90%
USC
Florida State
Ole Miss
Tennessee
75%
Michigan
Virginia Tech
Too high for Tennessee, Michigan and Virginia Tech. Phil Fulmer won't admit defeat on Pruitt. Michigan is fine, they'll win 10 games. They'll give Fuente a chance to see what the post-Bud Foster era looks like. I know I just said otherwise, but I wouldn't entirely rule out USC winning enough for Helton to wiggle off the hook either. And honestly, if FSU can find 6 wins from somewhere, it wouldn't shock me to see Taggart get another year.
Rutgers, Ole Miss, Illinois. That's a very small list of dead men walking for this part of a season.
Mike Norvell is only 37 years old, that’s as much a hot up and comer as it gets. He’s being floated as a serious option for us when I view that as approximately a snowballs chance.
"Established winner in the AAC" is what I meant by "tippy-top of the non-Power Five market" both of which apply to Norvell, regardless of his age.
Todd Orlando is over a decade older than Norvell, but he fits the profile of someone who would be a credible hire at Illinois, but who Florida State wouldn't stoop to consider. Everyone isn't selecting from the same list.
Very good point, one that I’ve made many times here. People seem to assume that a coach will take our job just to be in the Power 5 when in reality, there’s nothing stopping a guy like Luke Fickell from saying “I don’t love any of these jobs and I’m happy staying in my home state making 2M, I’d rather wait and see what else comes up”.
Absolutely true, but it's not very methodologically rigorous to say "If I can make a fair case that the coach wouldn't be interested, or would hypothetically have better offers, cross him off the list". You'd have certainly eliminated Lovie Smith and Brad Underwood through that methodology.
The way to do it is to draw your list all the way up to the line of not passing the straight face test (Stoops, Meyer, etc) and then understand that the upper part of your list are lower-percentage possibilities.
I guess it depends what your goals are. The way I see it is lets take a look at a list of names reasonably sized enough to get our arms around, that nonetheless has a very high probability of containing the ultimate selection.
Not sure if it was this board or not, but the big initial list I made for our last two had Lovie and Underwood on them. To shamelessly toot my own horn.