Who will be our next Coach?

rwcmike said:

I like Roman and he would be a great hire. I couldn’t help but wonder, when watching Andrew on the sideline last week, if he doesn’t want the job.

Anon1663716692 said:

I am still voting for Brent Key of Georgia Tech. He has done an amazing job there and would be great at Stanford. I doubt he would take the job unless the offer were huge and there were other personal considerations that would appeal to him. He should certainly br close to the top on any list.

apluscelly said:

Suggesting Greg Roman as the next head coach is crazy. He hasnt coached college in 15 years, and only as a coordinator for 3 seasons. In his 30 years of coaching experience, 27 of them have been in the NFL, and he has never been a head coach at any point. To say he would be unprepared to be a Power 4 head coach in 2026 would be an understatement. Reich, love him, but looks a little worn out to me. He's best as an interim band-aid in my view.

apluscelly said:

Suggesting Greg Roman as the next head coach is crazy. He hasnt coached college in 15 years, and only as a coordinator for 3 seasons. In his 30 years of coaching experience, 27 of them have been in the NFL, and he has never been a head coach at any point. To say he would be unprepared to be a Power 4 head coach in 2026 would be an understatement. Reich, love him, but looks a little worn out to me. He's best as an interim band-aid in my view.

Anon1663716692 said:

I am still voting for Brent Key of Georgia Tech. He has done an amazing job there and would be great at Stanford. I doubt he would take the job unless the offer were huge and there were other personal considerations that would appeal to him. He should certainly be close to the top on any list.

GSO61 said:

So it seems like we are back to grabbing whoever we can convince to give the job a try and that won't cut it for the long term.

GSO61 said:

So it seems like we are back to grabbing whoever we can convince to give the job a try and that won't cut it for the long term.

rwcmike said:

Correct. We need someone who wants to be here for 10 years. I don’t know if ASU got lucky with Dillingham and if he is just a flash in the pants one hit wonder. He could be a lifer at ASU. Need someone whose dream job is Stanford. I think Smith and Paye are those types for basketball.

rwcmike said:

…a flash in the pants…

akhockey7 said:

There is a better chance Mickey Mouse coaches Stanford than Brent Key leaving GT for Stanford.

rwcmike said:

just a flash in the pants one hit wonder.

msqueri said:

I don't have any idea of who Luck may be looking at or how he might be thinking about it. As I said on the Talking Trees podcast, I think the crux of it is the level of ambition he has or, really, is allowed to have. I would also note that I don't think Luck is likely to end decades of practice of the head coach hire being more of an institutional/committee decision than purely one decider's choice. He will have to navigate institutional politics. Hopefully the balance is weighted toward people we think are committed to Stanford football, like Levin, Donahoe, and Luck, but I would be surprised if the faculty, Tara VanDerveer, Condi Rice, etc. aren't important voices too. I keep coming back to ambition. It's really sheer guessing to throw names out there not knowing if we are willing to swing big shots and be turned down/embarrassed, if we would hire somebody with factory/mercenary vibes, if we are going to pay 2 or 3 or 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 million bucks, if there is significant budget set aside for assistant coaches, and so forth. I don't think it's totally laughable to throw names out like Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Chip Kelly, and Dabo Swinney....but it is extremely unlikely. Same for good current Power Four coaches like Lance Leipold, Bret Bielema, and Clark Lea. Hard to say which of those categories is more of an outlandish longshot but both certainly are. Still, I can't rule out that we dramatically level up our ambition and investment. Short of that, there are other routes as @jdshelly's helpful typology laid out. By the way, when I was pushing for Shaw to go I did a turnaround artist study of all the college football hires of the last 30 years to try to get insights into the kinds of coaches that have effectuated power conference turnarounds. I have identified some additional case studies from the years since I did those posts and if I have time am hoping to update that thread for our current search. That study offers a similar typology as jdshelly did though I did not separate out proven power coach from NFL coaches. The intervening years since those posts have reinforced that proven guys are the most common source of turnaround artists. As such, if I were king for the day I would really work hard to muster the university resources and ambition to make a hire in that vein possible. I don't know if that's where we'll be though. If not, the power conference coordinator and lower level coach routes are reasonable routes too. The line "there are some particular candidates in lower tiers that I would take over particular candidates in higher tiers" is the salient one to me. I am hesitant to opine on which of the categories is most attractive because I think there are attractive candidates in each. There are also people who fit in multiple categories, like Dan Mullen, who I would give a hard look to. I could not disagree more with @GSO61 and @rwcmike. I think it is a very counterproductive mentality to want to optimize for likelihood to stick around. The best thing that ever happened to us was Jim Harbaugh. We should be so lucky as to have a coach who does so well that they have better options. I think a program is kind of a loser if it wants to hire coaches whose dream job is to coach there if the program itself isn't at the pinnacle. We should want people whose dream jobs would be to coach Alabama or Ohio State or Notre Dame (or the Los Angeles Rams). If we ever reach the pinnacle and are legitimately a program that would attract the best, sure, then go for somebody you would want a long time (presumably how Alabama, Ohio State, and Notre Dame felt about their coaches). Moreover, I just don't really think it's a good goal to want a coach to stay ten years. Many coaches, even very successful ones, grow stale by then. Stanford fans shouldn't have to be reminded of that after seeing the program-slaying calamity that happened with our most successful coach ever. Even John Ralston didn't make it ten seasons. We should be optimizing for winning, not trying to thread the needle of a good coach but one so self-selecting he wouldn't leave (doesn't lead to great mentalities/work ethics, as we saw with TPS) or one so good but not great he doesn't have better options. It's hard enough to just get a good coach. The history of major college football coaching hires is that it's about a coin flip in whether they succeed, and that's with all the programs making the hires trying to get it right and not all of them facing the brave new world headwinds we face. No, really could not disagree more with the idea we should give a crap about this being somebody's dream job. The only thing we should be focused on is getting somebody who will turn us around. I have many thoughts on people in all the categories that could be and I'm sure they will evolve each week of the season. Just for the sake of throwing some names out there, right now my head is at wanting Luck to make magic happen with splashy or proven power conference good or keeping an eye on guys like Alex Golesh, Jon Sumrall, GJ Kinne, Eddie George, Dan Mullen, Andy Kotelnicki, Will Stein, and Glenn Schumann. For what it's worth, I think there could be a rationale for somebody like Roman, especially with the right assistants joining him, to be an intriguing fit. I worry about the lack of head coaching experience and the years of being passed over for such, but there is a lot he'd bring and with the right staff it could be potent. My preference, though, is for one of the following categories: proven power head coach, former NFL head coach (successful or not), hotshot coordinator with great mentors, proven Group of Five coach. There is a last piece to this that I think is really important but I have not yet wrapped my head around because I think it requires granular and sophisticated understanding of individual candidates in a way that's difficult for outsiders to pull off: who fits Stanford and whose skill sets complement Luck's future role. Could definitely see guys I mentioned being unviable through those lens or guys totally off-my-radar being appealing.

rwcmike said:

he is just a flash in the pants one hit wonder.

Jamesy2 said:

What about Mike McDaniel, Dolphins head coach who might be fired soon if the team doesn't turn it around? Brilliant offensive mind, could keep the defensive staff intact given their trajectory, can focus just on coaching with Luck handling the roster, and has ties to the bay. And the dolphins can pay him for the first however many years that are remaining on his contract. Would that qualify as a good hire?

akhockey7 said:

There is a better chance Mickey Mouse coaches Stanford than Brent Key leaving GT for Stanford.