As you certainly know and support, records need to be related to the situation. One would expect any coach to have a winning record at UCLA or Stanford. The bigger question is, did the coach move the program forward, backward or keep it steady.
Mark Carr (USF) Wins/loss/ties and then W/L/T in conference (conference finish at the end) 2007 Mark Carr 2 13 3 2 5 0 7th 2008 Mark Carr 5 13 2 0 7 0 8th 2009 Mark Carr 7 7 5 1 6 0 t-7th 2010 Mark Carr 5 13 2 1 4 2 8th 2011 Mark Carr 6 14 0 2 6 0 6th He was the least successful coach in USF history Brown took over a very unsuccessful program. They had not had a winning record in conference games since 2000. She went 3-1-5 this year.
That is a poor record! Carr seemed to be a contentious hire on this forum and I think this shows why.
Sure. But his last year at USF he won more games than the new Penn coach did her last year at Holy across. Both of them falling under lucky stars for differing reasons. Both bad hires.
Easy Chris Kouns - Fired at University of Cincinnati goes to Capital University D3 Todd Clark - fired from Campbell University goes to Barton College D2 - wins enough to get back to D1 even. Julie Carlson - fired from Jacksonville University to Anderson College D2. Point is all struggled at some point in the D1 careers and lost their job. Go to lower division and rebuilt their career.
An Ivy League job is a coveted position. In women's soccer there are 8 conferences that really stand out: the Ivy's, any Power 5, the WCC, and the Big East. Should be a high standard to get one of those 92 head coach positions. Penn fell woefully short here. 17-37-14. No need to spin it any other way, CB went 17-37-14 at Holy Cross. Out of 68 games, she won 17, so just 25% of her matches. I would give her a pass in her first year but not much changed after that. A record of 17-37-14 over four years is what you would expect to get fired for, not get promoted to a job that probably pays over $100K to a higher conference. Par for women's soccer hires this year. If this was Penn's best option for a hire then shame on them for not putting together a better candidate pool and generating more interest, especially if they had a soccer person on their admin. 17-37-14. Doubt you will see that record being listed when Penn makes the official announcement on their end. Competitive Ivy League programs like Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Brown have to enjoy this. Cornell doesn't do a real process and just hires their assistant (with no head coach experience) like they did last time, Yale also hires a coach with no head coach experience (although can understand why in that situation), and now Penn AD Grace Calhoun and administrator Scott Ward make this Casey Brown hire. The LSU hire easily takes the cake for worst hire this past hiring cycle. Next in line though would be this Penn hire, along with UNLV, Colgate, and Cornell, plus the Kentucky extension. Debacles abound.
I know a few coaches who moved up to D1 and after a few years, dropped back down to where they were more effective. There is something about "fit" or timing I guess as well as competence. Google 'peter principle'. I think the point is, Penn is a different level in many ways than Holy Cross. It could work out but I don't know this coach at all. But there is No Question that some of these are gender hires. I've been told directly by AD's or committee members over the years that 'we need a female' for this position. One of those schools is now on their 5th young female head coach in about 15 years and had one winning season all that time. Most of those coaches did not benefit from that experience in their careers. That is, they flamed out of college coaching and went to club or hs coaching or teaching. The peter principle.
Actually she won more conference games than he did in their last seasons, and she had an overall winning record (5-4-8), unlike he did (6-14).
Is Penn really a coveted job though? I know Ivy is prestige but they cannot offer scholarships, so it is a different kind of bird. And, I don't know a lot of people clamoring on moving to Pennsylvania. I am sure it is a fine location, but without ties there, I don't think it is a place people race to move to.
Hold on, now. Chris kouns was hired as an assistant to Michelle Salmon at Cincinnati. He wasn’t head coach or fired, she was. He spent three years at Capital, then five years at Georgia Gwinnett where he went 54-33-7 before he was let go there with a “ we thank him for his time” ( direct quote) from the AD. His successor won naia championships the next three years. he was a head coach at Jacksonville before Julie Carlson. I don’t believe his rebuilt career includes a current ncaa gig. I see a Chris Kouns linked in entry in a position doing executive searches. Is that him? Looks like it. Clark owns a 189-149-32 mark in his four stops at Malone, Campbell, Barton and Canisius. His best stint seems to be at naia Malone, which stared him on his journey. He may be your best example, but it’s hardly a ball of fire rebuilt career. He just bounces around. He hasn’t had a winning season in his five years at canisius. Julie Carlson is another Jacksonville ex coach from a program that might have the worst support in D1. Its hard not to be better no matter where you go. She was a volunteer assistant for 2 years at Clemson before she signed on at Anderson.She manage 15 wins and 15 losses in her two years at Anderson university.. She went 9-6-2 and 6-9-2 and (was?) moved on. Clemson lists her present gig as director of soccer operations there. That isn’t a coaching position at all. Hardly a rebuilt coaching career.
A quick google search will tell you that Julie Carlson coached at Jacksonville State in Alabama. Not at Jacksonville in Florida.
I think the reason a coach would want that position is because it’s attractive from an academic standpoint, and the last two head coaches have gone onto great jobs after so it’s a string stepping stone. But agreed people probably aren’t desperate to live there. I personally don’t mind Philly but there are definitely more appealing spots.
Agree with this. Some are definitely chosen with additional weight placed on their gender. Another perspective to all this back and forth about success(wins)/failure(losses) comes from Taleb: Fooled by Randomness "Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure." Neither side of the debate takes into account how RANDOM things really are.
