Dana Holgorsen opted to leave the Big 12 for Houston football. West Virginia has become a less attractive job than Houston.
Dana Holgorsen has agreed to a five-year, $20 million contract with the University of Houston to become the school’s next head football coach. Holgorsen leaves behind his post at West Virginia, where he took over for Bill Stewart in 2011.
In his eight seasons as the head coach in Morgantown, Holgorsen went 61-41 as he helped transition the Mountaineers from the Big East to the Big 12. His first season was marked by a tie for the Big East championship and a trip to the Orange Bowl. While West Virginia has gone bowling in six of seven years since joining the Big 12, however, the Mountaineers have never come quite as close to conference contention as they were in their previous league.
The last time we saw a Power Five coach opt to leave his position for a Group of Five opportunity was back in December 2012, when Tommy Tuberville departed Texas Tech to take the job at Cincinnati. It is not likely to become a trend across college football, as few Group of Five schools will ever be able to pay the kind of contract handed out to Holgorsen.
But while the circumstances particular to West Virginia and Houston made this a less shocking move than it might seem, it also speaks more generally to the impact of recent conference realignments and why certain Power Five positions are far less attractive than they once might have been in a previous conference.
Not all Power Five situations are created equal
On one hand, it seems strange to think of any head coach wanting to leave a Power Five coaching situation if there is no pressure to depart. But looking at West Virginia in relation to the other Big 12 schools, it is worth wondering whether geography was the biggest factor driving Holgorsen to take the Houston job.
Morgantown is an outlier situated more than 800 miles away from their nearest conference rival, Iowa State. Far removed from the Texas recruiting hotbeds that are pivotal to Big 12 success, West Virginia has little homegrown talent in the state to bolster its base of talent. The Mountaineers are forced to take on a disproportionate amount of travel relative to the other members of the Big 12, putting West Virginia at a disadvantage in wear and tear.
In the Big East, West Virginia benefitted from a more geographically compact situation that afforded greater competitive balance and more opportunities for conference titles. Winning in the Big 12 is not impossible, but it is always going to be an uphill battle to overtake Oklahoma and Texas teams that have far less travel to endure and that are closer to home for many recruits.
When looking at it from a geographic perspective, it is no wonder that Holgorsen never managed to replicate the level of success he enjoyed in his first season at the helm in Morgantown. In the Big East, West Virginia fit far better than they presently do in their current conference configuration.
What makes the Houston situation different?
Houston is also situated in a geographically diffuse conference. With the death of the Big East and the rebranding to the American Athletic Conference, the league was forced to take on a wider footprint across the eastern half of the United States. Houston is playing in a league now whose members span from Texas to Connecticut.
But while the AAC has some of the same issues that befell the Big 12 after their most recent realignment, Houston is anchored in the heart of the AAC West footprint instead of sitting as an outlier far from other conference members. By comparison, West Virginia would be the equivalent in geographic terms of UConn in the AAC — and, like the Mountaineers, the Huskies have also struggled to rediscover their competitive ceiling since the death of the Big East.
Holgorsen spent most of his coaching career as a coordinator in Texas, first at Texas Tech and then at Houston. He is familiar with the territory, and despite the Group of Five affiliation it will likely be easier to draw talent to the Cougars than it was to the Mountaineers.
While it seems odd at first glance for a coach of Holgorsen’s caliber to ditch his Power Five gig for a new opportunity at a seemingly lower level, there are plenty of reasons to see this as a lateral move from a competitive standpoint. Houston is a more attractive job in terms of its geographic location than Morgantown, despite the present conference affiliation of both teams.