What are the characteristics of a success Power Five coaching hire? The recent past points the way
The four traits of the best hires
Looking at the broader takeaways from Power Five hires during this span yields four traits that bode well for a coach's tenure:
The hire comes with multiple years of Power Five experience. With the exception of Klieman and Leipold, every successful coach hired from 2018-21 brought Power Five experience to his new position. Even those successful coaches hired away from the Group of Five were deeply familiar with the Power Five landscape: Kiffin was the head coach at Southern California and Tennessee, Norvell was the offensive coordinator at Arizona State, and Heupel was the coordinator at Oklahoma and Missouri.
The coach leans older, or at least above that 45-year-old benchmark.While age is not the determining factor — just look at Day, Smith, Beamer and others — the numbers favor the older crowd, following the obvious conclusion that more experience is better than, well, less.
He has a background on offense. There is no more obvious predictor than whether the coach arrives with an expertise on offense or defense.
He has some sort of prior acquaintance with the program, or at least within the conference. As outlined, more than half of the 15 coaches who previously worked at the program have put together winning tenures. That percentage increases when you include new hires who have spent time in the same conference. Of the 19 successful hires between 2018-21, a total of 13 (68.4%) meet this criteria.
…there have been 28 hires of coaches with an offensive background, a reflection of college football's evolution into an offense-driven sport. Fourteen of these hires have worked out, including seven coaches with teams currently ranked in the USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll: Day, Heupel, Norvell, Oregon State's Jonathan Smith, Kelly, Texas' Steve Sarkisian and Leach.