(Warning: long read) As Pat Narduzzi's football team continues to struggle, many have begun to question whether he should remain the Pitt head coach beyond this season and, if not, who would be potential replacements. Even if he returns for 2021 (he most likely will), it's an interesting thought exercise to partake in. One of the biggest questions of a potential coaching search would be whether to hire a P5 coordinator or hire a coach with previous head coaching experience, either with a G5 school or at the P5 level. Each Pitt's past two head coaches (Narduzzi and Paul Chryst) have been the former, with Pitt being their first head coaching job. I did some number crunching after the Miami game today and I have come to the conclusion that this would be the wrong approach to take. Here's why:
- First, it's important to understand the challenges that Pitt faces as a program. We will never be able to out-spend our competition, either neighboring schools or ACC members, and, in all likelihood, will also never out-recruit them as well. This means that any coach that leads Pitt's program will have be capable of doing more with less. This makes sense when you compare every Pitt coach since Johnny Majors' first tenure.
| Coach | Prior Experience? | Winning Percentage |
| Johnny Majors One | Yes | 70% |
| Jackie Sherrill | Yes | 83% |
| Foge Fazio | No | 54% |
| Mike Gottfried | Yes | 60% |
| Paul Hackett | No | 38% |
| Johnny Majors Two | Yes | 27% |
| Walt Harris | Yes | 54% |
| Dave Wannstedt | Yes | 58% |
| Todd Graham | Yes | 50%* (one season) |
| Paul Chryst | No | 50% |
| Pat Narduzzi | No | 55% |
Each of the four head coaches with the highest winning percentages while at Pitt (Sherrill, Majors I, Gottfried, Wannstedt) had prior head coaching experience while the coach with the lowest winning percentage (Hackett) had no prior head coaching experience.
- Now, let's compare this to the rest of the country. Since the CFP era began in 2014, 13 different head coaches have made the playoffs: Nick Saban, Mark Helfrich, Jimbo Fisher, Urban Meyer, Dabo Swinney, Mark Dantonio, Bob Stoops, Chris Petersen, Kirby Smart, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Ryan Day, and Ed Orgeron.
| Ranking | Team | Coach | Prior Experience? |
| 2014 (1) | Alabama | Nick Saban | Yes |
| 2014 (2) | Oregon | Mark Helfrich | No |
| 2014 (3) | Florida State | Jimbo Fisher | No |
| 2014 (4) | Ohio State | Urban Meyer | Yes |
| 2015 (1) | Clemson | Dabo Swinney | No |
| 2015 (2) | Alabama | Nick Saban | Yes |
| 2015 (3) | Michigan State | Mark Dantonio | Yes |
| 2015 (4) | Oklahoma | Bob Stoops | No |
| 2016 (1) | Alabama | Nick Saban | Yes |
| 2016 (2) | Clemson | Dabo Swinney | No |
| 2016 (3) | Ohio State | Urban Meyer | Yes |
| 2016 (4) | Washington | Chris Petersen | Yes |
| 2017 (1) | Clemson | Dabo Swinney | No |
| 2017 (2) | Oklahoma | Lincoln Riley | No |
| 2017 (3) | Georgia | Kirby Smart | No |
| 2017 (4) | Alabama | Nick Saban | Yes |
| 2018 (1) | Alabama | Nick Saban | Yes |
| 2018 (2) | Clemson | Dabo Swinney | No |
| 2018 (3) | Notre Dame | Brian Kelly | Yes |
| 2018 (4) | Oklahoma | Lincoln Riley | No |
| 2019 (1) | LSU | Ed Orgeron | Yes |
| 2019 (2) | Ohio State | Ryan Day | No |
| 2019 (3) | Clemson | Dabo Swinney | No |
| 2019 (4) | Oklahoma | Lincoln Riley | No |
Among those 13 coaches, six had prior head coaching experience (46%). However, among the seven head coaches that had no prior head coaching experience, five of them were previously coaches and/or coordinators with the same team; essentially, they were promoted at an already established program. If you read this entire post, you will see this develops into a very consistent trend among head coaches with no prior head coaching experience. If you take away these five (since Pitt will
not be hiring from within if they do fire Narduzzi), eight coaches have made the CFP who were outright hired. Among these eight, six of them had prior coaching experience (75%). Additionally, among the four different head coaches to make the CFP more than once (Saban, Meyer, Swinney, Riley), 50% of them had prior head coaching experience while the two were promoted from the existing staff. As you can see, the majority of programs that have made the CFP since 2014 have not hired an outside coordinator as their head coach; the lone two exceptions were Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Georgia's Kirby Smart. For what it's worth, this trend continues when you look at each head coach who won a national championship during the BCS era; nine of the 13 head coaches had prior experience (69%), while three of the four that did not (75%) were hired from within. This means that nine of the ten head coaches hired outright had prior head coaching experience (90%). (1/3)
