Between the slew of firings across college football and the emotional whiplash of the final five games of last year, I’ve been pondering what it would take for a head football coach to be fired from Ohio State. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Buckeye coach lose his job for on-field performance. Meyer, Tressel, and Woody all famously departed for off-field issues, and while we should all be grateful that Fickell didn’t shed his “interim” label at the end of 2011, it would be a stretch to say he was “fired”.
In the “Gold Pants” era, Buckeye teams have been defined by how they achieve three main goals:
1) Beat the team up north
2) Win the Big Ten
3) Win the National Championship
How much weight you give to each of those is a matter of personal preference, and could be debated endlessly. We’ll save that for another day. The playoff era throws another wrinkle into the equation, namely that those goals do not necessarily have to be accomplished in sequence anymore, and are more independent of each other than they have ever been.
I have attempted to quantify those stated team goals as a success percentage and charted them against each coach’s overall win percentage below. A perfect coach who wins all his games and every national title would be at the far upper right of the graph, while a coach who loses every game and fails to meet any team goal would be at the bottom left. An otherwise great team who underachieves when a team goal is on the line would be at the lower right, while a theoretical overachiever (including the hypothetical 1-11 team who beats M!ch!g@n or a technically possible sub-500 team who wins the conference and makes a playoff run) would live in the middle to upper left.
In an effort to define what makes a coach fireable at Ohio State, I’ve included two additional data points: Earle Bruce’s record the day he was fired (before the M!ch!g@n game) and Day’s record before last year’s CFP run. These struck me as relevant because Bruce represents a coach who is generally well thought of among fans today despite being fired, and Day (at that moment in time) was well-documented as having the opposite problem.
Broadly speaking, it seems like Ohio State coaches get into trouble when the sum of their win percentage and percentage of goals achieved dips below 1. Coaches who keep their win percentage above .750 and average at least 1/3 of their team goals over their tenure are going to stay very comfortable, while anyone below the line formed by the red dots is likely on the hot seat. Interestingly, Paul Brown is below the line, but is still honored with his name on the stadium. Exceptions are clearly available for world wars, short tenures, and contributions to professional sports in Ohio.
