HINDSIGHT'S 20/20: Grading Power Five coaching hires after the 2012 season

Mitch Barnhart hired Mark Stoops after the conclusion of the 2012 season. Cats Illustrated looks back at all the hires during that offseason.

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GRADE: A. This would have been the unlikeliest of grades had a person been asked to forecast such a ranking before this season began. Colorado, a proud program with a very good history, had been irrelevant for some time before McIntyre was hired. Just as some probably wonder whether Nebraska can ever really aspire to elite football again, many have surely asked whether Colorado's success might have become a relic of history.

The Buffs aren't the Bills, but they're pretty damn good. And who saw this coming? McIntyre's first three Colorado teams finished 4-8, 2-10 and 4-9. They were outscored easily in McIntyre's first two seasons -- but then again, maybe everyone should have just expected that and written it off. Last year Colorado showed real progress, nearly evening out the ledger on the season-long score sheet. And this year Colorado will compete against Washington for a Pac-12 championship. McIntyre has the Buffaloes at 9-2, fresh off a win over Top 25 Washington State, and they're doing it in style, outscoring opponents by around 17 points per contest.

The Pac-12 has surely taken a dip this year, or at least several of the league's key power brokers are down (USC early, UCLA all year, Arizona State, Stanford, Oregon), but Colorado's rise is a real thing.

Here's what's really impressive, and perhaps scary for the Pac-12 South: McIntyre's first few recruiting classes ranked Nos. 66, 64, 72 and 66. That, on par, is worse than UK's recruiting averages in the pre-Stoops Rivals.com era. And those are the classes that have built this west coast contender. McIntyre is now armed with the nation's No. 17 class, still a work in progress, and he's likely to bring a whole new level of talent to Boulder.

Summary: Who saw this coming? It looked bleak but now the sky's the limit. But can Colorado keep McIntyre?

Lessons: Sometimes patience pays off big. And, there are still those coaches who are the exceptions to the rule: You don't have to have the flashy recruiting ranking to build a program.

GRADE: A. Petrino didn't spend much time at all with the Hilltoppers, but he was one in a nice string of quality hires for a WKU program that has found national acclaim for its success in the Group of Five ranks.

In hindsight, the most significant aspect of WKU's decision to hire Petrino was that it may have effectively served as an unintended way of "mainstreaming" Petrino for Louisville to hire him again, after a checkered past that had rendered him virtually untouchable to nearly for nearly any athletics director.

WKU isn't feeling any negative impact from that then-controversial decision to hire Petrino (although they never would have received the same scrutiny for it as a Power Five school, since G5's are, oddly, held to a different moral standard thanks to a lack of interest). It wouldn't be right to say Petrino laid the foundation for all the success WKU has had, but he did have success in his one year there.

For WKU, the hire proved to be a huge success on another level. It was Petrino who brought Jeff Brohm to Bowling Green, and while Petrino's hire was more of a flash point than Brohm's, it's Brohm who has compiled the truly impressive 28-10 record through almost three seasons. There has been continuity even with Petrino's quick departure, and without Petrino there's no telling who would be coaching the Hilltoppers now -- or how much success (or lack of it) they'd be having in the post-Taggart era.

Summary: Petrino was a one-year success at WKU, but his hire helped the 'Toppers land Brohm, who has been the real gem.

Lessons: Group of Five schools aren't held to the same standard by much of the media in terms of weighing ethics and a coach's past in their hiring decisions. And, just because a coach leaves quickly it doesn't mean all is lost. Look for the ripple effect. Also, some guys just know how to field winning football teams. Petrino brought a chorus of criticism with him to WKU (and Louisville this time 'round), but it hasn't seemed to bother him. Some guys thrive when they're under the gun, even often.

GRADE: A. So how does a coach with a losing record, approaching the end of his fourth season, land an "A" grade (or rather, how does his A.D. get that mark for the hire)? Simple. Taggart took over an underachieving and unspectacular USF program, which had fallen on hard times, and, understandably, went 2-10 in his first year. Since then he's been 4-8, 8-5 and now 9-2, with his team showing indisputable progress every year since he's been with the Bulls.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Taggart has restored honor to a once-promising program that had spun out of control. He laid the foundation for the success WKU has had under Brohm (and before him Petrino), turning a 2-10 team (his first year) into a scrappy, overachieving squad that finished 7-5 in back-to-back campaigns. Taggart's teams fight hard. They're rarely outworked. They also play fast, and that's in part a testament to his coaching and in part a testament to the fact that he recruits speed very well.

