A tribute to CPJ, the three time ACC coach of the year who has led is to four coastal division titles, three ACCCG appearances, and two epic wins over Georgia, both in athens and both sweet and glorious indeed.
This is an interesting topic that is extremely pertinent to what, in today's terms, constitutes a great head football coach. Throughout history, written records passed down from generation to generation have acclaimed greatness to the coaches that have led their programs, from whatever they may have been originally, to a continued history that furthered tradition and demanded national accreditation from all foes as a perennial power.
While many coaches can be labeled sound recruiters, schematically gifted, and strongly educated on all matters gridiron, only a limited number of coaches deserve credit for founding and building meaningful, character building, passionate, tradition rich, honorable programs. My personal belief is that coaches who have strong character will always reap positive dividends. These coaches deserve credit for the contribution they are making to society. Chan Gailey deserves credit for raising sound young men. Mark Richt and Chan are very similar in demeanor and philanthropic initiative. They are both highly respected individuals as deserved for the way they live their lives. While these coaches deserve an insurmountable amount of credit for making this world a better place, when we talk about the greatest collegiate head coaches in the history of American Football (From Beginnings: Walter Camp, Ivy League, Pigskin, etc), to Now: Spread Offense, Reign of Meyer, Unprecedented Size and Speed for 18-23 year olds), we evaluate an extended list of required attributes that define Greatness.
The coach that drives his program to annually compete at a high level, to always be in the hunt for championships, and to present itself an imminent threat to its historical rivals, while maintaining full autonomy over all significant operations required of a head man, is a coach we without doubt define as great. From a leadership standpoint, first and foremost, the coach who has full oversight over his team: Offense, Defense, Special Teams, and all Assistant Coaches, is meeting necessity #1. While we saw Chan struggle in this area, and now at Kansas City, we have truly learned what it takes for a Coach to be successful, and that is running a football program like a CEO runs a profitable company. With full autonomy over all head operations, a successful head coach must now possess the schematic wit to win ballgames. And these schematically-sound individuals most often find success purely on Xs and Os; but the standard in achieving consistent, perennial success extends beyond a high Football-IQ and craft in Game Plan. The existence (or non-existence) of this standard is the greatest sign of a program's potential, and the greatest reasoning in evaluating the legacy of a coach and his program.
The teams that win championships do not necessarily have to possess the most talented student-athletes in the country, in Rivals or Scout terms. Then again, it is hard to define how talented a student-athlete is, and recruiting services don't take honor, character, and a high IQ into consideration when evaluating prospects. Fred Rouse was talented, but look where his attitude led him. So, one may come to the conclusion that the National Champion does indeed posses the greatest amount of talent of all programs nationally - and this could be argued. A better conclusion would be to say that the head coach maximized his student-athletes' talents in producing a sense of strong connectedness and chemistry with one another - coach to player, player to player, program to fan - that led to high achievement. A part of producing effective chemistry as a head coach is sticking to your impulses on the gridiron and in the office. A Coach, possessing these qualities, who never budges from his principles is a coach that is destined for greatness. The standard that brings these coaches we define as great together, is the instilling of physical and mental toughness. That standard for a coach is, undoubtedly, his ability to implement toughness as a foundation over all intangible attributes. With toughness serving as a foundation, and as the standard for this comparison as I believe, we can now separate the winners (Johnson) and losers (Gailey). As we take a gander at those individuals who've held the crystal ball the past decade - Fulmer, Bowden, Stoops, Coker, Tressel, Saban, Carroll, Brown, Meyer, Miles, Meyer - we can recall the great talents these teams possessed. But it was was the toughness and grit of these teams that brought them each the level of duly respected recognition. Each of these coaches has carried himself honorably and with a great sense of strong faith in his players. Each of these coaches established a sense of strong chemistry between coach and player, player and player, program and fan, that resulted in the continuation of cherished history, the preserving of deeply rooted tradition.
Our guy undoubtedly makes the historical FCS list. Look at what Paul accomplished at Georgia Southern as CEO in five years - an amassing 62-10 record (86.1 Winning %), perennial fights at the national crown, back to back National Championships in 1999 and 2000, 5 Southern Conference Championships - 5 for 5 - , and Paul did it with honor and unflappable drive. How Paul ended up at Georgia Tech, one could call it destiny. As amazingly, the intangibles Paul brings to the table in combination with the level of intelligence and integrity our student-athletes possess, on top of their physical abilities, is what will engrave Paul and his program's legacy (our program's legacy) in continued written accounts, records, and archives of the Greatest of the Great.
As we think of names such as Heisman, Alexander, Dodd, Carroll, Switzer, Osborne, Saban, Meyer, we come to realize that these coaches didn't possess one attribute more so than the other, yet combined each into a leadership recipe: In instilling mental toughness, craft in scheme, and most importantly winning with honor, integrity, and unflappable zeal. This is the recipe which has tabbed each coach to the list - a continued and cherished tradition - of the greatest collegiate Head coaches of all-time. These attributes are the evaluators of the coaching fraternity that presently proclaims greatness in college football.
