(Long) Is the “Orgeron method” the future of head coaching hires?

Let me preface this by saying that Alleva absolutely backed into the Orgeron hire working out as well as it has so far after missing on literally everyone that he wanted, but could an Orgeron-style hire be the safest, most consistent way to go about a head coaching hire in the current college landscape?

I was watching football all day Saturday and couldn’t help but see extremely mixed results from high-dollar superstar hire guys like Chip Kelly, Jimbo Fisher, James Franklin, Urban Meyer, Tom Herman, etc. and I was thinking of reasons why some of them are succeeding while others are generally looking like shite or flat out underperforming while Ed Orgeron is killing it, and I really don’t think that the current state of college football is conducive to spending $8MM/year on a head coach.

The game has gotten to a point that you can have 37 analysts doing what used to be arguably the HC’s most important job- overseeing game planning and analyzing opposing teams. Pair that with the recent superinflated prices for a high-tier head coach, and you’re basically spending $5,000,000+ extra per year on a glorified administrator who may or may not have massive ego problems.

I honestly think that starting in the last decade, investing in having elite position coaches and coordinators is far more important and money-efficient than having a head coach to basically be an extra OC or DC, and having the extra money that we saved on Orgeron’s salary to dole out to guys like Aranda, Craig, Sullivan, and McMahon is huge. Having Jimbo, Herman, or anyone not named Nick Saban for $6MM/year or more would NOT be a good hypothetical trade for those 4 guys if we lost them due to overpaying for, say, Jimbo, and got stuck with lesser coordinators and position coaches.

SUMMARY: We can hire analysts and superstar coordinators to do the head coach’s job so it’s pointless to spend 8 times more than an elite coordinator’s salary, or 16 times more than an elite position coach’s salary, on a high-tier-but-not-homerun X’s and O’s HC when you can instead get a guy who’s an elite motivator, recruiter, and has the ability and knowledge to give structure to the program and lock down an important position like the D-line or O-line, and I think that a lot of programs lately are screwing themselves by going all out financially on a HC and having to get crappy bargain bin coordinators because they run out of money on the HC’s salary.


Curious to hear everyone else’s opinion on this. Burrow’s interview comments about analysts really got me thinking about it again today