Arizona Offense & Arizona Defense
Chart reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
Anyone else think the rhetoric around Rich Rodriguez has gone a little bananas? I mean all around, not just for the people putting For Sale signs in his yard, but also for the Rodriguez fans that are a little smug, and a lot illogical, in their dismissal of the people calling for Rodriguez's firing.
I am going to try to walk through the case for keeping him and the case for firing him with relative logical rigor, relative because nobody is perfect, but I tend to drive non-quants crazy with my blunt disregard for feelings as something we should talk about. So that said I am going to get some rather silly arguments out of the way early:
- Arizona doesn't have a history of football success.
- The program isn't imploding internally like in the Mackovic years.
This is a real job with grownups right? Ok then nobody cares. Not all bad coaching fits are bad guys. Lots of good guys who couldn't win games get fired. Arizona isn't running a retirement program for nice guys that can't recruit or develop talent. If we are we should hire Joe Glenn, he plays piano and tells funny stories.
- Next year's recruiting class is aces
No, it isn't yet. Thus far this class checks in at #17 in ESPN's ranking with 27 commits. Go look at this class. There are three 4 star recruits in it. Arizona signs that many 4 stars nearly every year. As every other class fill up with the top unsigned talent Arizona's ranking is going to fall. Unless Arizona closes really strong they are going to finish somewhere in the #25-30 range. That means they have to develop 2 and 3 star talent into Pac-12 players; which the staff has a POOR track record at. Even if the class managed to stay in the top #20; nobody keeps their job for a top #20 class; maybe a top #10 class, but not this class. You want to buy hype, fine, but ask for a receipt.- This is actually the "Golden Age of Arizona Football"
No it isn't. Going to a bowl 4 straight years isn't impressive in this age of bowl inflation and it is nothing to be proud of at a Power 5 program. You can be proud of going to big bowls, but when 5-7 teams go to a bowl then going bowling has really lost all meaning. Winning 33 games over 4 seasons isn't impressive either because it doesn't control for the UTTERLY OBVIOUS discrepancy in the number of games in a college football season over time. The only stat that matters is Pac-12 win percentage. That is the only reasonable approximation of apples to apples across time.
- Rodriguez is an offensive genius and we are lucky to have him
Lets clarify here. I will stipulate that Rodriguez's offense, with the right players, can be a marvel. It was in 2012 with Matt Scott and Stoops's players, but great X's and O's can't make up for the massive talent deficit this program has on the O-line and at wide-out. Arizona hasn't ranked in the top 10 in Offense in any advanced stats ranking since 2012. They normally rank in the #25-35 range and that puts them in the middle of the Pac-12 and Power 5. That isn't genius, but it is who we are when this staff recruits and develops the players for the offense.
- Greg Byrne shouldn't care about the buyout
$9 million is a lot of scratch for an athletic department like Arizona and that doesn't even factor in the costs of going out and getting a new coach with a new staff.
Keep Coach Rod
The worth discussing arguments for keeping Rodriguez are there, but they are getting lost in all the really dumb emotional claptrap; which makes my head hurt (see above). I'll call these arguments the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Brutus, and Scrooge McDuck.
The Pittsburgh Steelers argument refers to the Steelers practice of making a good hire and sticking to it because stability is underrated. Most of the Arizona fans who are making this argument are bringing up the Dick Tomey era; which is valid. Tomey didn't get it going right off the bat and in modern college football he probably would have been fired before Desert Swarm had a chance to happen. I think people are disingenuously underselling Tomey's first 5 years quite a bit in an effort to make Rodriguez look better, but I get where they are coming from. They are arguing that stability is itself a virtue and if you make the right hire it will pay off eventually. That is totally valid.
The Brutus argument is that Rodriguez will fire even long time friends and colleagues if it isn't working and I respect that. Letting the defensive staff go last season could not have been easy, but it was necessary after Rodriguez couldn't find another job and had to come back to Arizona. I think Rodriguez is committed to winning and I also know that he has nowhere else to go after this dismal season sits on his resume. He has to make it work at Arizona. I kid you not, if he fires Tony Dews and Charlie Ragle after this season, I will send the man flowers at the office.