We're on the way boys, we're on the way...
This is an interesting topic that is extremely pertinent to what, in today's terms, constitutes a great head football coach. Throughout history, written records passed down from generation to generation have acclaimed greatness to the coaches that have led their programs, from whatever they may have been originally, to a continued history that furthered tradition and demanded national accreditation from all foes as a perennial power.
While many coaches can be labeled sound recruiters, schematically gifted, and strongly educated on all matters gridiron, only a limited number of coaches deserve credit for founding and building meaningful, character building, passionate, tradition rich, honorable programs. My personal belief is that coaches who have strong character will always reap positive dividends. These coaches deserve credit for the contribution they are making to society. Chan Gailey deserves credit for raising sound young men. Mark Richt and Chan are very similar in demeanor and philanthropic initiative. They are both highly respected individuals as deserved for the way they live their lives. While these coaches deserve an insurmountable amount of credit for making this world a better place, when we talk about the greatest collegiate head coaches in the history of American Football (From Beginnings: Walter Camp, Ivy League, Pigskin, etc), to Now: Spread Offense, Reign of Meyer, Unprecedented Size and Speed for 18-23 year olds), we evaluate an extended list of required attributes that define Greatness.
The coach that drives his program to annually compete at a high level, to always be in the hunt for championships, and to present itself an imminent threat to its historical rivals, while maintaining full autonomy over all significant operations required of a head man, is a coach we without doubt define as great. From a leadership standpoint, first and foremost, the coach who has full oversight over his team: Offense, Defense, Special Teams, and all Assistant Coaches, is meeting necessity #1. While we saw Chan struggle in this area, and now at Kansas City, we have truly learned what it takes for a Coach to be successful, and that is running a football program like a CEO runs a profitable company. With full autonomy over all head operations, a successful head coach must now possess the schematic wit to win ballgames. And these schematically-sound individuals most often find success purely on Xs and Os; but the standard in achieving consistent, perennial success extends beyond a high Football-IQ and craft in Game Plan. The existence (or non-existence) of this standard is the greatest sign of a program's potential, and the greatest reasoning in evaluating the legacy of a coach and his program.
The teams that win championships do not necessarily have to possess the most talented student-athletes in the country, in Rivals or Scout terms. Then again, it is hard to define how talented a student-athlete is, and recruiting services don't take honor, character, and a high IQ into consideration when evaluating prospects. Fred Rouse was talented, but look where his attitude led him. So, one may come to the conclusion that the National Champion does indeed posses the greatest amount of talent of all programs nationally - and this could be argued. A better conclusion would be to say that the head coach maximized his student-athletes' talents in producing a sense of strong connectedness and chemistry with one another - coach to player, player to player, program to fan - that led to high achievement. A part of producing effective chemistry as a head coach is sticking to your impulses on the gridiron and in the office. A Coach, possessing these qualities, who never budges from his principles is a coach that is destined for greatness. The standard that brings these coaches we define as great together, is the instilling of physical and mental toughness. That standard for a coach is, undoubtedly, his ability to implement toughness as a foundation over all intangible attributes. With toughness serving as a foundation, and as the standard for this comparison as I believe, we can now separate the winners (Johnson) and losers (Gailey). As we take a gander at those individuals who've held the crystal ball the past decade - Fulmer, Bowden, Stoops, Coker, Tressel, Saban, Carroll, Brown, Meyer, Miles, Meyer - we can recall the great talents these teams possessed. But it was was the toughness and grit of these teams that brought them each the level of duly respected recognition. Each of these coaches has carried himself honorably and with a great sense of strong faith in his players. Each of these coaches established a sense of strong chemistry between coach and player, player and player, program and fan, that resulted in the continuation of cherished history, the preserving of deeply rooted tradition.
Our guy undoubtedly makes the historical FCS list. Look at what Paul accomplished at Georgia Southern as CEO in five years - an amassing 62-10 record (86.1 Winning %), perennial fights at the national crown, back to back National Championships in 1999 and 2000, 5 Southern Conference Championships - 5 for 5 - , and Paul did it with honor and unflappable drive. How Paul ended up at Georgia Tech, one could call it destiny. As amazingly, the intangibles Paul brings to the table in combination with the level of intelligence and integrity our student-athletes possess, on top of their physical abilities, is what will engrave Paul and his program's legacy (our program's legacy) in continued written accounts, records, and archives of the Greatest of the Great.
As we think of names such as Heisman, Alexander, Dodd, Carroll, Switzer, Osborne, Saban, Meyer, we come to realize that these coaches didn't possess one attribute more so than the other, yet combined each into a leadership recipe: In instilling mental toughness, craft in scheme, and most importantly winning with honor, integrity, and unflappable zeal. This is the recipe which has tabbed each coach to the list - a continued and cherished tradition - of the greatest collegiate Head coaches of all-time. These attributes are the evaluators of the coaching fraternity that presently proclaims greatness in college football.
We're on the way boys, we're on the way...
