Who should I hire?What job should I take?

Successor Type and Coaching Performance in NCAA Division I Football and Men’s Basketball

Chad McEvoy, Illinois State UniversityKyle Ehrhardt, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Brent Beggs, Illinois State University

Introduction

Industry of significant turnover Impact of a hire is extremely

significant: Team performance Revenue

▪ Ticket sales▪ Sponsorship▪ Fund raising▪ Postseason participation

Expensive to hire

Review of Literature

Managerial succession extensively studied in business/management settings, with mixed results: Promoting from within leads to stability

▪ Grusky, 1960 Outside successors can have a positive

impact through a change in direction▪ Shen & Cannella, 2002

Review of Literature

Some research exists in managerial/coaching succession in sport, primarily at the professional level: Change naturally leads to improvement

▪ Pfeffer & Davis-Blake, 1986 - NBA Succession hurts performance due to

instability▪ Grusky, 1963 - MLB▪ Audas, Dobson, & Goddard, 2002 - EPL

Change has no impact▪ Brown, 1982 - NFL

Purpose of the Study

Examined whether differences existed in post-succession performance in NCAA Division I football and men’s basketball based upon the type of coaching successor hired: Assistant coach from inside the program Assistant coach from outside the

program Head coach from outside the program

Purpose of the Study

Practical implications Athletic directors: Who should I hire? Coaches: Which head coaching job

should I pursue/take?

Methods

Subjects NCAA Division I football and men’s

basketball programs Time period = 1985-2004

▪ Every coaching succession between 1989-2000 considered a case/subject

▪ Coaches would did not remain at the institution for a minimum of four years were not included in the sample

Methods

Three successor types/groups Inside successor (FB: N=65; MBB: N=84) Outside successor – head coach (FB:

N=80; MBB: N=211) Outside successor – assistant coach (FB:

N=104; MBB: N=147)

Methods

Collected eight years of computer rankings for each subject – the four years before and four years after the succession took place Sagarin computer rankings collected as

the measure of team performance

Methods

Statistical Design Separate mixed between-within subjects

ANOVA’s for football and men’s basketball subjects▪ Between-subjects factor = three coaching

succession groups▪ Within subjects factor = team performance

across time▪ Greenhouse-Geisser test used due to violation

of sphericity assumption

Methods

Statistical Design Post-hoc testing - multiple post hoc tests

conducted due to significant disordinal interaction▪ Tukey’s post-hoc tests used to examine

differences between the three groups across each of the eight time periods (coaching years)

▪ Repeated measures ANOVAs and dependent t-tests used to examine differences within the eight time periods

Results Greenhouse-Geisser tests significant (FB: F=2.57,

p=.02; MBB: F=4.965, p<.001) Significant disordinal interactions with both FB

and MBB Significant differences between the three

successor groups for each of the eight years (FB: all F’s>5.00, all p’s<.01; MBB: all F’s>3.00, all p’s<.05)

Significant differences found within each of the three groups across time for both FB and MBB (FB: all p’s<.02; MBB: all p’s<.04) Dependent t-tests used to test for pairwise differences

within each group

Results and Discussion

Outside assistants hired by considerably-lower ranked schools than the two other groups

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Results and Discussion

The two outside successor groups appear virtually identical, other than starting positions

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Results and Discussion

Schools that declined in performance prior to succession hired an outside successor, while schools with improved performance prior to succession hired an inside successor

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Results and Discussion

When performance is better than normal, inside successors will be hired…when performance is worse than normal, outside successors will be hired Recent MBB examples = Outside: John

Calipari to Kentucky, Tony Bennett to Virginia; Inside: Josh Pastner at Memphis

Recent FB examples = Outside: Lane Kiffin to Tennessee; Inside: Bill Stewart at West Virginia, Greg McMackin at Hawaii

Results and Discussion

Both outside successor groups showed steady improvement over time after succession, while insiders declined

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Practical Implications

Athletic Directors: Who should I hire? These results suggest that athletic

directors should think twice about promoting a coach from within the program and should look outside the program for a new coach

Are these results because of the coaches themselves or rather the circumstances under which they’re hired?▪ Regression to the mean

Further Testing

Currently research ongoing in this area Preliminary results:

When ignoring successor type, 53 of 57 programs examined improved over the next four years when hiring a coach immediately following a season worse than the school’s long-term Sagarin mean

41 of 47 programs declined in performance over the next four year when hiring a coach immediately following a season better than the school’s long-term Sagarin mean

Practical Implications

Coaches: Which head coaching job should I pursue/take? Some may not be able to be overly

selective as opportunities may be difficult to obtain

Our previous and ongoing research suggests that a coach should be wary of being promoted from within and/or replacing a coach that has performed better than the school’s long-term norm

Practical Implications Coaches: Which head coaching job should I

pursue/take? – Recent examples: John Calipari appears to be positioned for

success at Kentucky (2008-09 Sagarin ranking=51)

Likewise, Tony Bennett has a chance to be successful at Virginia (2008-09 ranking=99)

Conversely, Josh Pastner could have a difficult time replacing Calipari at Memphis (top 10 ranking the past few seasons, 9th this year)

Questions, comments, discussion…