Here are the 2024 Conference USA standings.
So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each Conference USA team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.
College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2024 season, which teams in Conference USA met this threshold? Here are Conference USA teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
Florida International was the only Conference USA team that saw their actual record differ significantly from their expected record based on YPP. The Panthers underachievement ultimately cost head coach Mike McIntyre his job. More on his replacement, Willie Simmons, in a bit. Close games was the culprit. The Panthers finished 1-4 in one-score conference games, losing three games by a field goal or less.
HBCU to the Rescue
Befitting a league with teams congregated near the bottom of FBS in raw talent, infrastructure, and history, Conference USA teams need to be a bit unconventional when making their head coaching hires. Two of the schools that fired their head coaches (Florida International and Kennesaw State) did just that by hiring two coaches with previous success at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Florida International hired Willie Simmons and Kennesaw State hired Jerry Mack. Based on the history of previous HBCU head coaches that took FBS jobs, what can we expect from them in their new roles? Unfortunately, there is not much history to speak of.
Full disclosure, I did not conduct this research on my own, as I would have had to go through a ton of coaching hires, and as I have mentioned before, I have a real job. So, instead I used AI to do the research. I used Perplexity and asked it to provide a list of FBS coaches that had previous head coaching stops at an HBCU. So if this list is wrong, blame Skynet.
As I mentioned, the list is not very extensive. Simmons and Mack represented a 67% increase in the number of FBS head coaches with previous experience as a head coach of an HBCU. Since there were only three previous coaches to fit this criteria, we'll go through them one by one.
Willie Jeffries was a trailblazer, coaching South Carolina State for six seasons (1973-1978) before taking the Wichita State head coaching job. He became the first African-American head coach at a predominantly white Division IA (now FBS) school. Wichita State was a lower-tier job in the late 70's, with the Shockers playing in the Missouri Valley Conference and posting just one winning campaign in the fifteen seasons before Jeffries' arrival. Jeffries was not able to turn the program around, finishing with just one winning season during his five-year tenure. As you may or may not know, Wichita State no longer fields a football team, so one can reasonably assume the infrastructure, and not Jeffries was the reason the program failed to thrive. Following his time in Kansas, Jeffries returned to the HBCU ranks, coaching Howard for five seasons (1984-1988) before returning to South Carolina State for thirteen more (1989-2001). He posted winning records at both stops and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2010.
If a child was born on the day Willie Jeffries took the Wichita State job, they would have been in their late 30s when another HBCU head coach got an opportunity to lead an FBS team. And if you google Jay Hopson, you will see he is in fact exactly the type of HBCU head coach you would expect to get an FBS job (i.e. he is white). Hopson guided Alcorn State for four seasons before taking the Southern Miss job prior to the 2016 season. He had a decent four-year run at Southern Miss before resigning one game into the 2020 season.
This was the most publicized HBCU to FBS move. You may notice Deion coached a lot of games in just two seasons at Jackson State, but he actually coached three including the 2021 Spring Season. Coach Prime brought several of his Jackson State players with him to Colorado and while the first season was underwhelming, there is no denying he has brought notoriety and success to a program that has been mediocre to bad for the better part of the past decade. The notoriety should remain, but will the success, after his son and star quarterback along with the reigning Heisman Trophy winner are off to the NFL?
Willie Simmons has extensive experience as an HBCU head coach, serving in the position for eight seasons between Prairie View and Florida A&M, easily the longest tenure of any HBCU head coach moving to FBS. He never had a losing season at either stop and his last Florida A&M team finished with a perfect record against FCS competition, losing only to South Florida.
Jerry Mack was head coach at North Carolina Central for four seasons and also never had a losing season. His teams were 26-6 in MEAC play over that span.
You may notice one thing about these two former HBCU head coaches. They did not jump straight from an HBCU to FBS like the other three coaches. Simmons spent one season at Duke as a position coach before getting the Florida International job. And Mack has not been a head coach for eight years. He bounced around the college ranks, coaching at Rice and Tennessee for a few years and was most recently the running back coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars. I think this speaks more to the ponds FBS administrators are fishing in rather than any shortcomings these gentlemen had leading HBCU programs. For whatever reason (most likely institutional racism), HBCU head coaches rarely get the call up to lead FBS programs. Simmons and Mack had to take other jobs to find that pipeline to their FBS dream despite success in their HBCU roles. Neither Florida International nor Kennesaw State are easy jobs, but I wouldn't be surprised if Simmons or Mack (or both) led their teams to bowls games by 2026.
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