Tenure Coaches: Big East leads the way....

[DefenseBB]

Tenure

As many should surmise, Geno is the longest tenured coach in the NCAA D1 Coaching list for WCBB entering his 40th year.

• #2 is Doug Bruno started his current stint in 1988, though he did initially coach DePaul for 2 years in 1976-1978.
• #3 is a tie with Bill Fennelly at Iowa State and Tricia Fabbri at Quinnipiac in 1995-96. Both are entering their 30th year!
• #5 is Alabama State’s Freda Freeman Jackson from 1998-99
• #6 is a tie with Liberty’s Carey Green, South Dakota State’s Aaron Johnston and Southern Indiana’s Rick Stein
• #9 is Jose Fernandez from South Florida from 2000-01 and is entering his 25th at the school.
• #10 is a tie with Cindy Griffin from St. Joe’s and Trisha Brown from Stonehill
• #12 is Karl Smesko from Florida Gulf Coast 2002-03

Of interest is 8 of the top 12 are men, which given the time they were hired is not that surprising. The good news is this past off-season, 55 coaches were hired-48 women/7 men. To me, the goal should be to get the best candidate regardless but there has been “noise” about “gender” so I noted it.

There are 362 Division 1 programs now. Most first contracts are for 5 years, so that is a break point for my data below. As you can deduce, 196 are probably still on their first contract. Percent totals listed.

• 1st year: 55 coaches (15.2%)
• Years 2-5: 141 coaches (39.0%)
• Years 6-10: 95 coaches (26.2%)
• Years 11-15: 42 coaches (11.6%)
• Years 16-20: 14 coaches (3.9%)
• Years 21-40: 15 coaches (4.1%)

Ok, now the interesting analysis

• The Big East has the longest tenured coaches at 12.7 Years with Geno, Bruno, Flannery-23, Tartamella-13, Bozzella-12 leading the way
• #2 is the West Coast Conf at 8.5 Years led by Scott Rueck at Oregon State 15 years

The Big 4 ranking is below (longest tenured coach, #2 tenure and number of 1st year coaches):

• 7.9 Yrs. Big Ten (Brenda Freese-23 years, Joe McKeown-17, 1 first year coach)
• 7.3 Yrs. Big 12 (Fennelly-30, Jeff Mittie/Ronald Huey-11, 0 first year coaches)
• 5.9 yrs. SEC (Dawn Staley-17, Robin Pingeton-15, 2 first year)
• 4.8 yrs. ACC (Jeff Walz-18, Wes Moore-12, 4)

To me, Joe, Ronald and Robin, despite their tenure should either retire or be let go after this year as their performance is well below average the last 5 years but that will be a separate thread as every conference has coaches under scrutiny.

Let the discussion begin.