Examining the year three dynamic
SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS FOOTBALL
Nobody, nothing, does narratives like college football.
It's difficult to pin down when this particular one spawned, but somewhere along the way the theory began to proliferate that college football fans and administrators should see which direction their respective program is heading in a head coach's third season at the helm. And of course, there are two primary means by which to measure this: win totals and recruiting.
With South Carolina coach Will Muschamp in the midst of his third season in Columbia, one that has the team sitting at 3-3 right now, GamecockCentral.com decided to actually examine this narrative.
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To do so, we looked back at the track records of many big-name and high-level coaches both in past and current tenure to dive into the data points. What we found was quite interesting. What we discovered was that in fact, the third year was sometimes one in which elite-level coaches saw slippage in their program's efforts in terms of wins and losses. And behind the scenes, those same programs were building towards something much greater.
Some had their worst seasons in year three and ended up achieving excellence. Other data showed that even the best programs fluctuate - sometimes dramatically - during a coach's time.
Mostly, it showed that there's a lot more behind the curtain than wins and losses. Let's take a closer look:
In 2000, Michigan State coach Nick Saban (34-24 at that program) took over an LSU program that had begun to seriously falter under Gerry DiNardo. The Tigers slipped to 4-7 and 2-8 prior to DiNardo getting the boot after 10 games in 1999. Saban was able to go 8-4 and 10-3 (with a conference title) in his first two seasons. His third year was his worst, at 8-5 with a 5-3 conference record. The Tigers won a national title in year four, with one Will Muschamp as the team's defensive coordinator.
Dan Mullen has been lauded for his work at Mississippi State and in getting Florida back on track in his first year in Gainesville. At Mississippi State, Mullen went 7-6 (2-6 in conference) in his third year. That was one season after winning nine games. His best season in Starkville would come three seasons later. It's almost universally believed that Mullen maximized his resources at State in the meat grinder that is the SEC West.
Maybe Gamecock fans will want to turn away for this one, but the cold and hard facts are that Dabo Swinney has built a consistent winner up in Clemson. And the Tigers' recent success could have even the most fervent of Clemson fans forgetting some of the potholes in the road that ultimately led to this path of success.
Maybe we're cheating a bit on this, since we're counting Swinney's "first season" as the 7 games he coached as the Tigers' interim in 2008. He did still make his mark quickly on the program with some staffing changes and other moves. In 2010, the third year under Swinney going by that metric, Clemson went 6-7. Following that campaign, the Tigers' recruiting began to take off and the team has not won less than 10 games since. A painful five game losing streak to South Carolina was planted in the middle of it, but Clemson has turned the tables there and now has a national championship to its credit. It's a far cry from several years ago, when many both inside Clemson and outside wondered if Swinney was the right guy for the job.
Many Missouri fans wish Gary Pinkel was back in "the other Columbia" right now. His worst season at Toledo was in year three. At Missouri, he won 8 games in his third year after a losing record his first two. The team meddled for a while, and then Pinkel's teams reeled off five divisional titles (tied for first or outright) from 2007-2014. That included more SEC title game appearances than the Gamecocks, in the midst of USC football's best years to date.
The Gamecocks' coach during that time? That would be one Steve Spurrier, whose worst seasons at both Florida and South Carolina were in year three. He won a national title in Gainesville and multiple conference championships on his way to becoming one of the most famous coaches in football history. Florida was not much before he arrived, and South Carolina did not have a lot of consequence in the trophy cases. He took South Carolina to its greatest heights, with some of the most memorable moments in history. Let us not forget there were plenty of documented bumps in the road along the way to get there.
Any USC fan will recall that, as revered as Spurrier was, there were plenty of questions about whether or not even he could win in Columbia. It took Spurrier six seasons to reach the nine-win plateau at Carolina.
It can also be seen that a coach's tenure from one school stop to another is not always a mirror, and that some of the country's most prolific programs have had head-scratching seasons in the middle of lengthy pockets of winning.
Bret Bielema had a largely successful tenure at Wisconsin, with nearly 70 wins and a bunch of top 25 finishes in the coaches poll. His worst season in Madison was year three. After moving to Arkansas, his best season was his third. Two seasons later, he was fired.
