A couple of weeks ago, open sniping in the press between Gary Williams and the Athletics Offices at the University of Maryland fueled speculation that the 20-year coach and Maryland alumnus may no longer have the same job security he had a year ago. That speculation has sparked an interesting debate on the topics of how successful coaches have to be to keep their jobs at high profile programs, how to measure that success, and what kind of job security a national championship buys someone, among several others. Now, let me make it clear that I am not a Maryland Terrapins fan, and that ultimately I believe that the decision of whether to hire or fire any coach should be left entirely up to the supporters and administrators that oversee that program. In other words, if I thought that a particular coach was the worst coach in history, I do not believe it is my position to advocate for that coach’s dismissal unless he/she is coaching my team. All of the discussion about how the Maryland program has changed since the days of Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter, coupled with my own observations of how little postseason success Maryland has enjoyed since 2002, encouraged me to research and examine some facts about programs and how they perform post championship.
As with any research project, I had to lay out some parameters for the analysis, particularly parameters that would encourage impartiality and unbiased analysis (again, my own observations led me to believe that Maryland has, in fact, performed more poorly than other post-championship teams, and I wanted to separate myself from that gut feeling). I decided I would look only at champions in the 64/65-team era (since Villanova in 1985) because this era seems to be the most accurate and fair in establishing how a team wins a championship and I excluded the 1991 Duke Blue Devils from consideration because they repeated their championship success in 1992, so I included only the second iteration. I also decided to ignore the year immediately following the championship, because many championship teams lose a preponderance of the talent that carried them to the championship win, often unexpectedly. Finally, I decided to focus on a five-year period of performance (post-championship years 2-6; i.e., 1986-1991 for Villanova through 2003-2008 for Maryland) to get a large enough sample, as well as include at least two full classes having been recruited and completed their eligibility (barring redshirt seasons) after the championship.
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