Coaching Changes & Bowl HandicappingWhen college football's regular season draws to a close, there are several things that are going on. You'll see seniors from teams that miss out on the bowls say good bye to college, and a lot more of those teams fire their coaches. But those aren't the coaching changes in bowl handicapping that you have to worry about, but rather it's the teams that will continue playing that said good bye to their head man. There are several teams each year that head into their final game with a coach that was fired or quit to take a position at a different school. Whenever you have a coach who has left an institution before the bowl you have to weigh in what kind of affect that will have on the team as part of your college bowl handicapping strategy.
There are some teams that have no problems making the adjustment to one of the coordinators taking over the head reigns, then there are other clubs who seem to completely tank. If a team has a head man who leaves unexpectedly or who was fired, then the team might be a little angry and have a hard time focusing. Positive emotions can really have a nice impact on a team, but negative emotions can be a killer. The team could be thinking about how poorly the administration treated a guy and who their next coach will be. These are the teams you will want to avoid as much as possible with your college bowl predictions. Of course then there are the teams that fired their head coach, but retained him to coach in the bowl game. How much attention to detail will the coaches put into coming up with a game plan and executing it, into making sure that all the players are putting forth their best effort in each practice? If the coach is leaving a top-notch program, then he probably will have other offers coming in, so he might be interviewing or just be distracted in general by where he's going to end up. How much are the players going to put into the game if their head coach was fired yet still around? This can especially be true if they didn't care for him much to begin with, these aren't guy you want to back with your college bowl betting, that's for sure. When you do your bowl game handicapping every year, look for coaches that have either left a program or are rumored to be on their way out. You might find some value in going against these teams, or with them if the situation is right. Even if a team is looking solid, but is overachieving, the rumors might start swirling about their big name coach heading to a premiere program. Any distraction can be a killer so make sure you factor coaching changes in your bowl handicapping. |