Jimbo Fisher (at FSU), James Franklin (at Vanderbilt and Penn State), Chris Petersen (Washington) and Jim Harbaugh at Stanford all improved their win totals from first season to third. Fisher's program ended up winning a national title, then slipped. Harbaugh improved at Stanford year over year, but his "worst" season at Michigan so far was in year three.
At Michigan State, Mark Dantonio's record went from 7 wins/9 wins/6 wins in his first three seasons. He then won 11 in back-to-back years, slipped back to 7, then won the division in 2013, starting a string of double-digit win seasons. The Spartans achieved the College Football Playoff in 2015. The next season was a 3-win campaign, then a rebound year with 10 wins.
Gary Patterson of TCU is widely regarded as one of the top coaches in the country, and has come up for almost any big job that opens over the years. Patterson's third season went against the grain by winning 11 games. Then the team slipped to 5-6, before reeling off double digit wins in the next six seasons. That time period produced one undefeated season in 2010. Times were good.
Then things seemed to come apart in Fort Worth with a 7-6 season in 2012 and a painful 4-8 in 2013. Patterson went 12-1 the following year.
If these statistics show us anything, it's that sometimes win and loss totals do not frame the entire picture of a program from a long term perspective. It also shows that it's going to be near impossible for programs to establish a college football dynasty, as much as every fan base wants to achieve it.
Put in simple terms: it's hard to win. It's even more difficult to win consistently. None of that means that Gamecock coaches, players, administrators, or fans should throw their hands up and be satisfied with the status quo, or give up on building a dominant winner. That does not mean what happens on the field and in the program is immune from criticism. What it does mean is you have to know where you are to be able to see where you're going.
Let's not pretend that Will Muschamp was handed the keys to a powerhouse. Muschamp not only took over at South Carolina, he took over a Gamecock program that was reeling, behind in facilities and recruiting operation, and at the same time its two biggest rivals both in and out of conference were beginning to roll.
This was a long-term reclamation project, and the fact that USC overachieved in years one and two does not change that. The data laid out here shows that for the most part, programs don't just follow an upward curve each year and then stay there perennially. It did not happen at many of the big name programs instantly and South Carolina does not have the tradition or trophy case of any other program discussed above.
South Carolina's relationship with football is unique. It's complicated. The path we keep referencing? USC's is much more rocky than most. Will Muschamp is trying to establish some order, stability, and normalcy, and he probably deserves time - a lot of it - to accomplish that feat. This is the first time in the program's history that the administration has made a serious investment in football. Recruiting has been brought into the 21st century in part by savvy decisions like expanding the video team, to become one of the best in the country, but also by rudimentary exercises like actually evaluating prospects at summer camp.
It's OK to question why South Carolina has not acquitted itself better in certain games regardless of circumstance, or why the Gamecocks have not gotten over the hump with more than one top 25 win yet. It's fair to believe that Will Muschamp would have been better served instantly going another direction on offense upon taking the job, since Kurt Roper was out after two unsuccessful offensive seasons at USC.
All those things, and plenty of others, are fair. What is not fair is to assume that the Gamecocks' record should only go up, all the time, or that what we've seen on the field as absolutely the best it can get under Muschamp. Because history shows that many other programs that have been much better in the past, with multiple championships to their credit, have not even done that. It's OK to want to get there, and frankly, there's no reason USC cannot. There just needs to be a recognition that it will take time, and that there is often more to a build than meets the casual eye.
Coming off a three-win season, Muschamp put together his first recruiting class in two months. The 2017 and 2018 crops were not without misses, but built upon the first group and saw USC bring in some talented players. The 2019 crop features the highest-ranked quarterback prospect in school history (from California)and Muschamp's first five-star signee (from Clemson and Georgia's back yard), among others.
Even the best have failed on the way to a title, which is South Carolina's ultimate goal. So there have been failures, and there will be more. Yet whether it's on the field or in recruiting, perhaps it's a novel concept to believe that things could actually get better in the future instead of worse.
A little perspective can go a long way.
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