Nice article in the Athletic (paywall) on Danny White and some of his criteria for hiring coaches. He hired Bobby Hurley, Nate Oats for Buffalo basketball and Lance Leipold for Buffalo football. Scott Frost and Josh Heupel for UCF football and Johnny Dawkins for UCF basketball and Heupel again for Tenn football.
Some excerpts:
1. Take the pulse of the team
He ignores existing captaincies and tells players to elect a group of teammates they respect most. White then meets with that group to assess the program.
In sports he knows well, such as basketball — White was a walk-on at Towson and Notre Dame — White focuses on player-coach dynamics and locker room culture. In sports he’s less familiar with, such as soccer, he might ask players about the style of play and if they felt the teams’ skills were being used properly. He’s not necessarily asking the players to pick the coach.
2. It helps if the coach was a really good player. Other than Oats and Leipold his other hires excelled at sports at the college level.
“I like point guards, catchers and quarterbacks,” White said.
(Heupel and Leipold were QBs, Hurley, Oats, Dawkins were PGs)
3. Understand what kind of coach you need for your teams particular circumstances
4. Forget year 0, year 1 matters immensely so you better pick a coach who can win quickly
White is adamant about this. He cares a lot less about how the hire is publicly received than about how quickly the hire can win.
“The success you have in Year 1 matters in a coaching trajectory,” White said. “If I hire someone who is a terrible fit for that group of team leaders, that’s who you’re winning or losing with in Year 1. People talk about winning the press conference. I talk about winning Year 1 more than winning the press conference.”
Both of White’s football hires at UCF embody this. But here’s the wild part. Hiring a coach to a program coming off an 0-12 season was much easier than hiring a coach to a program coming off a 13-0 season.
At the time, White felt his options were plentiful. “
TCU and
Baylor were setting the world on fire,” White said. Those programs had similar traits to UCF. “Talent-rich state, but beating big-brand schools by getting that kid who is 2 inches shorter but just as fast and running that style of offense.”
By “that style of offense,” White meant an up-tempo spread. He was less concerned with the schematic coaching tree — Air Raid, Veer and Shoot, Oregon’s Blur — than with the coach’s fit.
5. Trust your gut even if it makes you do something uncomfortable
(He didn't want to hire Heupel away from UCF and felt guilty about it but he just kept coming back to thinking he was the best choice for Tenn, so in the end he went with this gut feel.)
