Speak With Data

Earlier in the silly season  coaching search, the top two coaching candidates floated by Purdue's fan base were Western Michigan's P.J. Fleck and former LSU head coach Les Miles. In recent days, it has appeared neither may end up in West Lafayette. Yesterday, news-ish broke-ish that a deal was done-ish with Purdue and current Western Kentucky head coach Jeff Brohm.  Western Kentucky was revealed to be beginning its own coach search, while coach without an agent Jeff Brohm stated no deal existed and he would not think about future plans until after the C-USA championship game today. Another name floated was current Air Force Academy head coach Troy Calhoun. Which are two odd choices when considered together; at Air Force Calhoun ran a run-heavy option offense (although he has experience coaching quarterbacks in the NFL under Gary Kubiak) and Brohm's offense at WKU was a pass-oriented spread offense. Using the same methods I used to look at Purdue's last few coaches , I

With last Saturday's loss in the Bucket Game against IU, the Darrell Hazell era at Purdue is over (well, yes he was fired mid-season, but since interim coach was assistant Gerad Parker I would consider it a continuation). Hazell, much like predecessor Danny Hope, was fired for a lack of on-field success. Hazell was hired to re-energize a program lacking direction during the Hope era, and potentially return to the success of Joe Tiller's early years. While it is obvious that Hazell failed in those goals, what is the magnitude of that failure? I'm going to look at two factors: recruiting (using recruiting ratings from Rivals) and on-field success (using Football Outsider's S&P+, which is an opponent adjusted metric calculated for offense, defense, and special teams reflecting efficiency, explosiveness, field position, and finishing drives ). Figure 1 Figure 2 Typically, a team's talent is the driving factor for their performance. In college football, th