re: For those off the BK bus, what would you have preferred?

Lane kiffin

Kiffin

You’re gonna get killed for that kind of logic around here.

quote:

---

Agreed. Taking Washington to a title game doesn’t make you phenomenal. Someone else brought them to the Playoff in 2016

---

yea another phenomenal coach

I didn’t mind the idea of Lane, but I never thought it was a realistic possibility. Kelly made sense. I’m not off the train, but I’m paying attention. I thought the team played really well in some ways, but we just had a little bit of everything kinda not go our way. There like 3 fumbles we caused and didn’t come up with them and a play that could have been an interception if I remember right. It was a wierd game in my opinion. It still feels like we could have easily won. I’m not sure what to make of that yet.

quote:

---

Lincoln Riley looks pretty good about now.

---

Let’s look at Riley, Kiffin, and Kelly their first two years.

Brian Kelly
School record before hiring: 6-7 (3-5)
Record, first 2 years: 20-7 (12-4) (0.740)
Record vs. ranked* teams: 3-6 (0.333)
Record vs. top 10* teams: 2-5 (0.286)
Record vs. unranked* teams: 17-1 (0.944)
Wins:
#5 Alabama
#8 Missouri
#20 Mississippi State
Losses:
#1 Georgia
#5 Alabama
#6 Florida State
#6 Tennessee
#9 Ole Miss
#11 Florida State
NR Texas A&M

Lane Kiffin
School record before hiring: 4-8 (2-6)
Record, first 2 years**: 18-8 (10-6) (0.692)
Record vs. ranked* teams: 1-5 (0.167)
Record vs. top 10* teams: 0-3 (0.000)
Record vs. unranked* teams: 17-3 (0.850)
Wins:
#21 Arkansas
Losses:
#2 Alabama
#5 Baylor
#5 Alabama
#16 LSU
#20 Mississippi State
NR Auburn
NR Arkansas
NR Texas Tech

**I actually excluded 2020 from this and used ‘21 and ‘22 instead, to make it a fair comparison. Using 2020 would have made Lane look worse.

Lincoln Riley
School record before hiring: 4-8 (3-6)
Record, first 2 years: 19-8 (13-5) (0.704)
Record vs. ranked* teams: 5-6 (0.455)
Record vs. top 10* teams: 0-3 (0.000)
Record vs. unranked* teams: 14-2 (0.875)
Wins:
#11 Arizona
#17 Oregon State
#18 Notre Dame
#19 Louisville
#21 UCLA
Losses:
#2 Washington
#6 Oregon
#9 Tulane
#10 Utah
#10 Utah
#14 Notre Dame
NR Utah
NR UCLA

*All rankings are based on final CFP rankings for the given season.

Winning percentages for comparison:

vs. Top 10
Kelly: 0.286
Kiffin: 0.000
Riley: 0.000

vs. Ranked
Kelly: 0.333
Kiffin: 0.167
Riley: 0.455

vs. Unranked
Kelly: 0.944
Kiffin: 0.850
Riley: 0.875

You can certainly argue that Kiffin and Riley took over worse situations. However, I already spotted Kiffin a year of rebuilding in order to leave 2020 out of it.

My takeaways are:

1. Kelly’s perceived deficit in “big games” stems largely from the fact that he has played tougher competition than either of the other two coaches listed here. Almost twice as many games against opponents who finished in the top 10. I don’t think people are giving nearly enough credit to how brutal LSU’s schedule has been the past 2 years.

2. Kiffin has been the beneficiary of baby-soft schedules at Ole Miss. I said this in another thread, but I believe if Kelly and Kiffin swapped year-two schedules, LSU would have gone 11-1 and Ole Miss would have gone 8-4. But people give Kiffin more credit for going 10-2 than Kelly’s 9-3. It’s silly.

3. Riley’s win% vs. ranked opponents stems from the fact that only 3/11 games were against top-10 teams, compared to 7/9 for Kelly.

4. Kelly has been very consistent. Only one loss vs. a team that finished unranked, aTm in his first year. Have we won most of our top 10 games? No. But you need to be a consistent top 5 team if you’re going to win >50% vs. the top 10. We aren’t there yet. Meanwhile Kiffin and Riley didn’t win any of their games vs. top 10 competition.

Will Riley or Kiffin bring USC/OM to the promised land? Maybe. Who knows? But at least be objective when comparing the records.

/rant

quote:

---

quote:
6 Mike Norvell Florida State $9.8 million


Geeze

---

- right?!

something tells me Bill O'Brien isn't making that at Boston College - or Brent Key at Tech -

I think most fans were meh about kelley but his stability and floor was attractive. He just never fit in IMO. I don’t know who would of been better but I do know it should have been a younger guy.
Kiffens
Venables
Stoops

Come on now...he just looks cringe