The Malzahn Effect

Last Updated on June 14, 2011

If you haven’t already discovered Coaches By the Numbers, it’s time. No other website has such an enormous amount of data on college coaches. They do a great job analyzing those numbers as well.

A recent post over at CBNT was on The Gus Malzahn Effect. They’ve been ever so kind as to allow me to repost it here. I thought it went along nicely with the conversation this morning about whether coaches are overpaid. So, without further adieu:

In January of 2011, he was hoisting a National Championship trophy and looking forward to earning over $1.0 million per year as Auburn’s Offensive Coordinator.

As you probably know by now, at CBTN, we rate coaches using a proprietary formula that looks at several factors and weighs them accordingly. Obviously Malzahn is a great offensive coordinator and likewise receives 5 stars in our system. However, what is interesting is his ‘effect’ on the head coaches he works under. So, just how good of an Offensive Coordinator is Gus Malzahn?

Let’s dig into some numbers and see:

1) Below are Houston Nutt’s CBTN ratings (bold numbers are with Gus Malzahn as Offensive Coordinator):

Year	School	CBTN Rating
2001	Arkansas	58.77
2002	Arkansas	59.99
2003	Arkansas	64.71
2004	Arkansas	46.27
2005	Arkansas	33.03
2006	Arkansas	65.90
2007	Arkansas	57.88
2008	Ole Miss	68.12
2009	Ole Miss	61.50
2010	Ole Miss	30.54

Average CBTN Rating without Malzahn: 53.86

CBTN Rating with Malzahn: 65.90

Differential = 12.04

Houston Nutt’s CBTN Rating was 23% better with Malzahn than without. Also, since 2001, Houston Nutt has only played in two SEC Championship games and one of those appearances came in 2006 when Gus Malzahn was calling the offensive plays.

Now, let’s look at the impact Malzahn had on Coach Nutt’s Winning Percentage (bolded numbers are with Malzahn):

Coach	Year	School	Wins	Losses	WP%	Conf. WP%
Houston Nutt	2001	Arkansas	7	4	63.6%	50.0%
Houston Nutt	2002	Arkansas	9	5	64.3%	55.6%
Houston Nutt	2003	Arkansas	9	4	64.3%	50.0%
Houston Nutt	2004	Arkansas	5	6	45.5%	37.5%
Houston Nutt	2005	Arkansas	4	7	36.4%	25.0%
Houston Nutt	2006	Arkansas	10	4	71.4%	77.8%
Houston Nutt	2007	Arkansas	8	5	61.5%	50.0%
Houston Nutt	2008	Mississippi	9	4	64.3%	62.5%
Houston Nutt	2009	Mississippi	9	4	64.3%	50.0%
Houston Nutt	2010	Mississippi	4	8	33.3%	12.5%

Average WP% without Malzahn = 55.28%

WP% with Malzahn = 71.4%

Differential = 16.12%

Avg. Conf. WP% without Malzahn = 43.68%

Conf. WP% with Malzahn = 77.80%

Differential = 31.12%

2) Now, let’s look at Todd Graham’s CBTN Head Coach Ratings (bold numbers are with Gus Malzahn as Offensive Coordinator):

Year	School	CBTN Rating
2006	Rice	37,35
2007	Tulsa	47.52
2008	Tulsa	55.73
2009	Tulsa	30.83
2010	Tulsa	58.78

Average CBTN rating without Malzahn: 42.57

Average CBTN Rating with Malzahn: 51.62

Differential = 9.05

Todd Graham’s CBTN Rating was 22% better with Malzahn than without him.

Now, let’s look at the impact Malzahn had on the Winning Percentage (bolded numbers are with Malzahn):

Coach	School	Year	Wins	Losses	WP%
Todd Graham	Rice	2006	7	6	53.8%
Todd Graham	Tulsa	2007	10	4	71.4%
Todd Graham	Tulsa	2008	11	3	78.6%
Todd Graham	Tulsa	2009	5	7	41.7%
Todd Graham	Tulsa	2010	10	3	76.9%

Average WP% without Malzahn = 57.47%

Average WP% with Malzahn = 75.00%

Differential = 17.53%

3) Finally, let’s look at Gene Chizik’s CBTN Head Coach Ratings (bold numbers are with Gus Malzahn as Offensive Coordinator):

Year	School	CBTN Rating
2007	Iowa State	22.04
2008	Iowa State	15.75
2009	Auburn	55.84
2010	Auburn	95.88

Average CBTN Rating without Malzahn: 18.90

Average CBTN Rating with Malzahn: 76.53

Differential = 57.63%

Gene Chizik’s CBTN Rating is 305% better with Malzahn than without him.

Now, let’s look at the impact Malzahn had on the Winning Percentage (bolded numbers are with Malzahn):

Coach	Year	Wins	Losses	WP%
Gene Chizik	2007	3	9	25%
Gene Chizik	2008	2	10	16.7%
Gene Chizik	2009	8	5	61.5%
Gene Chizik	2010	14	0	100%

Average WP% without Malzahn = 20.85%

Average WP% with Malzahn = 80.75%

Differential = 59.90%

The numbers with Chizik are hard to draw too many conclusions from given how drastically different the Iowa State and Auburn jobs are (Auburn is the 9th Rated CBTN Job and Iowa State is the 61st Rated CBTN Job).

Here at CBTN, we are trying to let the numbers speak for themselves as much as possible.

Maybe it’s just one really big coincidence or maybe there are other factors that explain the trend, but head coaches seem to perform better and win more games with Gus Malzahn calling plays than without Gus Malzahn calling plays.

You can learn more about CBNT here.

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