The Scrooge McDuck argument is pretty obvious; it is going to cost Arizona a boat load of money. Arizona doesn't have a deep pocketed set of football donors that care about the program enough to just write this check. Arizona would have to take this out of operating revenue, capital, or deferred payments; which could put Arizona in the position of paying for Rodriguez not to coach for years to come; all while they have to pay their existing coach. That is rough, especially if you blow the next hire too.
Fire Coach Rod
The Scrooge McDuck argument is pretty obvious; it is going to cost Arizona a boat load of money. Arizona doesn't have a deep pocketed set of football donors that care about the program enough to just write this check. Arizona would have to take this out of operating revenue, capital, or deferred payments; which could put Arizona in the position of paying for Rodriguez not to coach for years to come; all while they have to pay their existing coach. That is rough, especially if you blow the next hire too.
Fire Coach Rod
There are a lot of arguments here, many of which I enumerated in dispensing with the less thoughtful cases that are being made. I'll call these arguments Jim Mora, Mike Stoops, and Robert Lucas.
Jim Mora is a hell of a recruiter, a good coach, and a massive jerk. He led UCLA to three straight 9+ win seasons right out of the gate. Why are many Bruin fans calling for his head on a pike? Because his Pac-12 win percentage is now below Karl Dorrell's and UCLA expects to be better than that. Rodriguez is closing in on all time Arizona mistake John Mackovic. Rodriguez has only had a winning Pac-12 record once, in 2014, which took A LOT of luck. How often are you going to win the South and lose to both L.A. schools at the same time?
Jim Mora is a hell of a recruiter, a good coach, and a massive jerk. He led UCLA to three straight 9+ win seasons right out of the gate. Why are many Bruin fans calling for his head on a pike? Because his Pac-12 win percentage is now below Karl Dorrell's and UCLA expects to be better than that. Rodriguez is closing in on all time Arizona mistake John Mackovic. Rodriguez has only had a winning Pac-12 record once, in 2014, which took A LOT of luck. How often are you going to win the South and lose to both L.A. schools at the same time?
That is sort of the long run case to fire Rodriguez, but what is the short run case? This is the Mike Stoops case. When Byrne fired Stoops he cited Stoops's losing streak against Power 5 and Pac-12 teams specifically. On average Stoops was fine, you have to give him a pass on the years he spent picking up after Mackovic, but Byrne felt the losing streak against Power 5 competition was indicative of the direction of the program. If he holds Rodriguez to anything near the same standard then Rodriguez should be unemployed. Rodriguez went 3-6 in the Pac-12 last year. He is 3-12 in the last two years and 0-6 this year. He is likely to finish the season 0-9. That is totally unacceptable. If you went 0-for the conference at Kansas in your 5th year you would be fired. This team is incredibly untalented and that isn't going to change anytime soon. You don't let the guy that tanked things do the rebuild in most well functioning organizations.
The final case is the Robert Lucas. Lucas is a Nobel Laureate economist closely tied to endogenous growth theory and Rational Expectations. I think there are plenty of reasons to question Rational Expectations as a generalized paradigm to view the world and I think it is an absurd simplification for macro, but it is always useful to think like homo-economicus in narrow well defined spaces; like micro. So if Greg Byrne is a rational value maximizing guy, how does he approach the question of firing Rodriguez this year. I think he should think about it from this perspective:
Am I going to have to fire Rodriguez in 2017?
The final case is the Robert Lucas. Lucas is a Nobel Laureate economist closely tied to endogenous growth theory and Rational Expectations. I think there are plenty of reasons to question Rational Expectations as a generalized paradigm to view the world and I think it is an absurd simplification for macro, but it is always useful to think like homo-economicus in narrow well defined spaces; like micro. So if Greg Byrne is a rational value maximizing guy, how does he approach the question of firing Rodriguez this year. I think he should think about it from this perspective:
Am I going to have to fire Rodriguez in 2017?
