Tennessee Vols: Comparing Butch Jones’ First 10 Years To Other Coaches

Tennessee Vols head coach Butch Jones has led his team to back-to-back nine win seasons.

Since last November, I’ve been trying to objectively figure out who Butch Jones is as a coach.

This hasn’t been an easy task, and I regret to inform you that I still don’t feel I have a definitive conclusion.

My latest foray into figuring out Butch Jones as a coach was to compare his first ten years to the first ten years of some successful coaches.

The first thing I learned is there are a lot of good coaches who haven’t been a head coach at the collegiate level for ten years. Dabo Swinney, Jimbo Fisher and Jim Harbaugh all fall short of the ten year mark (though Harbaugh does have his time in the NFL).

I didn’t take the time to go through all of the coaches in college football, just the ones off the top of my head that Jones can be compared to — both good and bad.

Here’s what I found, starting with Jones:

• Butch Jones — 80-48
• Nick Saban — 82-39-1
• Les Miles — 90-38
• Urban Meyer — 104-23
• Bob Stoops — 109-24
• Mark Richt — 96-34
• Chris Petersen — 107-24
• Bret Bielema — 86-44

And just for reference, here are some coaches with less than 10 years as a head coach.

• Larry Fedora — 74-44
• Dabo Swinney — 89-28
• Jim Harbaugh — 78-33
• Jimbo Fisher — 78-17

As sports fans, we love symmetry. We’re constantly comparing coaches and teams to other coaches and teams. We look to the past to determine what the future might hold. We see how long it took another coach to reach certain milestones and we make that the benchmark.

What we don’t understand, however, is there are many variables that go into whether or not a coach is immediately successful. For example, Les Miles took over a great situation at LSU, one that allowed him to win a national championship within three years of taking over the program.

Then there are other coaches that inherited bad situations and turned it around almost immediately. Nick Saban and Bob Stoops come to mind.

But even comparing Saban turning around Alabama and Stoops turning around Oklahoma isn’t fair. Saban was beyond his first ten years as a head coach when he helped change Alabama’s fortunes. Stoops was a brand new head coach when he changed the culture at Oklahoma.

In fact, if you look at Saban’s record after the first ten years, there would be no way to assume he’d become the elite head coach he is now. Whereas, if you look at Urban Meyer’s record after his first ten years, it’s already evident that he’s an elite coach.

Every coach, and their path to greatness, or mediocrity, is different. Right now, Butch Jones is in the same sentence as Bret Bielema and Larry Fedora, but he’s also in the same sentence as early 2000’s Nick Saban.

If you go off history, which I’ve already suggested is a bad idea, then it doesn’t bode well for Jones. Most likely he’ll turn out to be a career nine win coach. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Mark Richt will tell you that it’s not good enough for a school in the upper echelon of the SEC.

But then again, maybe Jones will make the same leap Saban did, or maybe he won’t. There’s no way to look at the path of other coaches and predict how Jones’ future will pan out.

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At this point, we just have to wait and see what happens. If anyone tells you they know what Jones’ legacy as a coach will be when it’s all said and done, they’re lying straight to your face.