Tommy Bowden's Legacy
So I've done a little more analysis with the data I posted yesterday and boy oh boy things are looking sad. I decided to figure out what the true nature was of our season by season W/L records under Tommy Bowden. Often times you'll hear people say "He has three whole 9-win seasons!" or "He's been Bowl Eligible every year he's coached!" (the latter being an outright lie as we were in fact banned from bowls the year of the SC brawl.) Anyway, on the surface, you could agree with those folks; I mean Tommy Bowden does have a winning record overall. Each year we win more games than we lose, so you can't be unhappy with that, right?
Well, not exactly.
We compete in the ACC. Even though a few good teams were added to the ACC, our conference still has a good many patsies. Absolutely horrible teams that earn us the moniker: The ACC - When does basketball season start? So should we really count those as quality wins when we're talking abot coaching efficiency? I don't think so.
In addition, we play 2 or 3 absolute cupcakes a year in the form of out of conference games (and that's not even including South Carolina!) Should running up the score on the likes of UL-Monroe or La Tech be considered a quality win? I don't think so.
It is my contention that when you remove the teams from our schedule that are absolutely terrible, Tommy Bowden has had a very poor record at Clemson. To illustrate this point, I came up with this chart: (click for larger version)
Basically I broke the number of games won each year into different categories. "Wins" is just the total number of wins, while "Top 115 wins" is the number of wins that year against teams ranked 115th in the nation or better (at year's end.) I realize this isn't the prettiest chart but A) It should be ugly, because the results are ugly and 2) I didn't want to manipulate the numbers any, this is just the raw data with no juxtaposition.
So, look at that orange bar there: "Top 25 wins." 6 total. TOTAL, in 9 years. That's not even one a year. In fact, it could be said that the only year we had that was worth a damn was 2003... which leads to an entirely different discussion about why that came about, and the coaching changes that followed. I'll leave that for another time.
In the other 9 win seasons, we just didn't beat anybody with a decent football team. Look at 2000, 8 of the teams we played ended the season ranked worse than 40th! 5 of those wins were against teams ranked worse than 70th in the country! That is horrible. This year wasn't much better, with 4 of our wins coming against teams ranked worse than 70th, and no top 25 wins.
So, in 9 years, we've had one quality season, 0 Ten win seasons, 0 ACC championships, 0 BCS bowl appearances, and we only beat a maximum of 5 "decent" (top 70) teams a year.
In the SEC, we'd be known as "Vanderbilt."
This is mediocrity folks. This is horrible. We are Clemson, we should not accept this.
Well, not exactly.
We compete in the ACC. Even though a few good teams were added to the ACC, our conference still has a good many patsies. Absolutely horrible teams that earn us the moniker: The ACC - When does basketball season start? So should we really count those as quality wins when we're talking abot coaching efficiency? I don't think so.
In addition, we play 2 or 3 absolute cupcakes a year in the form of out of conference games (and that's not even including South Carolina!) Should running up the score on the likes of UL-Monroe or La Tech be considered a quality win? I don't think so.
It is my contention that when you remove the teams from our schedule that are absolutely terrible, Tommy Bowden has had a very poor record at Clemson. To illustrate this point, I came up with this chart: (click for larger version)
Basically I broke the number of games won each year into different categories. "Wins" is just the total number of wins, while "Top 115 wins" is the number of wins that year against teams ranked 115th in the nation or better (at year's end.) I realize this isn't the prettiest chart but A) It should be ugly, because the results are ugly and 2) I didn't want to manipulate the numbers any, this is just the raw data with no juxtaposition.
So, look at that orange bar there: "Top 25 wins." 6 total. TOTAL, in 9 years. That's not even one a year. In fact, it could be said that the only year we had that was worth a damn was 2003... which leads to an entirely different discussion about why that came about, and the coaching changes that followed. I'll leave that for another time.
In the other 9 win seasons, we just didn't beat anybody with a decent football team. Look at 2000, 8 of the teams we played ended the season ranked worse than 40th! 5 of those wins were against teams ranked worse than 70th in the country! That is horrible. This year wasn't much better, with 4 of our wins coming against teams ranked worse than 70th, and no top 25 wins.
So, in 9 years, we've had one quality season, 0 Ten win seasons, 0 ACC championships, 0 BCS bowl appearances, and we only beat a maximum of 5 "decent" (top 70) teams a year.
In the SEC, we'd be known as "Vanderbilt."
This is mediocrity folks. This is horrible. We are Clemson, we should not accept this.
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