Rodriguez is definitely going to be on the hot seat next year. So what saves his job? Lets say that it is getting to 6 wins and a bowl; I think that is absurdly low expectation, but we'll settle there. In a normal Rodriguez year this is ok, Byrne sets up three patsies and Rodriguez combines that with a losing Pac-12 schedule to produce a low level bowl. But next year Houston is just sitting there in the non-conference, a big loss waiting to happen after Tom Herman moves on to greener pastures. That means Rodriguez can't just get by with 3-6 in Pac-12, he has to get to 4-5. 3-6 is a tall order with the team he will have next year and 4-5 would be an incredible coaching job AND a lot of luck.
I think the chances Rodriguez gets fired in 2017 are roughly 85%.
So what does that mean? It means Arizona wastes 2017 not really committed to rebuilding as Rodriguez plays upper-classmen instead of young players in an effort to save his job. The 2017 offensive line could lose 3 starters to graduation, if all three of those guys, who are not all good, play the whole season...ugh. It means Rodriguez probably commits to Solomon and Dawkins or Tate transfer. If you think this is the rebuild year then you are consoling yourself with fantasy. This isn't the rebuild. This is the collapse before the rebuild. Rodriguez won't have the reserves in the bank to commit to a rebuild next year, so the rebuild gets put off until after he gets canned next year.
I think the chances Rodriguez gets fired in 2017 are roughly 85%.
So what does that mean? It means Arizona wastes 2017 not really committed to rebuilding as Rodriguez plays upper-classmen instead of young players in an effort to save his job. The 2017 offensive line could lose 3 starters to graduation, if all three of those guys, who are not all good, play the whole season...ugh. It means Rodriguez probably commits to Solomon and Dawkins or Tate transfer. If you think this is the rebuild year then you are consoling yourself with fantasy. This isn't the rebuild. This is the collapse before the rebuild. Rodriguez won't have the reserves in the bank to commit to a rebuild next year, so the rebuild gets put off until after he gets canned next year.
Now lets think of next year in terms of buyout. This year the buyout is just under $9 million. Lets say that next year it drops to $6.75 million. I don't have an actual breakdown so I am just calendarizing it. If we take the expected value of 2017 buyout payments we can figure out the real cost of firing Rodriguez this year, vs the cost of probably firing him next year.
E(Buyout 2017)=E(Fire)+E(Not Fire)=(.85*6.75)+(.15*0)=5.7375
E(Buyout 2017)=E(Fire)+E(Not Fire)=(.85*6.75)+(.15*0)=5.7375
Of course there is a 15% chance you don't fire him and pay no buyout. So the cost of firing Rodriguez this year (without doing any factoring of inflation or anything fancy) is
$9million-$5.74million=$3.26million
Basically you pay the difference between the expected buyouts plus you pay for the chance he would have saved his job. My point is that firing him now is less expensive than you think if you think about how bad this team is going to be next year and how hot his seat is going to be. I think there is a very strong case to be made for not putting off the rebuild until 2018.
Plenty of Space to Disagree
Hopefully though we can all disagree about Rodriguez without being disagreeable. For realsies people. It is bad enough watching Rodriguez yelling like an angry bum at the Greyhound station while his players quit on him, and nobody should doubt that after the last two performances. If you do doubt that they have quit, that might be even worse, because Arizona might be the least talented Power 5 team in a decade if these players and coaches are still trying.
Plenty of Space to Disagree
Hopefully though we can all disagree about Rodriguez without being disagreeable. For realsies people. It is bad enough watching Rodriguez yelling like an angry bum at the Greyhound station while his players quit on him, and nobody should doubt that after the last two performances. If you do doubt that they have quit, that might be even worse, because Arizona might be the least talented Power 5 team in a decade if these players and coaches are still trying.
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