Sizing up the Coaches

No doubt Coach Gailey has taken some heat in his short tenure at GT. Of course losing an embarrasing bowl against Fresno St who had a bunch of starters ineligible, then turning around and watching 10 players flunk out, including some of your best starters will do that. It didn't help that he came in too late to the recruiting process his first year. And should I mention the injuries - I'll mention 2 names - Tony Hollings and Greg Gathers. Yikes.

But let's remember that a coach cannot be judged by what he does in a 2-year period. You have to let him get his system in place, get in "his" players. Having said that I decided to go back and look at how our "favorite" coaches fared in their early seasons. The conclusion - if you judged coaches on their first 2 season, you might actually say that Coach Gailey is the best of the bunch. (Yeah I know, the haters will talk about doing it with O'Leary's players).

But check this out:



In fact, the cumulative initial 2-year records of our last few coaches are:
2-19-1......Curry
5-17........Ross
10-12.......Lewis
11-11.......O'Leary
14-12.......Gailey

That's an interesting trend if you ask me. Each new coach we have had has had a better initial 2-year record. Now adding Miami / VaTech into the ACC changes the playing field somewhat, but let's give our man some props and congrats for coming in and maintaining strong play, even through adversity

Here is the table with more data, including ACC records and bowls.