Heather Dinich ‘Heart’ David Cutcliffe

General NCS Football Rankings & Lists39

She’s at it again.

The woman who originally ranked Carter-Finley Stadium the ACC’s  11th toughest place to play while ranking Kenan Stadium 4th because of its scenic beauty…

This place is just the right size, and the picturesque pine trees make this one of the nicest venues in the league. Butch Davis has an amazing view of all of it from his office.

…appears to be stepping in it again.

Before the 2008 ACC Football season began, Dinich ranked the ACC’s Head Coaches in this entry that SFN ignored.  The list was ok, although it seemed to be long on opinion and short on statistics as evidenced by the most perplexing item that immediately pops off the page – the ranking of David Cutcliffe at Duke at #4 ahead of a laundry list of coaches with significantly more impressive career results like Tom O’Brien, Tommy Bowdem, Ralph Friedgen and even Butch Davis.

You couldn’t justify Dinich’s selection at the time on the grounds of ‘newness’ because Paul Johnson was also new and was slotted at #9 despite a highly successful run at also-ran, Navy compared to Cutcliffe’s six-year run at Ole Miss that was good enough to get him fired.

Q: So, what did a last place finish and 1-7 ACC record with a roster full of upperclassmen get Cutcliffe in the post-season rankings?

A: 4th place, of course!!

See the re-rankings after this season.

Don’t you understand?  While Tom O’Brien added to a decade of success by building a bowl team in a year he lost more games to injury than anyone in the league (by a factor of more than 2x), David Cutcliffe was adding to his significantly less successful resume with a 1-7 record.  Who wouldn’t understand that?  (sarcasm).

I also shake my head at the logic behind dropping Ralph Friedgen to #10 from #8 while raising Jeff Jagodzinski to #5 from #11.

Let me make sure I get this straight:

  • Jagodsinski has coached for two years with a roster full of upper-class talent he inherited from Tom O’Brien – including Matt Ryan.  Jags has obviously performed well in a balanced conference by making the ACC Championship game twice (never winning).
  • Eight years ago Friedgen inherited a program in the same stratosphere as Cutcliffe inherited and responded by making an appearance in the Orange Bowl.  He has compiled a 63-36 while appearing in six bowl games over eight years.

Remember, over the course of this one season Friedgen fell two spots and Jagodsinski rose six spots – with Tom O’Brien’s players.  So, BC must have had a helluva year compared to Maryland, right?

Uh…no.  BC finished a whopping one game ahead of Maryland in the Atlantic Division standings defeating the Terps at the end of the year for the right to play in the ACC Championship game.  Hmmmmm….

I’m not arguing that Friedgen is necessarily that much of a better coach than Jagodsinski.  I guess I wouldn’t even argue too much if you wanted to take a flier and rank Jagodsinski ahead of Friedgen.  I am arguing that there is no rational basis for making such wild moves in the rankings after setting the baseline in August.  The inconsistency of thought and methodology in compiling these rankings severely undercuts Dinich’s credibility.

To be fair, Dinich quickly ‘updated’ her embarrassing stadium rankings in August with an amended ranking in response to broad reader outcry from around the conference.  The follow-up piece can be seen here.

If Dinich doesn’t re-rank this list – or at least statistically explain the list – then she leaves us no choice but to presume the ranking criteria are important things like the coaches’ sense of fashion, office decor, and general cuteness… just like Kenan Stadium is such a pretty place to place.

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General NCS Football Rankings & Lists

39 Responses to Heather Dinich ‘Heart’ David Cutcliffe

  1. bradleyb123 12/16/2008 at 4:37 PM #

    I think Wake is on the way down. They won’t ever sink as low as they were before Grobe came along, as long as he remains at the helm. Wake played a little over their heads for a couple of years. And they won some games I thought they were very much outplayed, and that made their W-L record a little more gaudy than it probably should have been. Plus, they did it at a time when the entire ACC is pretty well down. When Skinner is gone, and Swank is gone, I think Wake sinks back down to the middle-lower tier of the ACC. Especially as teams like NC State, Carolina and Duke get better.

  2. Noah 12/16/2008 at 4:45 PM #

    Meet the ACC’s next Gregg Doyel.

    Wow. Why not just spit in her face while your at it? No one deserves such an insult.

    I agree. – Alpha

  3. packalum44 12/16/2008 at 4:48 PM #

    I have a feeling that lots of media folk read this blog. It is by far the best one out there. Heather, please use these great bloggers’ criticisms to your benefit and not get upset. I’ve read much worse comments on her own blog.

