Last week, Bill Connelly did some tinkering on a method of rating head coaches using SP+. Connelly uses the raw SP+ numbers from the coach’s tenure, and also utilizes a baseline:
For each year someone is a head coach, we could compare his team’s SP+ rating for that season to the school’s average from the 20 previous years.
Based on that, and among the guys who have at least four years of head coaching experience, Dave Doeren comes in at No. 28. Dave’s average vs. the baseline at NC State is +3.7. That’s not a dramatic number but does square with the general sense that Dave has improved the program in his time here. The idea is not to lean so much on wins and win percentage—both are by definition built into SP+ anyhow—since going 8-4 at NC State, for example, can be just as impressive an accomplishment relative to program history as going 10-2 at Alabama, say.
The five coaches directly ahead of Dave in the rankings, in order, are Mark Stoops (it’s SEC Dave!), Bronco Mendenhall, Willie Fritz, Lincoln Riley (Riley hasn’t fared well relative to baseline at OU and USC), and Chris Klieman (it’s Big 12 Dave!). Seems about right to me.