Excellent. Normally, I do take randomness into account, which is why I revert to long term stats and trends most of the time. On the Brown hire at Penn (assuming it's actually happening), one of the problems with looking at Holy Cross's 2nd place finish last year is that it could have been an outlier (random) season. Or, maybe not. Since she got COY, the other coaches apparently didn't think so, but maybe they think they saw something that really was just randomness at work. There should be no question, however, that how individual teams do from year to year is highly variable except for very small groups at the top and bottom.
Not sure about 'random' exactly. The "Entropy Effect" in college hiring? I mean if you could easily predict competitive sports, who would care about it? I think the biggest thing very many folks misunderstand in this process is who starts in the applicant pool. Unless you're on the committee, you don't see the resumes that come in. You also don't know what directives are given the committee. That is, how aggressive the school (via committee) will be to get folks into the pool. Its hard to really judge a hire if you don't know all those that actually applied and met the criteria. For example, at Penn, how many females were in the pool with successful D1 head coaching experience? Assuming they wanted a female, and consider the Patriot COY "successful", they may have gotten the best candidate who wanted the job at the salary range offered that remained in the pool. If Brown met the hiring criteria and had a decent interview, I don't think you can just declare a failed search if you thought you could have done better. It's too late. You should have done better getting apps into the pool. Should Penn, or any school, have worked harder to encourage better applicants? Certainly can be critical of that in any hire. BTW - I would view Penn as a great place to coach. Its the Ivy League for God's sake so the school recruits for you. You just need a few better "Ivy kids" than the other Ivys. It's a place a decent coach could grow old working with great kids. Plus you get some Sundays off.
Ok, she was .500 there, then, and let go after 2 years. The point is her resurrected coaching career involves no coaching of players. She is now director of soccer operations at Clemson, things like making sure the plane flights are booked. I just don’t see that dropping down a division is a normal parth to resurrecting careers. Coaches who struggle are going to struggle at lower divisions just as often as not with the reduced resources. I’m sure if you hunt enough somebody will find three coaches, but the first attempt here is pretty suspect from the person making the claim. It’s tougher than just speculating.
Eddie K, appreciate your insight and your method of how Penn may have looked at that hire. I do know of a couple applicants that didn't get an interview there that would have been on paper far better hires, one male and one female. Penn could have gone through the process and if they saw their best candidate was someone that went 17-37-14 their AD Calhoun and sports admin Ward could have said at that point it's not good enough, we need to do better and let's give it another shot before settling. They could have put more work and research into this to attract a better pool and reached out to other admins & coaches. They could have contacted head coaches with better resumes and experience from other mid-major conferences. It's a lackluster hire any way you look at it. 17-37-14 is what they settled for to bring in. Just my thoughts. And yes, agree with you it is a sought-after position. A lot of parents and kids want an Ivy League education and are willing to pay the $ for it. Think of how many club players go to expensive private schools, or to good public schools in expensive areas. Families need to have disposable income to pay club fees for ECNL and DA and most of them will definitely have money to pay for top-level education. These families have $ and would absolutely send their daughter to an Ivy. And they can get their daughter in as a recruited soccer player with somewhat lesser academic credentials to an Ivy than a regular student. The parents don't give a care on if the daughter wins an Ivy League championship or not but do care that they'll get an Ivy League education on their resume. As an Ivy head coach you would be able to recruit very good players on a national level plus also have a better work-life balance with less demands in the spring. 17-37-14, with an overall Patriot League losing record too. They settled for mediocrity.
https://pennathletics.com/news/2020...glas-n-brush-head-coach-of-womens-soccer.aspx When will a school do a press release with the truth. Our top candidates either weren't interested or said no in the interview process, soooo this is what we were left with and she said yes. Also we wanted a women, so we'd say yes to near enough any women that would say yes to us. (Yes I know that's completely sexist, but really I don't care at all).
Hey Chris, why not post the Oklahoma press release that does not even acknowledge Mark Carr's USF record other than the saying he worked there for x years. But that would counter your sexism narrative because Carr is a male. "He was also head coach of the University of San Francisco's women's team from the 2007 through 2011 seasons." https://soonersports.com/news/2019/12/21/ou-hires-mark-carr-as-head-soccer-coach.aspx
Mark Carr's youth World Cup isn't much better than his college record. So can't get past the group stages of youth world cup with the best players in the country but lets give him a power 5 head coaching job. Mark Carr coaching ability is 100% laughable (which he clearly hasn't noticed). But the people at Oklahoma just saw youth national team coach plus it's nice to have Jill Ellis call the AD for you too. I'm way more against terrible coaches who can't coach than I am against women.
Yeah but at least give them some credit for looking, and hiring someone from outside, unlike every other Ivy schools who just promotes their assistants because they clearly don’t care
I would also add that having the “best season in more than two decades” at a particular program is not insignificant. Neither is being named coach of the year of your league, especially when you don’t win the conference. If that’s so insignificant, coaches wouldn’t often times receive bonuses for them.
Should state: “We don’t care about our women’s soccer team, their success on the field of play, or the program in general. We just wanted to hire a female for the job.”
I’m not hear to argue gender bias or defend any hire, but I think there’s a lot more to caring for a program than wins and losses. Not that anyone wants to be a part of a losing program or culture but saying that a coach being hired with a losing record shows they don’t care about their program isn’t necessarily true. Are wins and losses a big part of the puzzle? Sure. But not the only piece. Just think some of these generalizations are overstated and reaching. Disagreeing with her hire because she has a bad record is totally enough without discrediting yourself by claiming to know how her former players felt she cared for the program when you don’t. Or the experience they had. Or implying a female with a poorer record (especially at an inferior school) can’t care about a program or impact a program like a male can. Or anyone at a lower level school, for that matter. Rebuilding programs that experience some of their best seasons in recent memory can be some of the most fun to be a part of, next to winning a title.