    I really doubt she cares too much. She has a pretty good gig and (so it seems) very low accountability. Unless of course she is evaluated on her performance to get hits to her blog instead of write accurate articles using emphirical data and gracing readers with insight into sports that people who make it their career should have. In other words, she should know more than us. Its her job. I’m an accountant who works 50 hours a week.

  4. wufpaxno1 12/16/2008 at 5:50 PM #

    1- Fridge ….”Burp!”
    2-
    3-
    4-
    5-
    6-
    7-
    8-
    9-
    10-
    11-
    12-

    Does anyone else thing Fridge looks like he may have gained a little extra weight all of a sudden?

  5. 4hkidcj 12/16/2008 at 7:13 PM #

    As stupid as Dinich is normally, this blog twice as worse.

    “Q: So, what did a last place finish and 1-7 ACC record with a roster full of upperclassmen get Cutcliffe in the post-season rankings?

    A: 4th place, of course!!”

    First of all, David Cutcliffe wasn’t even coaching Duke last year. We are talking about coaches not schools are we not? Cutcliffe has coached both the Manning brothers and took an okay Ole Miss program and made it really tough. Cutcliffe deserved a nice ranking heading into the season. He’s a tough coach. At the end of the season, it is evident how good he is. Duke went from 1-11 to 4-8 with a win over an sec program and a decent game with VT. That’s a pretty nice turn around.

    I really am amused at how you can say Tommy Bowden is better than David Cutcliffe. We all know that Clemson would be a 5 win team had the not fired Bowden.

    Maryland, UNC, GT, and Clemson all have better programs so how their coaches rank better to you is stunning. Well not so stunning since you didn’t even know that this was Cutcliffe’s first year.

    The only one on that list that would maybe rank better than Cutcliffe is probably Butch Davis. He has completely reformed that UNC program. Believe me Duke is on its way. Laugh now but in five years watch Duke and UNC take over the Coastal. I can assure you VT, and Miami are falling giants.

  6. McPete 12/16/2008 at 7:42 PM #

    1-7 in the acc is bad, any way you slice it. Ted Roof knew he had a chance this year to win some games. he wanted one more year to show what he could do with his recruits as upperclassmen and was disappointed when they fired him when they did (that was according to Dave Glenn on 850 – who spoke with him). I bet Duke’s record wouldn’t be much different this year if they kept him. But Cutcliffe most likely did bring about a sense of optimism to the program that had gotten used to losing all the time.

  7. highstick 12/16/2008 at 9:43 PM #

    Homely little critter, ain’t she? Frankly, I give no credibility to these clueless sportswriters, male or female! They need to learn history, stats, and facts. Not just a few blurbs to write a piece for publication!

  8. PackerInRussia 12/16/2008 at 10:40 PM #

    wufpaxno1,

    It took me a minute but I got it 🙂

    4hkidcj,

    I don’t think anyone said that Cutcliffe was coaching last year. At least, I didn’t understand the comments that way. The comments are all based on what he did this year. He finished 1-7 in the ACC THIS year. Also, the coach rankings are meant to reflect how good of a job they did this past year rather than taking everything they’ve ever done as a coach and using that to determine the rankings. So, what Cutcliffe did with the Mannings would be irrelevant. However, it is understandable that you would mention that because it’s not clear in her article what she used to rank the coaches. For some it seems that she based it on what they did this past year. For others, it seems that she based it more on what they’ve done in the past and gave them the benefit of the doubt despite a bad season. I think part of the problem with Cutcliffe’s 4th place ranking is that it assumes that Duke was a team full of terrible players and that to just be competitive much less win some games is considered a remarkable coaching job. It’s been noted on this blog several times that that is a false assumption.

  9. SuperStuff 12/16/2008 at 11:29 PM #

    She writes Cutcliffe has one of the best QBs in the league and a senior laden squad and doesn’t understand he should have won more games instead of going 1-7 in the ACC. This was the year for Duke to win and they dropped the ball.

  10. LRM 12/17/2008 at 8:33 AM #

    Heather does a good job during the season, she just needs to avoid these subjective lists unless she’s going to define specific criteria. For instance, I think Cutcliffe is an offensive mastermind (it doesn’t hurt his two prodigies were Manning pedigree), but he wasn’t a particularly impressive head coach at Ole Miss, and was eventually fired because his defense and special teams were taking his teams out of games. The fact is, there are many outstanding coordinators out there, but very few true head coaches. In that regard, if she had put TOB at #1, none of us would have cared the reason, we’d be praising her.

