Intro
There are so many different types of coaches. There’s no one way to win in college football or men’s basketball, and that’s the beauty of the games.
These lists will be a mixture of football and basketball coaches used as examples. I will leave it up to you to be smart enough to parse between the two. There’s lots of examples of coaches here. Let’s get into it!
1. The Bricklayer
This type of coach may now be extinct:
Dave Doeren
The DD era is going to be judged, for better or worse, on how well the next guy does. The idea of removing a mostly 7-9-wins coach can lead to the thought, “it can always get worse.” Yes, yes it can. If the next five years are worse than the last five years, then we’ll regret it. The problem is you can’t predict the future, and you know that whatever this is isn’t working. So you turn the page. But that doesn’t invalidate what he did accomplish. Building a program brick by laborious brick over 14 years, raising the floor of the program, putting a couple dozen players in the NFL, running a tight ship, and always representing the school well are all things that shouldn’t be ignored.
He couldn’t break the 9-win glass ceiling or make it to Charlotte, but he was a coach that was well respected, and had a team we could be proud to root for. The problem was that this style of program building may now be extinct. You don’t keep guys in your program for 3-5 years anymore. The idea of turning 2-3 stars and making 5-stars/future pros out of them is a great story, but the transfer portal is about winning NOW.
The sad part is in a larger sense, what happens to those kinds of recruits? In a word, nothing. Nyheim Hines, Jalen Samuels, Bradley Chubb, Drake Thomas, just to name a few, are guys who would never sniff the NFL in today’s age where year over year player development is not the focus and it’s just about producing today. The biggest example is Thayer Thomas. The two-sport athlete chose football over baseball (also played basketball in high school), but was a walk-on in football that converted to a scholarship and eventually made it to the Denver Broncos.
Doeren gets credit for all these success stories, but those stories are ultimately not league titles, so guys like him are probably dinosaurs of a bygone era now, and that’s sad to think about. There will never be another coach at NC State that makes if 14 years.
Herb Sendek
It’s really hard being the guy after the guy, just ask Kalen DeBoer. Sendek was two coaches removed from Jimmy V, but in a lot of ways people treated Sendek like he had come just after Valvano and held him to the standard that V set. It wasn’t fair, but a big part of why this happened was he was the polar opposite personality from Valvano. He built his program his way, with his own system, a Princeton-style offense that worked like a Swiss watch when operating well, and like a Frolex when it didn’t.
His peak season was in 2004, that was his 9th year! It took him until year 6 just to make it to the NCAA tournament. Four straight NITs, then nothing, then finally the NCAA. There’s no way schools would have that much patience these days. Even NC State, which has famously been super patient with coaches, is unlikely to allow this moving forward.
He eventually jumped to greener pastures at Arizona State. NC State fans said good riddance at the time then looked back wistfully at his tenure during the dregs of the last few seasons. Funny how time works like that.
2. The veteran assistant waiting for his turn
Comes in two flavors:
The Crooner - Chuck Amato
Man, I loved this dude. He was a Jupiter-sized planet of attention. I always wonder what would have happened if he’d gotten just one more year since Russell Wilson was already committed when he was fired. But there was also rumors of NCAA issues and ultimately NC State did not want to run afoul there.
He famously (or allegedly, since many things with Amato were like tall tales) sang to Philip Rivers over the phone to convince him to retain his commitment to the Pack.
The best thing Amato did is he made NC State fans believe. We believed we had a chance to go up against anyone in the country. He turned beating then-invincible FSU into a yearly pastime, so much so that Seminoles fans believe Carter-Finley is their house of horrors to this day.
No one would have thought that someone like Mario Williams would have come to NC State, leading the Wolfpack to the best defense in the whole country. Now if they’d just been able to have that during Rivers’ senior year, things would have gone a lot differently, but it’s not like I’m still hung up on that 20 years later or anything…
The Quiet Expert: Justin Gainey
Gainey has spent the last 20 years as an assistant of various kinds, building expertise quietly while learning from greats like Rick Barnes. He was clearly brainstorming for a long time of what he’d like to do with his own team, and we now get to see the fruits of that planning. Imagine waiting 20+ years for your shot then finally getting it, it will be fascinating to see how he handles it. He started as an administrative coordinator on Sidney Lowe’s staff back in 2006, with stops at Elon, App State, Santa Clara (working for his former coach Herb Sendek), Arizona, Marquette, Tennessee, and finally NC State.
