By the Numbers: MWC Head Football Coach Tenure

By Jeff Bugher

© Troy Babbitt Photography 2021, Troy Babbitt-UW Media-Athletics

What's in a number anyway? Football is a game of numbers, whether it is numbers on a jerseys, numbers on a scoreboard, the number of first down's....but one number that is indicative of stability is head coach tenure.

When it comes to head coach tenure in the Mountain West Conference, the data shows that being the big cheese, the big kahuna, the head honcho...ok...I'll stop....doesn't necessarily mean that one will stay at the top for long. Let's dive into the data....I had to do a refresher on statistics from my college days to come up with this one.

Let's review some terminology first:

1. Mean (average): This is calculated by summing all the values and dividing by the number of values.

2. Median: This is the middle value when the values are arranged in ascending order. If there are an even number of observations, the median is the average of the two middle numbers.

3. Mode: This is the most frequently occurring value.

4. Range: This is the difference between the highest and lowest values.

Here's our Data Set:

The Outputs:

1. Mean: (0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 6 + 9 + 16) / 12 = 45 / 12 = Meaning (no pun intended) that the average tenure is 3.75 Years

2. Median: Since we have 12 teams (observations), we take the average of the 6th and 7th values. (2 + 2) / 2 = The middle value is 2 Years of tenure.

3. Mode: The value that appears most frequently is 1, with 4 occurrences. Meaning that the most common tenure number is 1 year....Therefore 4 of the 12 MWC head coaches currently have only only 1 year of tenure.

4. Range: The highest value is 16 (Troy Calhoun) and the lowest is 0 (Barry Odom), so the range is 16 through 0.

Let's break that down a little further:

9 out of 12 head coaches have 3 or less years of tenure (75%, but who's counting?).

That statistics clearly show that the majority of the programs in the conference have a lack of stability and tenure.

Where does University of Wyoming Head Coach Craig Bohl rank amongst tenure in the MWC? For Wyoming...the data set shows that Craig Bohl ranks at #2 for tenure, meaning that there is a lot of stability within the program which helps with recruiting and retainment. The college football landscape has changed drastically over the last several years with transfer portal rule changes and the opening of NIL (Name Image Likeness), therefore stability is a very important ingredient to keeping a program together that will last.