A Tale of Two Tommys: Tuberville at Auburn and Bowden at Clemson

With that in mind, here is his record from 1999 to 2003.  The bottom two tiers have not been analyzed individually since Tuberville has not lost to a team that finished the year below .500.

Tuberville just simply was not that good against decent or better teams.  He was about the same against the first tier as Bowden has been, but he only won three of every eight games against the second tier teams.  After six solid seasons of this kind of performance, it comes as no shock that the Auburn administration was looking to replace him.

Now, his record from 2004 to the present day.

It certainly appears that Tuberville’s new reputation is well-founded.  His .692 winning percentage against the first tier is even better than Bob Stoops’ .630 mark.

His performance against the second tier isn’t quite as good as Stoops’ is, but it evens out thanks to the fact that Tuberville hasn’t lost to any third tier teams, while Stoops has lost to three of them.  Tuberville’s overall winning percentage is basically the same as Stoops’ overall winning percentage (.814).

However, what separates Tuberville, who’s been to just one conference title game in the four seasons since 2004, from Stoops, who has been to six in his nine years, is performance against the top of their divisions.

OU and Texas have been the top two teams in the Big 12 South almost every one of the last nine years, and Stoops is 6-3 against the Longhorns.  In the last three seasons, Tuberville lost to the eventual SEC West champ each of those years.

Basically, while Tuberville has been better at winning big games, he just has had some trouble winning the right big games.

What this evidence appears to suggest is that it is possible for a coach to transform from being lousy against good teams to being great against good teams. For Tuberville, it took six years on the job as a head coach to make the change. It has now been eleven years as a head coach and nine in a major conference for Tommy Bowden.

If you like symmetry, it was the final year of having Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown that Tuberville made his change.  We’re now coming up on the last year of James Davis-C.J. Spiller combo at Clemson.  Will Bowden make the same transformation that Tuberville did?  It’s just another subplot to watch for in the 2008 college football season.

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