Greg Davis Is On The Short List For Offensive Coordinator At Iowa. Yes, Really.

God, it would have been a triumph. Anyway, I fixed it to make it more readable. Damn.

Greg Davis would have no business in a Whole Foods

…that he’s potentially someone else’s problem.

http://www.blackheartgoldpants.com/2012/2/21/2813368/greg-davis-iowa-hawkeyes-offensive-coordinator

they seem sad and resigned

although where someone says, they could do worse, I’m not sure they are aware just how easily they could do better…

“I like the guy. The more I read, the more I like. Texas is likely to fire the current OC within a year. He’s awful. Mack Brown has always been a panderer. Their loss is KF’s gain. Speaking of which, this guy is capable of bringing a lot of interesting things to the table. He’s run the spread. He’s run the ball. He recruits Texas and Louisiana and he doesn’t need a job. I think KF needs a guy with some clout to challenge his often conservative overly simplistic notions of how to game plan and force defenses to play on their heels.

I hope it works out this way."

The only thing he got right was, arguably, his assessment of Mack.

had me gaaa gaaa ’ing on myself

ohh, so familiar!

Vick played on a leash in a neanderthal offense - no pun intended. And his supporting cast was feeble. Cam Newton was totally dominant, but played better defenses than we saw. VY was free to do his thing, had some quality skill personnel around him, and, most importantly, had 4 starting OL who would play in the NFL. We also scored quite a bit on special teams and D.

thanks for explaining that…I hadn’t gotten it.

Folks like Coach K who charge $100K to come speak at a management conference certainly profit from the worldview that sports and business run at very close parallels, but that’s probably an interesting post in and of itself.

How comparable is a ‘coaching resume’ to that of, say, a managerial candidate? The question for me always comes down to the environment in which results are generated. In the macro sense, just about any business’ results take place in a competitive ecosystem and any positive result could be said to have been ‘won’ over your competitors, but in general I think sports results/achievements come in much more discrete and zero-sum environments. EVERYTHING you get in a game like football - every yard, every TD, every win - comes at the direct and identifiable expense of a competitor in engaged and active opposition. You may grow sales 30% per year and feel pretty good - if the market was growing at 50% per year it may not have been too much of an achievement, however. So in one sense, a coaching resume would seem to have even less room for ‘fluff’ than a business resume since you could say that ‘everything I got, I earned and I took from somebody else’.

But where lies the true responsibility for nominal success? Just as there are no one-man football teams, you’re not going to find any one-man corporations out there. If we’re looking for a good business analogy for Texas football, a company/brand like Coca-Cola could be a good place to start. Massive brands, resources that outstrip the competition, and name recognition/goodwill that provide a substantial and largely sustainable competitive advantage. If you get named brand manager for Coke, the odds are that you can list on your resume “managed world’s leading software brand for three consecutive years” even if you just sit in your cubicle and fling poop the entire time. Your inadequacies could easily be masked by massive advantages in brand recognition, marketing spend and distribution. To get a sense of whether you were, in fact, a top talent commensurate with your top post, an interviewer would have to dig much deeper.

I think a lot of the answer is that when you’re hiring, you’re not ultimately interested in a candidate’s past ACCOMPLISHMENTS as they A) involved an entire organization that the candidate isn’t bringing with them and B) happened in the past where there’s no way that your organization will receive any benefit from them. You’re interested in the candidate’s ATTRIBUTES that (arguably) enabled those accomplishments, and how well those attributes mesh with what you want to get out of the position you’re hiring for. I think a great question (and one that I’d love to hear asked in a Frerentz-GD interview) upon hearing a recitation of impressive-sounding accomplishments is, “To what do you attribute all this success?”

A few other interview questions that I would like Frerentz to ask (and that any Hawkeye fan should HOPE Frerentz will ask) include:

“How do you feel you provided a distinct schematic advantage for the Texas offense over its opponents?”

“We aren’t going to have the recruiting advantages that Texas has - tell me about some times where you identified some quality guys that others overlooked (not named Colt McCoy) and busted your ass to get them signed? How many days can I expect you on the road looking for guys that can make us better?”

“Here are three blank sheets of paper - draw three running plays that complement and build off each other.”

I’ve got a pretty good sense of the substance that those answers would contain.

His conventional resume looks strong, but as nobis60 points out, more of that is associative than causative. But most schools and employers favor associative. “Oh, you worked at Google/Apple/Procter & Gamble? You must be sharp!”

I remember being excited about Carl Reese because he masterminded the gameplan at LSU that took down Spurrier’s Florida team. We’re all familiar but we don’t KNOW.

I have so missed you. Will call you later today.