Nearly 200 Bad Teams Changed Coaches. One Did This.

How fast can a new coach turn a bad team around? Usually, not fast at all. We looked at 194 bad teams in major college football that changed head coaches between 2006 and 2025. On average they got about 3 points better the next year. Bad teams that kept their coach also got about 3 points better.

That should surprise you. The new coach is supposed to be the reason things change. Mostly, he is not. Bad teams bounce back a little no matter who is in charge. Then there is Indiana. In 2024, its first year under Curt Cignetti, it got 28 points better.

By the end, you will know what to compare the next big hire to, and why one Indiana should not fool you about the rest.

First, What a “Point” Means

We measure teams with SP+, a power rating built by Bill Connelly. It is counted in points: how many points better a team is than an average team, on a neutral field. A team at +20 should beat an average team by about three touchdowns. A team at −7 should lose to it by a touchdown.

Indiana in 2023 was a −7 team. It went 3–9. Tom Allen was fired, and Cignetti came over from James Madison. In 2024 Indiana was a +20 team and went 11–2. A year after that, it went 16–0 and won the national title.

Why Bad Teams Get Better Anyway

Notice the big pile of bars just right of zero. That is regression to the meani. If your team finished near the bottom, it probably had some bad luck too: close losses, injuries, a bad bounce. Next year the luck evens out; your team looks better. The new coach gets the credit. He would have gotten it anyway.

You will find plenty of teams that beat the average. About one in seven of these 194 gained 15 points or more. Only three gained 20 or more. Next best behind Indiana was Ole Miss in 2012, at +24. Indiana sits alone at the far right.

Was It the Transfers? Was It the School He Came From?

Indiana added 30 transfers in 2024, the third most in the country. So it is tempting to say the transfer portal did it. Hold that loosely. Across 656 team-seasons from 2021 to 2025, the number of transfers a team took in barely tracked how much it improved. Lots of teams load up on transfers; almost none do what Indiana did.

What about James Madison? Four coaches have left James Madison for a bigger job. Each took over a 3–9 team. Two went nowhere: Everett Withers went 2–10 at Texas State, and Mike Houston went 4–8 at East Carolina in his first year. Cignetti built Indiana. And Bob Chesney, who left James Madison for UCLA, is 6–0 this fall after UCLA went 3–9 last year. That is six games, and his team’s rating still leans on a preseason guess. Four coaches is not a pattern. It is four stories.

What to take home

When your team hires a coach after a bad year, expect it to get a little better. That part is nearly free; you get it just for having been bad. The question you should ask is: better than what a bad team does anyway? Only that extra part belongs to the coach.

And be careful with Indiana. One great story makes the next hire feel like the next Indiana. That is how a few famous winners make a bet look safer than it is. For every Indiana there are nearly two hundred teams that got about 3 points better. Some coaches do turn a team around. They usually take longer than a year.