    In the end, coaches are measured by wins and losses.

  11. choppack1 12/17/2008 at 9:16 AM #

    You know – we probably expect too much from a person assigned to blog the ACC if we are expecting strong analysis. I don’t think they teach this in your journalism classes – and we all know, they editors expect these folks to look at and solves problems the way our employers would.

    In this case, she appears to have blurred the 3 ways you can judge a coach:
    1)the most recent season – in this case, you’d look at who was the best ACC football coach in 2008.
    2)the recent history (kind of looking at the last few years) – which should answer the question: If I wanted to hire the best coach for my football program now, who would I hire?
    3) the long term outlook – in 10 years, when we look at these coaches, where will rank them based on their entire book of work.

    Here’s how I’d rank them for this season:
    1. Beamer
    2. Jags
    3. Paul Johnson
    4. TOB
    5. Swinney
    6. Freidgen
    7. Grobe
    8. Butch
    9. Groh
    10. Cutcliffe
    11. Shannon
    12. Bowden

    How I’d rank if I could hire any coach in the conference who would I hire:

    1. Beamer
    2. Grobe
    3. TOB
    4. Butch
    5. PJ
    6. Freidgen
    7. Shannon
    8. Cutcliffe
    9. Groh
    10. Jags
    11. Swinney
    12. Bowden

    All time rankings (if college football ended tomorrow):
    1) Bowden
    2) Beamer
    3) Grobe
    4) Butch
    5) TOB
    6) Freidgen
    7) PJ
    8) Cutcliffe
    9) Groh
    10) Jags
    11) Shannon
    12) Swinney

    Finally – in a conference where only 1 team had a losing record – it’s very hard to really say w/ any kind of certaintity who did the best job. In all 3 lists, it’s very close. For example, look at the job Swinney did – I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he turned around Clempson’s season.

    OTOH, look at Butch – his team was picked to finish second in his division. They didn’t do that, the staffs horrid play calling in the 4th quarter and OT vs UVa definitely played a role in that key loss. However, they did manage to win some key conference and OOC games w/out arguably their 2 best offensive players. It’s hard to say that Butch is the cream of the crop, but he appears to have done a good job preparing his team to play.

  12. wufpup76 12/17/2008 at 11:16 AM #

    “Heather does a good job during the season, she just needs to avoid these subjective lists unless she’s going to define specific criteria.”

    Seeing how ESPN operates, I’m sure these “lists” are forced upon her to get cheap hits and to flame up talking points

    After all, we are talking about it 🙁

    I’m guessing ESPN will never give up their strategic decision to push crap like “Who’s Next?’ and “Who’s Now?” since it drives so many people insane and gets a few of them to talk about it (not that SFN or it’s readers do – only when it can’t be helped and State is involved … this is not intended as a slap at SFN or it’s readers, just the marketing folks at ESPN)

    I know most of us completely ignore that drivel unless they really push our buttons and include State

  13. ppack3 12/17/2008 at 2:54 PM #

    My God, is that a Junior High School Pic of HD? :/

  14. jsc1973 12/19/2008 at 8:02 PM #

    Dinich overrates Cutcliffe in relation to the other coaches in the ACC, but this blog underrates him.

    David Cutcliffe was actually very successful at Ole Miss. His record there is better than any coach they’ve had (except Houston Nutt, who has been there just one season) since John Vaught, which means since integration and the end of Ole Miss as a national power. He was embroiled in a power struggle with the AD, who waited until he had a down season and then pushed him out the door.

    To get an idea of his ability, Cutcliffe was the offensive coordinator for Phil Fulmer at Tennessee in the 1990s, leaving after the 1998 national championship. Without him, the program slowly slipped backwards until it went 5-6 in 2005–at which time Cutcliffe came back to his old job and helped the Vols win 19 games the next two seasons. Fulmer with Cutcliffe was an .850 coach, without him, he was about .650.

    This year, with Cutcliffe at Duke, Tennessee fell to 5-7. The problem was a dreadful offense.

    As you might guess, I’m a Tennessee fan (living near Raleigh), which is why I know all of these facts about him. Honestly, I think Fulmer and Cutcliffe are/were better as a team than either one by themselves. Cutcliffe is NOT better than Tom O’Brien, not even close. But I think he is better than Groh, Shannon, Swinney and Bowden (WAY past washed-up), and at least as good as Jagodsinski.

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