A Tale of Three(?) Coaches

First of all, I would like to say how extremely stoked I am about the positive feedback I received after my first post. I certainly don't want to let any of my few readers down, so I decided to get back to work this Wednesday morning. Today's post answers a surprisingly common question that is asked by college football fans; why is a great coach great?
Well, to put it simply, a great college football coach has a basic understanding, and sometimes mastery, of the three keys essential to college football success. Some, like our favorite Alabama legend Paul "Bear" Bryant, possessed a mastery of all three, which was the driving factor behind his almost mythical success not just at Alabama, but at Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas A&M.
1. The Recruiter
These are the Ron Zook types. The guys who pick out five-star high school prospects like Phil Fulmer picks out boxes of donuts at Krispy Kreme. A great recruiter understands that bigger, faster, and stronger recruits lead to bigger, faster, and stronger players, but occasionally don't quite understand how to transfer that onto the playing field. Unfortunately, poor Ron Zook is my guinea pig for this example. Hands down, Ron Zook is the best recruiting coach I have ever seen. The fact that he could get one five-star to come to Illinois is amazing, but upon his second in the 2007 class alone, I have run out of superlatives. Zook could probably convince me to wipe his ass for him. Unfortunately, when the time came to perform the (most likely) dirty deed, he also would not have the faintest idea how to tell me what to do. Though Zook's players won the national championship last year under Urban Meyer, with Zook at the helm they would never even have sniffed a BCS bowl. Great talent, tragically, does not mean great teams. Which leads me to...
2. The Program Builder
Mack Brown in a nut shell. These are the guys who can create a college football program enviable to a pro team. Facility upgrades, fundraising, generating fan support, these guys do it all. More importantly, they understand how to take the talent they have and make lemonade from lemons. They squeeze out the potential and turn them into first round draft picks (See Miami under Butch Davis as well). However, when the crunch time comes, it always seems like they "can't win the big one." Mack Brown is a perfect example. Since 2002, Mack Brown has finished in the top ten four times. An outstanding program, having outstanding results. In the polls. Let's look at championships. The number I'm thinking of is...one. That's how many Mack Brown got over that span. National AND Big XII. And even then, most would say that was because Vince Young piggy-backed that team all the way to the Rose Bowl. Guess who went to the Big XII championship four out of those five years, winning three times? Bob Stoops. You know, the Oklahoma guy. Why? Because not winning the big game means you still have work on the third aspect of coaching college football. Which is...
3. The Gameday Coach
Rich Rodriguez. Period. Quick show of hands. How many of you can throw the ball further than Pat White? All hands should be raised. Another quick show of hands. Who wants to go play football in Morgantown, West Virginia? No hands should be raised. Rich-Rod, God bless him, has made the veritable chicken salad out of chicken shit. WVU is far from a recruiting hotbed. Their last four classes, according to Rivals.com, have finished 23rd(2007), 52nd(2006), 31st(2005), and 47th(2004). Their facilities are the reason Rich Rodriguez almost left his alma mater to go to Alabama. Yet they have two Heisman trophy candidates, a top five ranking, and two consecutive bowl wins, one of them a BCS bowl. Against Georgia. From the SEC. How? Because Rich Rod is a damn good coach. He can exploit a weakness, any weakness, in the defense, and just straight-up outscore your ass, ala Steve Spurrier at Florida during the 1990s. Can he win a national championship? Maybe. Is it likely? Probably not. Because even a great gameday coach can't win every game without what we like to call quality depth, or a defense. Which are hallmarks of the first two coaches. Now, I present the final equation:

Recruiter + Program Builder + Gameday Coach= Pete Carroll, Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Steve Spurrier, Bob Stoops, Jim Tressel... the elite coaches in the NCAA. True, some are better at aspects than others. Steve Spurrier is stronger at gameday coaching, while Meyer is a better program builder. Saban and Carroll are better recruiters. Stoops, I believe, may be the most balanced of all of them. But they all have deep understanding and competency in each aspect. And that, my loyal readers, is what makes a great college football coach.