College to NFL

The coaching journey from NCAA to NFL is riddled with cautionary tales. Nick Saban has won a few championships at Alabama and LSU, but he bombed out in the NFL. Petrino, and Spurrier each had short, unsuccessful NFL coaching stints, before returning back to success in the SEC.

Recently, however, coaches have been having more success jumping from college to the NFL. Most successful coaches have already had "big city" experience, and are often going to a "smaller" town for the pros. There aren't a lot that are "king" of their college town.

Jim Harbaugh didn't have to move to take the 49ers job. Stanford is less than 15 miles from 49ers headquarters.
Pete Carroll moved from LA to Seattle. USC is arguably LAs pro team, and moving up to Seattle could be seen as a less stressful job.
Greg Schiano was at Rutgers - just a few towns over from Giants stadium in New York. Going down to Tampa Bay could almost be considered a retirement.
Doug Marrone was at Syracuse, in upstate New York, just a few hours from Buffalo.
Tom Coughlin went from Boston College to Jacksonville - another trip from a big city to Florida. He eventually ended up at New York, and has not done too shabby.

Now the Eagles have tabbed Oregon's Chip Kelly as their new coach. Where does he fit in? Oregon is a Pac-12 school, and those coaches have had recent success in the NFL. However, Eugene is a college town. Portland is nearly two hours away. And the nearest pro team is 4.5 hours away. The Ducks are the "big boys" of football in the state of Oregon. They have Nike's money showering down on them. It seems more like an SEC school than the schools everybody else is coming from.

And the destination? Philadelphia is a much bigger city than Eugene. He will also be going to the opposite side of the country. However, prior to Oregon all his coaching experience was in the northeast, so it could be considered a homecoming. We will see how it pans out. However, there are a number of question marks now.

And there is also the question of why he decided to leave now. Not many days ago, he seemed ready to accept an NFL offer, but then decided to stay in Oregon. Perhaps during the few days he saw some major NCAA penalties coming to Oregon. Could he be pulling a Carroll and bolting before everything falls apart? Carroll and Caughlin saw their college teams regress after they left for the NFL. However, Stanford and Rutgers both continued to do well after Harbaugh and Schiano left. (They also both promoted from within.) We will see how things turn out.

Records at college and NFL (from ESPN)
Chip Kelly, PHI .868 ?
Pete Carroll, SEA .836 .518
Tom Coughlin, NYG .614 .555
Jim Harbaugh, SF .580 .750
Greg Schiano, TB .504 .438
Doug Marrone, BUF .500 ?

college football working right?

Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck, Russell Wilson are all rookie quarterbacks in the NFL. Luck has lead his team to a huge turnaround and a playoff appearance. Wilson is currently one of the hottest QBs and has helped push his team to the playoffs. RGIII is a rookie Pro-bowler who has his team on the cusp of the playoffs.

They are all hot-shot quarterbacks that have outplayed many of the veteran quarterbacks they have faced.

They also stayed in school longer than they had to. Luck was already considered to be the number one draft prospect before he decided to come back to finish his degree at Stanford.

Wilson and RGIII both graduated from college in three years. They both opted to stick around for graduate school rather than enter the NFL draft.

We can consider these three to be the anti-Cam Newton. They were taking full advantage of the education that could be provided in college. Rather than simply go there to play football, they were attending class also. Perhaps college football is really something more than a minor league for the NFL.

Short memories in the NFL

In the 2007 season, Brett Favre led the Green Bay Packers within a game of the Super Bowl and was selected for the pro-bowl. After the season he announced his retirement and seemed to be going out in glory. (Only a possible trip to the super bowl could bring him back.)

Michael Vick on the other hand was in a legal and financial mess. He was suspended indefinitely without pay. He lost his endorsements, and he was facing charges of dogfighting. His football days seemed over.

My how things have changed since then. While Vick made a fool of himself before going to prison, he has shaped up his public persona since incarceration. He eased back in to the NFL with a relatively small contract. He accepted the backup role and gradually eased himself back to the NFL. He seemed contrite. When the starter was injured this season, Vick had a chance to shine. Since then he has been on fire, and mentioned as one of the top MVP candidates.

Favre on the other hand seemed to retire after every season. He came across as a snooty and vindictive in public, hurting his reputation among Packer fans. His performance had its positives, but also plenty of negatives. His reputation suffered a hit with allegations of inappropriate behavior.

Vick has used his performance to help rehabilitate his image, while Favre has gradually tarnished his. Vick has shown that one can actually recover from the "death penalty" of a prison sentence. (Though it seems ironic that while there have been plenty of personal crimes and even deaths linked to NFL players the strongest conviction is for dog fighting...) Will his positive image remain, or will he return to his crass behavior once it is overshadowed by his performance?

We'll see how short the memories really are in the NFL.