Fortuna Files: Re-ranking the 2022 coaching hires
A cycle like no other brought plenty of surprises.
The 2021-22 coaching cycle was one for the books. From Notre Dame to USC, from Oklahoma to LSU, bluebloods were losing and hiring coaches left and right.
Little of it made sense in real time. Heck, much of it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense with the benefit of hindsight.
There were 29 FBS schools that hired new coaches during that cycle. Of those 29, 14 are current power conference schools.
And a whopping nine of the coaches who were hired during that cycle have either switched jobs or been fired since.
No one saw Jim Mora taking UConn bowling twice in his first three seasons. No one could have predicted the ups and downs that have defined the Billy Napier era at Florida, either.
Let’s do a check-in and re-rank the five most successful hires from that cycle, based on these coaches’ bodies of work to date through three seasons. Perhaps most notable is the big names who are not on the list.