It will be a surprise if the Power Five rank doesn't poach him soon, because there's only so far Taggart can take a USF program that could be left out of a major conference expansion in many scenarios.

Summary: Taggart is doing exactly what he did at WKU, only at a program with more potential. He's doing exactly what most expected he would, too.

Lessons: Place a high value on a builder with head coaching experience. Take a hard look at head coaches who have won against the odds and against the tide of history, even if they're coaching off the beaten path.

GRADE: B. It's important to remember that Mark Stoops inherited a terrible situation from his predecessor. Kentucky has had more down periods than glory years on the gridiron, but the period immediately preceding the Stoops' hire was particularly bad, with a 40-0 home loss to Vanderbilt as the best piece of evidence that rock bottom had arrived.

Stoops is 11 games under .500 at Kentucky, but the course he's charted at Kentucky is eerily similar, in more ways than one, to the one taken by Rich Brooks, his predecessor's predecessor. Plenty of lumps early, more than a few doubters and finally a bowl breakthrough in Year Four. The comparison only goes so far, but it does go a ways.

Mark Stoops has recruited at a higher level than most program-watchers believed Kentucky was even capable of, and that has forever raised the bar. Higher expectations, on the field and in recruiting, are a very good thing. The recruiting enthusiasm (and Barnhart's faith in Stoops) led to a massive renovation of UK's facilities.

Better recruiting, better facilities and, finally, a postseason appearance. Beyond that, UK returns almost every meaningful contributor in 2017. For the first time in program history UK had a pair of 1,000 yard backs in a single season, and both could return next year. The program hasn't had a consistent offensive identity for a very long time (unless your identity is "No. 18"), but it's got one now.

Plenty of work remains to be done. The defense hasn't exactly been up and down this year. It's been down and slightly less down. The Cats have benefited from a very down SEC East. One can still legitimately ask whether Stoops has a signature win over a truly good opponent. But the numbers, the trajectory, the recruiting and the investment don't lie. Ironically, when things seemed best, Stoops didn't break through. But when things seemed beyond repair, he finally got his break. He's now got a new lease on life and is enjoying national praise for his "physical" team (see: Alabama's Jonathan Allen, Georgia's Kirby Smart), rather than just for his Signing Day surprises.

Summary: Stoops has done some things, as a coach, that few believed a coach could do at Kentucky. He's been a master of hype and winning the offseason. Earlier disappointments finally gave way to a bowl. Each year Stoops' win total has improved or stayed steady. It's ironic that some of Stoops' biggest early selling points (e.g. High Performance with Erik Korem, the Air Raid, Neal Brown) are no longer prominent parts of the program (or even there at all), and this is when he seems to be turning the corner, at least in some measured way.

Lesson: Don't be so quick to say a program will always do this/be like this, or can never do this/that. The right coach can destroy stereotypes and overcome hurdles. But also, don't put the cart before the horse when the hype hits fever pitch. Wait for results.

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GRADE: B-. This will, inevitably, be the most hotly-contested grade handed out. Because when it comes to Tennessee football it's just never easy. Jones inherited a Volunteer program that was a shell of its former self. From their 1998 national championship in the first year of the BCS 'til Jones' hiring, Tennessee went from a top-tier program with a national brand and national recruiting reach to a soap opera plagued by infighting between factions in the athletics department and fan base, and from consistency to a model of undesirable inconsistency and a lack of long-term vision. It's only fair to set the stage for Jones that way.

Some have said it was a five-year building job for Jones. That might be generous to Jones, because there are plenty of examples of great coaches working big turnarounds at sinking ships in far less time than that. But it was clearly a daunting rebuilding effort, if the goal was to compete nationally.

Jones has certainly improved Tennessee's recruiting to the level it should be at. For much of his tenure he has flipped back and forth, depending on who you talk to and depending on the week you talk to them, between the coach who will restore Rocky Top greatness and just the latest in a long line of underachievers.

