The Best Coach in the Big Ten

The Best Coach in the Big Ten

In recent days, I have found myself spending free moments watching old TED Conference presentations on Youtube.  I found myself in such a place yesterday, watching Barry Schwartz explain why expanded choice leads not to greater freedom, but shockingly less.  He explained that choice allows us to get better things but we feel worse about them, because we wonder if another option would have made a more positive impact.  We expect perfection, and therefore our inflated expectations increase the opportunity cost of any alternative to the point that any choice will leave us unsatisfied.  In such a world, perhaps the only thing that can make us happy is delaying choices altogether.

While my introduction is more of a digression that I found interesting rather than a proper introduction, I do believe that inflated expectations cause us to despise any choice we make and immediately decide to pursue any or every other option.  Inflated expectations can cause fans of a premiere college football program to call for the firing of the greatest coach in the history of college football, during every year in which a top 20 finish is unlikely.  We are an anxious people, especially those of us who are members of the self-described “lost generation.”  We want the best and we want it now.  If Chris Peterson can win every game at Boise State, we should bring him on over to Penn State, because Joe Paterno is always losing between two and five.

Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, Joe Paterno’s record with Penn State ranks fifth in the Big Ten.  He won fifty-six of eighty-seven games for a winning percentage of 64.4%, placing the Lions behind Ohio State (84.4%), Wisconsin (68.9%), and Iowa and Michigan (both 67%).  Indeed, Lloyd Carr’s winning percentage from 2002-2007 was vastly superior to Paterno’s, and he was dismissed very publicly for his failure to win enough football games.  Penn State’s record during the seven years in the middle of the aughts was only better than Purdue (54.5%), Minnesota (52.3%), Michigan State (48.8%), Northwestern (47.7%), and Illinois and Indiana (both 32.5%).  If coaching is judged solely on the basis of wins and losses, it seems that the old coach is losing his touch, dipping into the dreaded second tier of the Big Ten. 

But, Robert Inchausti says that teaching is a profession of the sublime, and indeed college coaching is more of a sublime art than a scale in which very light wins are to tip the balance away from the heavy losses.  Every choice is accompanied by the inevitable what-if?  What if Penn State had fired Joe in 2004 after just seven wins in two years?  What if he had left after 2005?  Would Penn State have won a National Championship by now?  Frankly, if it were up to my rash friends and I, Joe would have been gone years ago.  I wrote as much in a much maligned email sent in September 2005.  Fortunately the choice did not belong to my “lost generation.”  Joe Paterno has stayed, and I can say that between 2002 and 2008, he was without question the best coach in the Big Ten.

How I Came to that Conclusion

To begin with, only three schools maintained the same coach from 2002 to 2008, Ohio State, Penn State and Iowa.  We soon see the cream rise to the crop with Coaches Tressel, Paterno and Ferentz.  Lloyd Carr would easily be among these three, had the Michigan decision makers understood that making a choice just because we feel like something is a bad fit at the moment does not make us feel more liberated, but less so.  Ask any Michigan fan if they still wish that Carr was fired in 2007, only the crazy ones will say yes.  (Then again, I’m still glad Donovan McNabb is out of Philly, and his stats tell me he was the greatest QB in the history of the organization.  All things are contradictory in some ways I suppose.  But still the NFL is different from college.  At least that’s how I rationalize this apparent contradiction.)

College football is different because of that first word, college.  Let’s not forget or be quick to forget that college is what is most important to the young men who go to these programs.  Brad Banks won the Davey O’Brien award in 2002 for best Quarterback in College.  Have you ever heard of him?  Well, he does lead the offense of a professional football team, and they play in an arena, on a fifty-yard field in Orlando.  The point is that graduating your players, even the supposed superstars, is the most important thing a coach can do, and if he wins a few championships too, that’s great.

