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With the recent firings of Florida head coach Billy Napier and LSU head coach Brian Kelly still fresh in the minds of college football fans everywhere, now is as good a time as any to reflect on what goes into hiring a successful college coach. The Napier and Kelly tenures and failures at their respective schools can teach us a lot about what to avoid in the future, but there is a very specific metric that I believe both programs overlooked when making these previous hires. While you could look at things like Napier's stubbornness or Kelly's inability to consistently nail the coordinator hires, there was a big red flag staring both the Gators and Tigers square in the face in November 2021 that they either willfully ignored or just couldn't see. Culture fit. Let's start with Kelly first. Brian Kelly was lured away from South Bend, Indiana, in late November 2021, and although plenty of people, with the benefit of hindsight, can see now that he wasn't well liked in Louisiana, at the time the hiring was seen as a coup. LSU AD Scott Woodward had gone big game hunting and successfully landed his elephant (or bengal tiger, in this case). What a lot of people who were excited about the hire failed to see was that Kelly fit in at LSU about as well as a Catholic priest at a pride festival. Ignore for a second the fact that Kelly is as likable as a tapeworm in a Hillary Clinton mask. Did anyone really think a fast-talking Yankee from Notre Dame was going to be well-received in Baton Rouge? I'm not trying to cast aspersions here; hell, I thought the hire was a slam dunk, but many others, along with myself, were looking at this purely from a wins and losses perspective. While Kelly's shortcomings as an outsider to Cajun culture may have been obvious to some, Napier's lack of fit in Gainesville was a bit more subtle, requiring a more extensive understanding of Florida Gators "lore." For the longest time during what I would deem the "Post-Urban" era, I, along with many others, believed that it didn't matter the style with which the Gators played, as long as they ended up winning. If you look at the four coaches during this time frame, the most successful, by far, was Dan Mullen. That shouldn't surprise anyone, and while Mullen had his flaws and deserved to be let go, he was easily the third most successful Gators head coach of the modern era. It's easy to see why he fit the Gator archetype much better than the others. Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier were the two greatest coaches to ever don a headset at the University of Florida and they both had three things in common: cocky, scored a lot of points, incredibly competitive. Mullen was the Wal-Mart brand version of Meyer and Spurrier when it came to embodying these qualities, but he was certainly closer to their mold than Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain, or Billy Napier were. Florida fans are so locked in on Lane Kiffin being their head football coach, not just because he is a winner, but because he is the closest thing we've seen to Steve Spurrier since the Head Ball Coach hung up his visor a decade ago. As for the Tigers, I'm sure Kiffin would be successful there as well, or anywhere for that matter, but when I think of an LSU head coach, the qualities that come to mind are grit, toughness, and maybe even a little eccentric. There's a certain defensive line coach with a thick, Cajun accent who might be throwing his hat into the ring to be the next head football coach at LSU. He might be worth giving a look. Regardless of who either of these schools hire, we as fans now have the rubric in front of our faces to know, more or less, whether these next hires will work out or not. It's not an exact science, but it is something to keep in mind. The beauty of college football (at least for now) is that it isn't as "cookie-cutter" as the NFL; you'll find different styles in different regions of the country. It's part of the reason why a slick Yankee didn't pan out at LSU, or a caveman offense will never work at Florida. So, when your school is in line to hire its next head coach, keep these lessons at the top of your mind. It could save you a lot of hope and heartache in the long run.