In the latter-part of last year it sure seemed like Jones had the Vols set up for a great 2016 season and maybe even a dark horse national championship run. Their drama-filled first half of this year captivated the nation, but injuries (and some ineptitude, or maybe just that luck running out) helped to send them back to three-loss territory. All things considered this is still one of Tennessee's better seasons in quite some time, but wasn't this supposed to be the Year of the Vol? And, injuries or not, if Tennessee still can't win the East during an era when seemingly no one wants to win it, why should Jones be viewed as anything other than something between a slight disappointment to a guy the jury is still out on?

Jones gets a B-minus because he's at Tennessee. Just because his predecessors underachieved and fell flat doesn't give him a free pass. It's "only" his fourth year, but his crowning achievement has been -- this year -- a final record with at least three losses and an inability to get to Atlanta even when the East is as down as it's ever been. He inherited a challenge, but he also inherited an enormous opportunity and a vast field of untapped potential. So far, some promise, but little more than a lot of fingers pointing to next year -- yet again. Some presidents have taken over bad situations. Four years in, most people think they own it, for good or for bad. Maybe not permanently, but your results are now yours.

Summary: Jones has done a lot of things Tennessee needed to be in a position to return to national relevance. At times he's seemed to have the Vols on the cusp of better things. But he's always hit his head on the ceiling, with the cause being a matter of dispute, particularly this year.

Lesson: It's hard to change a program's culture. Maybe it's too simple to blame the culture at Tennessee (because that is, indeed, very cliche). Still, Jones can succeed if a few things go right. Recruiting at least puts you in a position. But quarterback play matters too.

GRADE: B+. Auburn is an odd place these days, at least when you're trying to judge whoever the football coach on the Plains happens to be. The reasons for that are many. For starters, it's an upper-echelon SEC program that has rarely ever sustained "top of the mountain" success for very long, compared to the league's other giants. The program comes with plenty of strengths, but it does have some pitfalls. The spectre of Nick Saban and his impossibly strong record at Alabama is always hovering nearby, so whenever there's the slightest hint of chaos or a tick downwards, Auburn's coach had better watch out.

That a coach would even last at Auburn for four years during Saban's reign is a small accomplishment. But even in spite of the fact that Malzahn was on the hot seat as recently as earlier this year -- probably prematurely -- his overall record is nothing to sneeze at.

Malzahn was a popular hire for his offensive wizardry, which he had already demonstrated in calling Cam Newton's show a few years before. While the offense hasn't always been a juggernaut, it's been good enough to keep Auburn in the upper portion of the nation's toughest league. He's taken Auburn to a national championship game (winning an SEC championship that year), and that season turned out to be one of the most memorable for any team in modern history.

That Malzahn would find himself in warming waters after 8-5 and 7-6 campaigns is a testament to those pitfalls that will plague whoever rivals Saban in the Yellowhammer State. But he has rebounded admirably and Auburn has been a strong 8-3 team this season. He's still bringing in talent and there's no reason to believe that, in a good year, Malzahn's Auburn can't compete for an SEC championship again.

Summary: Take Saban out of the equation and Malzahn has been a very good coach who probably shouldn't have quite been on the hot seat. He has won big at Auburn. He can win big at Auburn again.

Lesson: At Auburn, you're judged differently. Also, Auburn's quick plummet after their success in 2013, and now their resurgence after their fall, are proof that reality can still change quickly in this sport.

GRADE: B. Jon Rothstein likes to say (repeatedly) that Villanova's basketball program runs itself. That's debatable, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Wisconsin's football program probably does. At least for now. At least it has, for quite a long time. The Badgers are doing it this year under Paul Chryst, a coach who was somewhat highly-regarded but not exactly a hot commodity at Pitt. They did it under Alvarez and under Bret Bielema, too.

That's not to diminish Andersen's impressive 19-7 mark. But that record is basically par for the course in America's Dairyland, so it's a compliment to what Barry built.

Ordinarily a 19-7 record at a non-Blue Blood school would be grounds for an "A" particularly following not one, but two outstanding coaches (Alvarez, Bielema). But if you thought Bielema-to-Arkansas was surprising, Andersen-to-Oregon State had to make your head spin. Andersen left a program that succeeds year in and year out to go west and take over an Oregon State program that had become incredibly stale under Mike Riley (who may be catching a second wind with a new chance at Nebraska). Oregon State has a ton of factors working against it, but Andersen left for Corvallis anyways. Most believe he didn't want Alvarez pulling all the strings as his puppet master, as he probably will in Madison so long as he has breath, but Andersen also cited his desire to be able to recruit under less stringent academic requirements.

