Just how do Cam Rast (Santa Clara), Paul Krumpe (LMU) and Steve Sampson (Cal Poly - SLO keep their head coaching gigs?
Incarnate Word lost their coach right before preseason (literally days before camp). Interim coach leading them through the season, tough season for them ahead. Will they hire interim coach, who's been assistant there, or will they look elsewhere. They've been ones to keep hires in-house.
Bruins Jorge Salcedo coaching seat has to be getting warm (especially following last year’s disaster of a season). But wait, Dan Guerrero is still the AD. And Cal’s Kevin Grimes perch should be if but for his scheduling this year alone! What a joke. (and his current RPI reflects it!)
This question applies for Navy, too. 1-9-1 so far this year (0-4-0 in conference), and no momentum going into their big game vs. West Point. I have to think they are looking closely at the head coach's contract after the worst year in program history in 2017 and what's shaping up to be even worse this year.
In no particular order. Some of these coaches still have jobs because the administration do not care enough about men's soccer in my opinion like South Carolina.. To be clear I'm not saying that all the schools below fit that category. Please chime in as I'm interested to hear your thoughts. South Carolina Cincinnati (2 winning seasons in the last 8 years) Cal Poly Northwestern (how are they not better!) California Loyola Marymount Santa Clara Rutgers (Donigan should be doing better there. Jersey is a hotbed for talent) UCLA seem to be doing better and should be back in the tournament once more, but does it matter?
Rutgers lost to Howard. That would have been fine in the 70s or 80s but not this century. That's not a sign of a program going in the right direction. And as noted, Rutgers has way too much talent - not to mention being close to three different MLS academies - to be this bad for this long.
Navy seems to get talent but the results do not follow. UMKC, Winthrop, and Robert Morris have been struggling for the past few seasons.
And the beat goes on with these long tenured coaches with a long history of ineptitude. Clearly the 4 year Steve Sampson experiment at Cal Poly has been an abject failure as his program is floundering in a big way And Cal’s Kevin Grimes has firmly established himself to the coaching hot seat with an absolutely abysmal season. What will this be...the 5th/6th consecutive year without a tournament appearance? Of course a late win over UCLA will probably garner him a reprieve!
Neither of these coaches are going anywhere. First the Winthrop coach is only in his 2nd or 3rd year after being a longtime assistant to a very long tenured HC (25+ yrs), he has at least a 5-6 year leash on this job. The Longwood coach has been there for 15+ years with a career record similar to his current year results. He would have been gone long ago based on results only. Not saying they should or should not keep there jobs, but history says otherwise.
So this kinda sad and depressing and telling in terms of how bad coaches are allowed to linger at college soccer programs because no one cares. There are eight D-I men's head coaches who have been at their current job since before 1991. None of them have a current RPI under 80. Only one of them has a winning record. Their average RPI is 138 and they have a combined record of 30-65-15. COACH, SCHOOL - YEAR HIRED: RPI, W-L-T Mark Berson, South Carolina – 1978: 147, 4-9-0 Shaun Green, Central Connecticut – 1985: 202, 1-11-1 Neil Roberts, Boston University – 1985: 181, 3-9-3 Ralph Lundy, Charleston – 1987: 169, 4-8-2 Ed Kelly, Boston College – 1988: 81, 4-6-3 Richard Nuttall, Hofstra – 1988: 86, 7-5-3 Tony Seltzer, Gardner-Webb – 1988: 185, 3-9-1 Michael Linenberger, Sacramento State – 1989: 146, 4-10-2 Most of these guys have probably forgotten more about soccer than I'll ever know. But, that doesn't mean the game hasn't passed them by, because it sure looks like it has for most of them. It will be interesting to see how long these dudes are allowed to hang on at their current jobs.
So, I was actually hoping to ask guys on this board about Hofstra and Nuttall today, so this post made it convenient, if not without foreboding. Met Nuttall last week. He says that they expect to be better next year--only losing one starter, I think. He's not an old guy. Mid to late 50s. The head coaching job at Hofstra must have been his first job post EPL. So anyway--how has Hoftra been in the last few years? Is a long-tenured coach all that bad? He seems genuinely interested in the players--keeps a roster of only 24.
EPL. Bwa-ha-ha! That's a good one. Dude was never an EPL player. He was never a first team player. He was an academy/reserve team player. Do the math. If he's in his 50s and he's been at Hofstra 30 years, that means he started in his mid 20s or, his physical prime. You think a first-team player walks away in his 20s to coach college soccer in America? Nuttall was fortunate that he came over here in an era where things like that were harder to verify and the people doing the hiring didn't know the difference between the reserve team and the first team so you could say "yeah, I played for Leeds" and they'd say "great, you're hired!" Having said all that, of the coaches listed above, Nuttall is actually having a decent year and winning more than he's losing. Odds are he doesn't get pushed out after this year. But, in his 30 years, he's been to the NCAA Tournament all of four times, last in 2015 (their only NCAA appearance since 2006). Given all the soccer played in Long Island and the talent in NYC and the greater Tri-State area, you'd like to think a good coach could put together teams good enough to consistently make the NCAA Tournament more than once every 7.5 years.
Fair enough. That is the information I was hoping to get. Where do you find the historical data? I have one other school for which I'd like some background.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you. It is the frustrating state of college athletics. These two, as well as other programs, are programs that could be a lot more successful. They have a good amount of scholarships, are semi affordable state schools, and can get transfers and international students. (They could learn from a school like Radford and their recent success.) You want to see these types of programs grow so that college soccer as a whole can grow and move forward.
Winthrop Soccer is just going through some hard times, which will improve as the school straightens out it’s financial situation. They have been the top program in the Big South, along with Coastal Carolina for the past 15 plus years. They have been to the NCAA Tournament 6 times during that time. They have also put 15-20 players in the pros. During this same time Radford has been to the tournament once, so they haven’t had anywhere near the success Winthrop or Coastal Carolina has had.
And fired with a year left on his contract, no less. Rutgers was willing to eat $143,000 to show him the door. https://www.nj.com/rutgers/index.ssf/2018/11/rutgers_fires_mens_soccer_coach_dan_donigan.html Given its location and conference, Rutgers shouldn't lack for quality applicants.