3. The ladder climber waiting for his chance to climb up to the top rung
Coaches who have been working their way up the ranks from smaller schools, to a G5 head coaching position before leap frogging to a power conference spot. This category has shown the most historical success when the coach moves up to the power conference level. It’s not up to me, but if it were, this is the category I’d select from. Lots of classic examples, here are just some recent ones:
Curt Cignetti - Obviously the one everyone points to now. It seems obvious to look back on it after he wins a championship at Indiana of all places. Almost any power conference team could have gotten him if Indiana is the one that ultimately gave him a chance.
Bob Chesney - The next Cignetti? The JMU pipeline may be real, as UCLA may be on the verge of the CFP. This is a wild sentence.
Jake Dickert - Similar to Chesney, the fact that Dickert might get Wake Forest to the CFP before NC State makes me so unbelievably sad.
PJ Fleck - Currently killing it for red-hot Minnesota. Holding all three of their rivalry trophies at once is a major accomplishment.
Jason Eck - The hot name of this year, likely to jump to the power conference level this offseason.
Dan Hurley - Rebuilt URI into an Atlantic 10 champion, then moved to UConn, where he captured multiple national championships and solidified his status as the premier face of the sport, whether we like his face or not.
Dusty May - Guided FAU on a miraculous Final Four run, which immediately launched him to Michigan and then leading them to a national championship. Yes, he left them high and dry by subsequently pivoting to the NBA, but still, a chip is a chip (unless you’re Louisville).
Ryan Odom - Successful stops at UMBC, Utah State, and VCU before jumping to UVA. At UMBC, he led the first 16-seed to be a 1-seed in a win over his future employer Wahoos. Remember a time when it came down to Odom and Will Wade and NC State fans said nahhh, we think Odom is too boring, we want the guy who’s made a career out of skirting all the rules but we believe all bad behavior is surely in his past?? No, I don’t remember that either.
4. The been around the block retread
Coaches that may be past their prime yet won’t hang it up, and keep getting at-bats
1. Bobby Petrino - The consummate interim head coach.
2. Mack Brown - UNC tried, and had a flash in the pan, but couldn’t lay those bricks like Doeren.
3. Dan Mullen - While I do feel he was unfairly fired from Florida (got the Bo Pelino treatment), he’s long in the tooth now.
4. Bahgawd, is that Jimbo Fisher’s music?!?!? (FSU hiring this has-been would so on brand and the funniest thing ever)
5. The “he was successful here as a player so for sure he’ll be able to be successful years later as a coach!!”
This one will touch some nerves, but it’s okay we can get through it together. I’m going to be honest, the history of these hires is littered with examples of times when it did NOT go well. There really are not any examples I can find of this type of hire actually working out. So, buyer beware, I guess.
Philip Rivers
The elephant in the room. I’m trying not to be too much of a Debbie Downer with this potential hire. I really just think it has a “jingling keys” or “silver dollar” (better than a shiny penny) affect, where it will surely lead to an initial excitement and injection of cash into the program. But questions abound. What does he know about putting together a staff, or navigating the modern era of NIL and the portal? Those things didn’t exist during his playing years. What connections does he have around the coaching world to bring in experienced assistants, specifically at the college level?
Don’t get me wrong, I was in the stands for Rivers’ whole tenure at NC State. He is the goat player of the last quarter century, he absolutely loves the game of football and would be able to be a quick study of the X’s and O’s side of it, but does that mean he can run a program? The job of power conference head coach is so much more involved that it was during the Amato era.
Would he bring excitement? Almost assuredly. But similar to Mack Brown above, is a flash in the pan worth the effort? You don’t know what you don’t know, so how much patience will everyone have while he learns on the job.
I would love to be wrong, but history has precedents for a reason.
DeShaun Foster
The anti-Chesney? He was put in an impossible situation after Chip Kelly left to be Ohio State’s offensive coordinator in 2024 after the transfer portal had already closed. He was a promoted running backs coach with no head coaching experience.