So far, no good. At least for Andersen. The Andersen hire gets a B and was smart at the time. It certainly didn't hurt the Badgers brand or damage their ability to field a winner. But they may have misread Andersen's understandable aspiration to be his own coach, rather than to play second fiddle to a predecessor who's never far away.

Summary: Andersen did what Wisconsin coaches do. He just didn't like everything that came with the job. Good coach. Understandable hire. Shocking exit.

Lessons: The heir apparent who makes perfect sense is usually, probably, the right choice. But those doing the hiring should make sure that everyone's on the same page on a number of levels. Personalities and egos must be weighed soberly.

GRADE: C+. This ranking is proof that this project is all about hindsight and what has transpired, because when Bielema was hired it was something between shocking and a blockbuster deal. Bielema had posted a 68-24 (37-19 Big Ten) record at Wisconsin, following Barry Alvarez in a way few expected he would. It was a curious hire because Bielema had seemingly absolute job security in Madison, a place where success is more than norm than the exception in modern times. Perhaps Urban Meyer's arrival made the path to the Rose Bowl much more difficult, but Bielema's move southward to a good, not a great, SEC program was surprising, to say the least.

Almost immediately Bielema established the kind of power identity you would expect a Wisconsin coach to bring with him anywhere, turning out monstrous offensive linemen and gaudy rushing attacks with apparent ease. But Bielema has found the going much tougher in the SEC. Before this year he was plagued by head-scratching losses early, which tainted some incredible late-season finishes.

Arkansas under Bielema has been, more often than not, a team that makes most people wonder how they didn't do better. This year Bielema may have overachieved a bit, so don't give up on him yet. But his 25-24 record in nearly four years in Fayetteville is surely not what Hog fans expected when they convinced him the pastures were greener in Saban's SEC West. The non-conference losses can't be explained by this, but there's another truth here: In the SEC West, the epicenter of the college football arms race and probably the Mecca of the sport's current universe, there have to be winner's and losers -- no matter how good all the division's coaches might be.

Summary: Bielema routinely fields a team capable of beating nearly anyone. Has he finally gotten over his ability to lose to anyone? Arkansas is a team nobody wants to play -- ever -- but also a team that rarely exceeds (or meets) expectations.

Lessons: The SEC West is absolutely brutal. Some guys have to lose. Don't mess with a good thing when you've got it.

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GRADE: C. Let's set the stage for a moment. Jeff Tedford started out very strong at Cal before tapering out. He would, occasionally, recruit a very high caliber of player to Berkeley. But his best recruiting classes never enjoyed the same success on the field as his earliest teams, which had made him such a rising star in the profession. Cal went from challenging USC to becoming an afterthought in a league that was steadily gaining national prestige.

So when Dykes was hired there was the memory of success; the possibility of high-level football seemed real. Dykes coached an exciting brand of football at Louisiana Tech, and that kind of offense would seem to go over well in college football's traditional Wild West. It has worked very well at times.

Dykes went 1-11 in his first year at Cal. New system, new coach, personnel that didn't fit: Give him a pass. He then finished 5-7 in year two (clear progress) and 8-5 last year (a breakthrough). But in his fourth year Dykes has run into problems. In spite of some memorable wins over Texas and Utah (more impressive than the Texas win), Cal has plummeted to 4-7. The culprit? The defense. Opponents are scoring an ungodly 45.5 points per game against Cal, and even in the Pac-12's (or whatever it was called at any given time) wildest days that kind of number would be embarrassing.

Dykes is a good enough offensive mind that it's entirely possible he could rebound with an acceptable season in 2017. But unless his program starts to play a little defense (more the kind they played in 2015), they'll hit a hard ceiling. One has to imagine that Oregon and Stanford will improve as well, so it's not going to get any easier.

Summary: Too early to judge where this ball's going to land but Dykes' teams have shown all the good you'd hope for and all the bad you'd fear. They're dangerous but Charmin soft.