The incoming classes from 1998 to 2003 made up the bulk of all of the teams from 2002 to 2008.  Of the students who came to Penn State to play football between 1998 and 2003, more than 81% graduated.  Penn State’s graduation rate in that time period was second in the Big Ten to Northwestern who graduated an astonishing 92.67%.  Indeed, I think that the measure of a great coach is the sum of his graduation rate and his winning percentage.  Tressell certainly has Ohio State on the right track, and you cannot blame him for the low graduation rates the first few years he was in Columbus, but the Buckeyes graduated only 56.5% of its players who came to the school between 1998 and 2003.  The Hawkeyes, on the other hand graduated 70.67% of its players.  Still, no coach can compare with Paterno’s winning and his graduation rate.  Perhaps we need to take another moment to consider the impact of his accomplishments.

Paterno’s worst incoming class from 1998 to 2003 graduated 76% of its players.  That number is higher than the average of 9 other Big Ten Schools in that same time span, and higher than the highest graduation rate in that time span of six other Big Ten Schools.  Consider this, only five schools in the Big Ten won more than 60% of their games from 2002-2008 (mentioned above), with one clear outlier being Ohio State who won more than 80%.  That means that Penn State was one of the elite teams in the Big Ten over that stretch.  With those same players, only five schools graduated more than 70%, (Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Penn State and Northwestern), with Northwestern as a clear outlier.  Iowa, Penn State and Michigan are the only teams who ranked in the top five in both categories, and Penn State’s winning percentage is nominally lower than Michigan and Iowa (3%), while their graduation rate is significantly higher (10%).  You can see the statistics below, and I won’t belabor the point.

Being a good coach is all about balancing the scale of light wins and heavy losses.  Being a great coach is a sublime art, and I hope that it is not a lost one.  As I began with thoughts from one of my recent favorite scholars, let me end with the same.  This one is from Tamba Hali, he writes:

“To be honest with you, Penn State was my worst visit.  I was pretty much bored.  But I liked it here because I wasn’t coming here to party.  I was really coming to go to school and play football.  [Coach Paterno] had a plan for every player, to put in their minds that they wanted to come here and get an education, go to classes, be a good citizen and abide by all the rules he established.”

So, please let not the choices we make limit our liberty.  Let us be proud of the old coach, and honor what he’s accomplished.  Thanks Joe, for everything!

Statistics:

Big 10:  Incoming Classes 1998-2003

Football Graduating Classes 2003- 2008

Team	Average GSR	Low GSR	High GSR
Illinois	71.333333%	67% (1999)	76% (2003)
Indiana	69.833333%	67% (2000 and 2)	77% (1999)
Iowa	70.666666%	58% (1998)	79% (2003)
Michigan State	48.5%	41% (1998)	56% (2003)
Michigan	70.833333%	68% (1998)	73% (2000)
Minnesota	49.166666%	41% (1998)	56% (2003)
Northwestern	92.666666%	91% (1999)	95% (2003)
Ohio State	56.5%	52% (2001)	63% (2003)
Penn State	81.166666%	76% (2000)	85% (2002)
Purdue	65%	70% (1998 and 2000)	59% (2002)
Wisconsin	63.833333%	67% (1998)	61% (2000)

Big Ten Records 2002-8

School	Record (’02-’08)	Best Record	Worst Record
Illinois	27 – 56 (32.5)	9-4 (2007)	1 -11 (2003)
Indiana	27 – 56 (32.5)	7-6 (2007)	2-10 (2003)
Iowa	59 – 29 (67%)	11-2 (2002 and 9)	6-7 (2006)
Michigan State	42 – 44 (48.8)	9-4 (2008)	4-8 (2002 and 6)
Michigan	59 – 29 (67)	11-2 (2006)	3-9 (2008)
Minnesota	46 – 42 (52.3)	10-3 (2003)	1-11 (2007)
Northwestern	41 – 45 (47.7)	9-4 (2008)	3-9 (2002)
Ohio State	76 – 14 (84.4)	14-0 (2002)	8-4 (2004)
Penn State	56 – 31 (64.4)	11-1 (2005)	3-9 (2003)
Purdue	48 – 40 (54.5)	9-4 (2003)	4-8 (2008)
Wisconsin	62 – 28 (68.9)	12-1 (2006)	7-6 (2003 and 8)

GSR= Graduation Success Rate