably will reach the 20-year mark at the same school, but with the volatility in the coaching profession that is not a given. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz and Oklahoma's Bob Stoops are now finishing up their 17th seasons, and both appear to have quite a few good coaching years remaining. Ferentz is 60, and Stoops is 55. They are the only two head coaches remaining in the FBS to be hired to their current jobs in the 1990s.
Mark Richt and Gary Pinkel were the longest tenured coaches in the SEC during the 2015 season with 15 years of service each, but as we know Georgia fired Richt following the regular season and Pinkel stepped down at Missouri due to health issues. Richt pointed out in his exit news conference that 15 years at a school was a long time. Will Richt be at Miami for 15 years?
Les Miles of LSU now assumes the title of dean of head coaches in the SEC, but in late November it appeared he wouldn't be around for another season after the Tigers dropped three straight games. He survived after beating Texas A&M in the regular-season finale.
There are only two other head coaches in that conference with more than six years at the same school: Nick Saban at Alabama, who has been with the Crimson Tide since 2007, and Dan Mullen at Mississippi State, who took over the Bulldogs in 2009.
Since Saban took the Alabama job, there have been 24 head coaching changes in the SEC.
With Beamer's departure at Virginia Tech, that leaves Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech, David Cutcliffe at Duke and Dabo Swinney at Clemson as the longest-standing head coaches in the ACC. All took over their jobs in 2008.
From 1904 through the 1966 season, Georgia Tech had just three different head coaches. They were John Heisman, for whom the famed trophy is named, who was at Georgia Tech from 1909 through 1919, William Alexander from 1920 through 1944 and Bobby Dodd from 1945 through 1966. Since 1967, the Yellow Jackets have had nine different head coaches whose average stay in Atlanta was 5.2 years, and that includes Johnson, who has been there eight seasons.
Of the 128 FBS schools, 107 have had head coaching changes (some more than one) since 2010, with 21 new ones coming in 2016. There have been 55 head coaching changes since the 2014 season.
College football coaches make big time bucks today, but if you don't win, and I mean win the right games, as Richt will attest, you can be without a job. The old expression that coaches are hired to be fired has never been more true than in today's "You have to win now" environment.
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com
This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 8:49 PM with the headline "Bobby Pope: Coaching not a long-term deal ."