Lesson: Progress and regression aren't always linear. Just because it looks good today doesn't mean success tomorrow is guaranteed. And what looks bad now might still turn around quickly.

GRADE: C. Let's start with some brutal honesty: 23-26 at NC State certainly isn't impressive, but it's not as though it's far out of character for the Wolfpack program Doeren heads. Chuck Amato recruited to NC State the way Mark Stoops is recruiting to Kentucky, but, as is true with Stoops, that's probably not going to happen over the long haul unless a coach is able to change the landscape for his program, somehow, in the big picture.

Doeren has had some good players at NC State, but he's in a top-heavy division and his program isn't close to truly challenging the top dogs -- Clemson, Florida State and now Louisville. It might not be fair to judge a coach based on that, but there are plenty of wins to be had in the ACC, where the middle is usually (not always) less than imposing and the bottom is often bad.

While Doeren has floundered in Raleigh, up the road in Chapel Hill the Pack's rival, North Carolina, has had more success under Larry Fedora. That probably has some of their fans wondering, "Why not us?" and it certainly magnifies NC State's deficiencies and, frankly, their lack of a quality identity under Doeren.

The recruiting is okay -- not great, not terrible. The play is okay -- not great, not terrible. According to reasonable outside expectations, Doeren's results aren't unusual. But he's basically spinning his wheels and his window of opportunity for building a long-term winner is probably running out.

Is that surprising? Maybe so. Doeren was once a very hot up-and-coming name in the world of coaching (and hiring). He piloted Northern Illinois to a 23-4 two-year record and fan bases at a few other schools were probably hoping he would have ended up at the helm of their favored program. Doeren's lack of success doesn't mean he's a bad coach. But he's been unspectacular and hasn't fared well against the alpha dogs in the Atlantic. The clock is probably ticking.

Summary: Based on his cult-celebrity status in the coach-watch world, Doeren's been a disappointment. But maybe it was too much to expect even a MAC miracle worker to contend with Dabo, Jimbo and Lamar Jackson.

Lesson: Just because a coach is a rising star doesn't mean he's a lock to be the next big thing. Also, Doeren may could have done better than NC State. He might not have wanted to let his window of opportunity pass, but even in hindsight, knowing that he's struggling, it's a little odd that a coach who fielded dominant teams at NIU ended up a such a middling ACC program.

GRADE: C. There will be those Boston College fans who disagree vociferously and contend the grade should be worse, but it's not that simple. The Boston College of the Matt Ryan, Tom O'Brien and Jeff Jagodzinski years was a far cry from the Boston College of Frank Spaziani, who coached at the Heights before Addazio. The program had gone from consistent, successful and a powerful brand in the Northeast (and among private schools in many other parts) to barely able to recruit against any major conference schools. That was before Addazio arrived.

In hindsight (and even at the time), it's quite impressive that Addazio was able to lead Boston College to a pair of bowl games in his first two seasons at BC. Many other coaches would not have done that. His early teams ran the ball well and he made some good executive decisions (such as bringing in some key fifth-year graduate transfers and hiring Don Brown as defensive coordinator).

Things have spiraled downward for Addazio, last year and this year, because the program has been basically anemic on offense. Literally, completely unable to move the ball against good teams. Bringing in Patrick Towles from Kentucky wasn't the fix this year. The offensive line, once one of the proudest line traditions in college football, has been barely recognizable. It's been ages since BC passed the ball well, and the program is on what seems to be a never-ending uphill climb to recruit speed and play making ability at the skill positions.

It's not easy to recruit at Boston College, what with the program's long-standing commitment to not investing in facilities at the rate other programs do. They also lack a quality local talent base. And this ship was wrecked first by Spaziani, before Addazio convinced a lot of people he could fix it. BC is still one win away from locking up a third bowl game in Addazio's fourth year (they're 5-6 with Wake Forest remaining), but there's no doubt that there's been a nagging negativity of late, with many fans wanting a change.

Summary: It started with Addazio overachieving, but he's struggled to recreate the success of those first two years (which included a win over USC and several close games against Florida State and Clemson). More recently the narrative has taken a negative turn, with offensive failures and a talent deficit, not to mention a stale offensive approach, causing many to sour.

Lesson: Some coaches overachieve for a time -- short or long -- but in the end if you don't up the recruiting, you generally don't survive. Some places are just tough to recruit.

