Arkansas State has had a revolving door at the head football coach position over the last few years and last year was no exception. Bryan Harsin lasted only one season before moving to take the head football coaching position at Boise State. Even though there is only one season to look at, I thought that I would take a look at Arkansas State under Harsin using the Complex Invasion College Football Production Model as a continuation of the teams that have changed their head football coach in 2013. Still not finished, but I think there are only four more teams to go.
In Harsin's only season as head football coach, the Red Wolves finished the regular season at 7-5, and defeated Ball State in the GoDaddy bowl to finish at 8-5 overall, even though Harsin did not coach the bowl game. Arkansas State played
an "average" strength of schedule (SOS) as compared to the "league" average. An average SOS is when it is within one standard deviation of the "league" average. Since the Red Wolves had an SOS of 72.31 and the league average was 65.92 and the standard deviation was 9.95, the Red Wolves SOS was higher than the average much not high enough to show that they were substantially different than most teams. In fact 65.6% of the teams last season played a SOS within one standard deviation of the "league" average.
Arkansas State's best game was a
victory over #21 ranked Ball State in the Go Daddy Bowl. Under Harsin the Red Wolves only victory over a team in the top half of the rankings was against #55 South Alabama with losses to Auburn, Missouri, Western Kentucky and Louisiana-Lafayette along with a loss to #92 Memphis. All the rest of the teams that Arkansas State played were victories over teams in the bottom half of the final rankings. Overall, the Red Wolves had the #70 ranked
team with the #66 ranked offense and the #71 ranked defense.
I will take a look at Petrino's one season at Western Kentucky tomorrow.
Analysis of 2013 NCAA FBS Head Coach Changes
Army and Rich Ellerson
Vanderbilt and James Franklin
Penn State and Bill O'Brien
UMass and Charley Molnar
Boise State and Chris Petersen
Texas and Mack Brown
Washington and Steve Sarkisian
Wake Forest and Jim Grobe
Wyoming and Dave Christensen
Eastern Michigan and Ron English
Florida Atlantic and Carl Pelini
Miami of Ohio and Don Treadwell
UConn and Paul Pasqualoni
USC and Lane Kiffen