He did his best to band-aid the roster, but limped to a 5-10 record, getting fired after an 0-3 start in just his second season. Folks thought that because he was a legend at the school it would drive NIL donations and lead to success. This kinda happened, but the on-field product couldn’t keep up while Foster was learning the job in real time.
Deion Sanders
At lease Prime had head coaching experience at Jackson State before jumping to Colorado.
Worked great when his sons and Travis Hunter (just the best two-way player the sport has seen since, well, Deion Sanders) were on the team.
Not working so great now, and Sanders might be unemployed soon. They tried really hard to support him with a lot of funding, but it takes more than money to pull the Buffs out from the bottom tier of power conference teams.
Jeff Brohm
Jury is still out on whether this was a good hire for Louisville. He’s a legend at the school, and felt like a coup since he had Purdue competing in the Big Ten way above historical average. But at Louisville, he made it to the ACC championship game in 2023. He followed that up with an 8-4 season.
Then, his Cardinals started 7-1 and limped to a 9-4 record with a Boca Raton Bowl win vs Toledo. Some might say he hasn’t broken through despite a trove of NIL funding. It’s all very odd, and rings very similar to the Dave Doeren tenure for how you grade a coach and consider what is the definition of a “good season.” You’d think his path would be cleaner in the ACC than in the Big Ten, so it’s unclear why he hasn’t found the same success he had in year 1 other than that year having a pillow soft schedule.
This year, they’re likely headed to 8 wins. They’re not bad, but they also lost to NC State (lol). If you’re a Louisville booster who’s put tons of money into the program, how do you define whether that’s good enough? Three seasons with 10 wins, 9 wins, 8 wins…My guess he gets one more year to prove it or lose it.
Scott Frost
A legend at Nebraska, playing under legendary coach Tom Osborne. In two seasons at QB, he was 11-2 and 13-0, the latter season ending with a 1998 Orange Bowl victory leading the #1 Cornhuskers over Peyton Manning’s Tennessee. This led them to claim a share of the national championship. What is this idea of a “shared national championship”. Well, ask your dad, he’d love to explain it to you.
As a coach, he turned UCF into a surprising power house (or Bounce House), and in 2017 went 13-0 and claiming an NCAA-recognized national championship (no, really).
Nebraska is the ultimate cautionary tale of, “it can always get worse.” In seven years, Bo Pelini never won less than 9 games, winning 10 three times. But it felt like there was this ceiling he couldn’t break through. Sound familiar? So they fired him because they felt like Nebraska had a “higher standard”, and expected to be competing for national championships, not the Holiday Bowl.
Naturally, Scott Frost’s alma mater came calling as they were desperate to return to their former glory. What better way than with the guy who won it as a player and then again at UCF? And this is where the prodigal son fallacy comes full bore. In four full seasons, his win totals were 4, 5, 3, and 3. They learned real fast, and are still learning, that sometimes it isn’t better to chase away a good thing just because you think you can do better.
He has since gone back to UCF and is working on recapturing that old magic, peaking with a huge win vs then-#2 BYU recently.
Trent Dilfer
The former UAB star came back to his alma mater, jumping straight from high school (sound familiar?).
His win totals were 4, 3, 2 (fired after six games in year 3).
Robert Griffin III???
Still not sure what to make of this. He’s openly lobbying to take the job at Baylor. He has zero coaching experience, and is just hoping his Heisman trophy and years as a broadcaster can somehow propel him to success as a power conference head coach? I don’t get it.
Part of me thinks this is a ploy to get the ultimate retirement package, being fired from a head coaching job. Getting paid millions of dollars to simply go away is like a lottery ticket, where do I sign up?
(checks notes…) Russell Wilson?????
This one is a joke, is most likely not serious. But it makes NC State look silly and not a serious program if you’re primary candidates have qualifications simply that you played QB here.
I’m not sure how much better than Dave Doeren NC State can realistically do, but it’s better than this.
Conclusion
In the end, what did we learn? I’m sorry, but hiring a high school coach doesn’t bode well for success, even if he’s a legend. Ultimately, there’s lots of ways to put together a successful program, and I would love to be wrong.
What do you think? Am I far off base? Who are some coaches I missed? Who would YOU like to see coaching NC State??
Philip knows what he doesn’t know! Worth the chance!!
Phillip Rivers is my top choice.