GRADE: D. Again, this is a reminder that this is a hindsight-based analysis. At the time Kingsbury made perfect sense. Beloved former player? Absolutely. Committed to the Air Raid program that became synonymous with Texas Tech (even though UK had it first)? No question. Young, energetic and able to relate with recruits? One had to assume so. When your program has had success, continuity is generally a good thing. New hires generally break continuity, but Kingsbury seemed to guarantee that Mike Leach's vision would remain in place (although he didn't directly succeed Leach).

Things just haven't worked out nearly as well as they had for the two previous decades in Lubbock. At one point one of the real constants in college football was that Texas Tech would win seven games. No less, but sometimes more. The program has a long-term ceiling and all but the most diehard Red Raider fans would acknowledge that. But Texas Tech under Leach and in that general era was a model of respectable consistency. Tough to prepare for, always able to execute its unique game plan, and never out of a game (never ahead by enough to rest easy, as well, however).

Kingsbury is now working on his second losing season in four years with the program he once quarterbacked. He is guaranteed to finish with a losing record in the Big XII for the fourth consecutive year. Some of that is probably because the rest of the league is "doing Texas Tech" as well as Texas Tech used to, and they just aren't that unique anymore. That's an oversimplification, but there may be some truth to it. A program that was once one of the most fascinating shows of turf, week in and week out, has become a run of the mill, increasingly mediocre middling.

It's worth mentioning that Kingsbury rebounded with a bowl season the last time he went undefeated, so don't write him off yet. Because of his name he's likely to get more patience than some other coach would. But it's far from a guarantee that things end well for him. What seemed to be a no-brainer of a hire, and a universally popular one at TTU, may now be viewed as, potentially, a decision that proves unfortunate.

Summary: Kingsbury seemed like (and may have even been) the smart hire at the time. But he's overseen Texas Tech going from on the cutting edge to just another Big XII team that likes playing roundball on grass with a toughness probably and, increasingly, more losses than wins. What's he got in the works that will reverse his fortunes when some other league schools have improved so much (this year or recently in the big picture)?

Lesson: The obvious hire, even if it's also the sexy hire, isn't a lock to work out. Circumstances matter. When a league improves, your job gets tougher. Also, you don't have to hire someone with head coaching experience, but it's certainly a desirable quality. Otherwise you're leaving a lot of unknown variables on the table and you'd better be prepared to deal with serious growing pains.

GRADE: F. Derrell Hazell might not be a bad football coach. Maybe down the road he'll find the right job, not at this level and with better circumstances, and he'll find more success. But he took a bad job and didn't make it better. In his own defense Hazell could point out that he's not the one who tanked Purdue's program. That happened over a longer period of time and it's easy to forget that in the late 1990's and early 2000's the Boilermakers were a tough out who occasionally rose up with a big year. They seem light years away from being even close to relevant now. After the Hazell years it's going to be even harder to get back to that level.

Hazell started 3-3 this season before he was canned. That .500 start was the bright spot of his time in West Lafayette. He never won more than three games in a season. Hazell's best full season was in 2014, and his team that year was outscored by more than a touchdown per game.

He didn't recruit especially well, although it's anything but easy to recruit at Purdue. His teams didn't have a strong identity on offense, nor did they play well on defense. In most phases of the game Purdue ranged from poor to terrible.

The decision to hire Hazell wasn't a dumb one. He had just finished a season 11-3 at Kent State of all places, and Purdue's power brokers had to know that they wouldn't have the pick of the litter. But all the structural problems that have come to make this such a tough place to win ultimately proved to be too much for Hazell.

Summary: A completely unspectacular tenure, and undoubtedly a forgettable era in Purdue football history. Little good came from this four-year run. Rinse, repeat with another budding generation of young athletes knowing only bad football in West Lafayette. It wasn't always like that, but Hazell's not the only one to blame.

Lesson: Sometimes a thing is broken beyond repair. Maybe another coach can fix it, but in some moments it's just not meant to be. To win at some programs it takes a lot of bold moves and probably some luck. Without it, you're done before you start.

