As Arizona stumbled to 0-2 against Houston in Week 2, discussion about Kevin Sumlin ensued. This opened a deeper look at how we perceive coaches’ careers.
Fans of college football love to criticize coaches. Websites such as this one are fond of churning out constant discussion about whether this head coach or that head coach is in danger of losing his job. We publish coaching hot seat watchlists, individual profiles of coaches on the chopping block, and lists of guys who could take over a job before a coach is even officially terminated.
And fans of the sport love to read about all of this. Rumors, how real or contrived, about coaching movements are incredibly popular among fan bases from coast to coast. A new coach offers hope eternal for a program, at least until that first game coaching.
This is what brought some of the Saturday Blitz staff to discuss Kevin Sumlin during early action on Saturday. As Arizona fell to 0-2 in Sumlin’s first season at the helm in Tucson, stumbling hard against his old school Houston in a 45-18 blowout, we talked about whether Sumlin would ever land another coaching gig if and when the Wildcats move on from their nearly-new hire. Only two games into his tenure, we were already questioning whether he should be written off.
That got the wheels spinning for this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback. This week, we are going to use Sumlin’s career as one of several lenses to evaluate how we perceive coaches and their careers in the context of whether they were successful or failures.