Why Rich Rodriguez is not a smart hire for USC, Miami

With the success Rich Rodriguez has had in Arizona, he’s become a popular choice for many job openings across the country, but things aren’t nearly as great as they seem.

South Carolina, Maryland, Miami, USC — all programs with head coaching positions available. And for every one of those, Rich Rodriguez has been named as an ideal candidate. He built West Virginia to a national contender, got into some trouble with the NCAA at Michigan, and didn’t seem to have a whole lot of support behind him. But now at Arizona, he’s come back to bring three seasons with at least eight wins, leading the Wildcats to a Pac-12 South Championship and Fiesta Bowl bid in 2014.

He has done great things for the struggling program in just three years, but this season he’s taken a step back. Arizona has seen countless injuries this season, stemming from fall camp. Arizona’s starting center Carter Wood suffered a chronic foot injury, which ended his football career. One of Arizona’s top linebackers, Cody Ippolito, suffered a torn ACL just a week before the first game. This is on top of the lingering injuries at receiver, quarterback and linebacker, which includes All-American Scooby Wright, the anchor of the defense.

This could just be a down year for Arizona this season, but when you look back at his success at Arizona, things aren’t really as great as they may seem.

In each of Rich Rodriguez’ four years at Arizona, he’s faced some of the easiest non-conference schedules in the nation, with only one of his 12 wins coming from a power five conference, Oklahoma State back in 2012. The rest of the wins are against Northern Arizona, Texas San Antonio, South Carolina State, Nevada, and UNLV – a non-conference slate even SEC fans would think is weak.

Then you take a look into in his Pac-12 record at Arizona. He’s looking at 16-15 record over the last three and a half years, which seems pretty serviceable considering the elevation of competition in the Pac-12, especially the Pac-12 South. And the way this season is looking, it’s not likely that he will keep this record above .500 through four seasons.

Analyze his wins in the Pac-12, look even closer to the losses, and you see how Arizona got to 8+ wins every season. When it comes to some of the heavy hitter in the Pac-12, Rich Rodriguez has not had much success. He’s gone 0-4 vs UCLA and 0-2 vs Stanford.

Even weaker teams; 1-2 vs Washington State, and split 1-1 with Oregon State and California. He is currently sitting with a 1-2 record vs both USC and Arizona State, and neither seem like winnable games for Rich Rodriguez this season, likely dropping to 1-3 vs both. He has been able to go 3-0 vs Utah, and 2-1 vs Oregon in Pac-12 play, but Arizona’s Pac-12 Championship Game vs Oregon last season certainly evens everything out on that front.

Looking at these records, it reminds you that he never beat Ohio State while at Michigan either. He wins the games you would expect Arizona to win, sometimes, and cannot beat the powers of the conference.

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In his first two seasons, he gave Arizona two straight bowl wins, something that hadn’t happened for the program since the 1997 and 1998 seasons. And those bowl games have been mediocre to average at best. A miraculous comeback win vs Nevada in the New Mexico Bowl back in 2012, and a solid win vs Boston College in the Independence Bowl in 2013. And on the big stage, Arizona was miserable vs Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl.

Last year was really a gift of a Pac-12 South Championship. Arizona needed a last-minute interception for UTSA to seal the win, a costly unsportsmanlike conduct penalty at Oregon to keep the game winning drive alive inside the red zone, a Hail Mary vs California, and poor clock management by Chris Peterson, which resulted in a fumble and a game winning kick, to get to 10 wins on the season.

In order to win the Pac-12 South, they needed some crazy things to happen, which explains why the analytics/metrics gave Arizona a 5 percent chance to win the South approaching week 10 of the regular season. Oregon State needed to beat Arizona State, unseating them for the Pac-12 South lead, and then you needed UCLA to beat USC, and then Stanford to beat UCLA in the final week of the season to clinch.

The stars just aligned in Tucson, Arizona for Rodriguez to win his Pac-12 South title. Of course, Arizona is not nearly the same caliber of program as South Carolina, Miami or USC, his resources would be much greater there. And you could argue that Rodriguez could do great things with loaded recruiting classes.

But at Arizona, he’s found some pretty great success in recruiting. He’s managed to pull in top 40 recruiting classes in each year, with his top class in 2014 coming in at No. 30, while working on bringing in another top 30 class for 2016. He’s in a college town with some of the best facilities in the nation at Arizona, beautiful year round weather, and fairly easy academic standards.

But his recruiting classes have scattered. When you look back at his 2012 and 2013 classes, most of those guys are not on the roster anymore. They have either left or been kicked out of the program, transfer, drop football completely, or have some sort of injury barring their return. And for those that return year in and year out, they have yet to develop, which would ultimately fall on the coaching.

It’s unfair to expect a kid to make a big jump from year one to year two, or even year two to year three, but there are just some guys that really make you curious about why they’re not playing, whether it’s a lack of development, or even conditioning, which is embarrassing considering the speed at which Arizona plays.

Whenever you watch Arizona, it’s easy to point out the 3-3-5 defense, a scheme you don’t really see at all. Now, Rodriguez might not have the best personnel for this defense, but it’s proved to be very ineffective. The five defensive backs are set to confuse the quarterback, with a blitz able to come from anywhere on the field, putting more speed on the field at the same time.

But in his four years with this scheme, he’s given up 30 points a game. Now, that’s a bit skewed, because the Pac-12 has some high-powered offenses, and defense is often a secondary thought. But do you really want a three-man front vs some of the top ACC and SEC programs, coming from a coach that has defense as an afterthought?

So you figured, if the defense is bad, you’d make up for it on offense, especially when it comes to a guy like Rich Rodriguez. For being such an offensive mastermind, his offense sure does stall out a lot. Some of falls on the players, and some of it falls on the play calling. Sure, his offense is averaging over 40-plus points, but it’s being inflated by the easy non-conference games, and then coming in games that lead to complete shoot outs because of the lack of defense from both sides, a common occurrence in the Pac-12.

You have a four-star quarterback in Anu Solomon, who is smart enough to make the plays necessary, but can never execute. Then when it’s time for a change of pace, Rodriguez will bring in a true running quarterback in Jerrard Randall. But you can’t even say Randall is a dual-threat quarterback, because his accuracy makes him a complete liability, which makes you wonder what he has done in practice for two-plus years in the system.

On paper, Rodriguez has done great things for Arizona, and made it a relevant force in the Pac-12. But when you dig deep into this success at Arizona, there isn’t much substance. Building a program back up at a place like Arizona is no easy task. But given his easy non-conference schedule and poor Pac-12 record, decent recruiting and resources, mixed with his stagnant offense and horrendous defense, Rodriguez might not be the top option you want for your program.

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