About the Coach Ratings « Coaches

Overview

The driving force behind CBTN is to objectively review and rank coaches in college football today. We have found that the success or failure of a program ultimately comes down to the ability of the head coach and his coordinators to do their jobs well. To that end, CBTN has produced a propriety rating system that objectively rates head coaches and coordinators on the core statistics critical for success.

Head Coaches

There are many considerations that go into evaluating a head coach. First and foremost is winning. Moral victories may help you get through a rough season, but they can’t play a part in rating a head coach. While we don’t believe in moral victories, we do believe that some victories are better than others. For this reason, we gathered Sagarin’s Strength of Schedule ratings for all 120+ FBS teams and 126 FCS teams and have factored them into our ratings for head coaches. Along with winning percentage, a coach can earn additional points for BCS appearances, BCS wins, conference championships, and BCS national championships. We take into account where a head coach’s team ranks in offensive performance and defensive performance because this reflects a head coach’s ability to coach either side of the ball (see Chip Kelly on offense or Nick Saban on defense) and a coach’s ability to hire and train good coordinators. While there are certainly other factors and statistics we could have taken into account, after extensive testing and retesting, we believe the formula we developed accurately and objectively ranks head coaches.
Head Coach Ratings

Offensive Coordinators

One of the main components we evaluate Head Coaches (as mentioned above) is ‘offensive performance’. This is composed of several straightforward statistics, including scoring offense, third down efficiency, and turnovers lost. Additionally, we take into account relative scoring offense, which is the percentage of points scored based on the opposing team’s average points allowed. We also factor in point per possession, which measures how many points, per possession, a team averages. Finally, we factor in Sagarin’s Strength of Schedule ratings. The idea here is the same as with head coaches. If two offensive coordinators are putting up the same numbers, the one doing it against better competition is going to come out on top.

Offensive Coordinator Ratings

Defensive Coordinators

Defensive Coordinators, similar to Offensive Coordinators, are evaluated on the ‘defensive performance’ portion of the Head Coaches rating system. The factors that go into this rating reflect the same factors used for the Offensive Coordinators, just on the other side of the football.

Defensive Coordinator Ratings