GRADE: D+. Too harsh? Pay attention. Helfrich took over the most dynamic, most exciting, most new money brand in college football. He drove the thing into the ditch. Even before this year (Oregon's now a shocking 4-7) there were signs that Helfrich might not be the guy to continue to turn Phil Knight's money into championship contention. But this year is when it's become painfully obvious that Helfrich is the wrong guy to lead the Ducks.

Helfrich did coach Oregon to the national championship game just two seasons ago. That was in his second year. He does get credit for that, but only in the same way Larry Coker gets credit for winning his national championship at Miami. It's been all downhill since then, and it's perfectly reasonable to wonder whether another coach -- many of them, even -- would have been much better suited to sustain one of the sport's modern and more unlikely success stories.

Now, does one bad year make a coach a failure? Maybe Helfrich still has time to right this and make the "F" grade look foolish. Oregon may have traded their spot in the sport's elite tier for a long down period, or at least a stretch of uncertainty and consternation. To make matters worse the balance of power in the Pacific Northwest has shifted, without question, to Montlake, with Chris Petersen's Huskies finally breaking their long hex. Washington may be poised to dominate Oregon for years to come.

Summary: It had started to seem like a given that Oregon was destined to remain as a powerful college football program. It just felt like more than a flash in the pan. It took several coaches (Brooks, Bellotti, Kelly) to gradually build up and break through. The money, the swag, the reputation with recruits, the playing style -- it seemed like Oregon was the new Miami, minus the championships but because they came from out of nowhere to emerge in strength. But now Oregon has fallen on harder times than they've seen in a very long time, and there might not be a quick fix or an easy way to reverse course.

Lesson: Nothing is a given. No program is really self-sustaining. If you lose a great coach (as Oregon did when Kelly left for the NFL), you'd better hire a great one. Also, Oregon is not Alabama, USC or Ohio State. The program can probably win with a good (not a great) coach, but their margin for error is still razor thin with the wrong coach. Finally, college football programs are fragile things. You can go from 60-to-0 just as fast and just as easily as some go from 0-to-60.

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It's perfectly reasonable to say that Mitch Barnhart's decision to hire Mark Stoops hasn't turned out to be the biggest blockbuster hire, as the results have played out, but the Cats' athletics director could have done a lot worse.

When a school is hiring a new coach they're often in a bad position. Most of the schools hiring new coaches in this 'Class of 2012' were in just that kind of unenviable spot. But not all struggles are equal. While Butch Jones, for instance, has had more success than Stoops, he also inherited a better roster, better facilities, more money to put together a staff, a better recruiting base, better history, and so forth. So resist the temptation to just line up wins and losses, even head to head, to make judgments that way.

Most coaches don't last too long at any given stop these days. They either fail (more quickly than ever, it seems) or they win enough to move on and continue climbing the ladder. Few and far between are the coaches who win, either just enough or a lot, and keep on winning, staying in the same spot with no apparent ambition to look for their next job. In fact, there are plenty of examples of coaches orchestrating very quick and unexpected turnarounds only to move on almost as soon as possible (James Franklin, for instance). One might even say that, for a program like Kentucky, the better and more sustainable path to lasting success and, thus, changing perceptions, is for a coach to gradually succeed, to slowly mature as a professional, to improve himself and the program incrementally, rather than as a tidal wave crashing down on the way things were.

That's not to say Stoops is guaranteed to succeed or that he would have absolutely left Kentucky had he won seven or eight games in years two and three. But it does mean that the slow build generally makes it less likely that a coach is poached, particularly at a place like Kentucky. And oftentimes a coach will reward a school and a fan base for their loyalty and steadfastness when they patiently bear the down times, more so than when success comes easy and fast.

Does that mean Stoops' tenure to date has been ideal? No, and there are improvements to be made. But Stoops was far from the worse hire Kentucky could have made in 2012. Relative to the job strengths and limitations at the other Power Five programs that were hiring new coaches in 2012, Kentucky has done well. How do we know that? Reasonable people don't hate Mark Stoops, nor do reasonable people believe he's doomed to fail. Reasonable fans fall somewhere between slightly disappointed to concerned about a lack of improvement in certain areas, even upset at missed opportunities, but on the other end of the spectrum from those who believe recruiting will still improve yet more and 2017 is setting up for fantastic football. When you're Kentucky and your coach is finishing his fourth year, and you have hope, then you could be doing a lot worse.