Coaches like Kelly and Leach are huge culture guys. In college especially it should take a minimum of 4 years, a complete recruiting cycle, to get the culture the coach wants. Philadelphia took the controls away after not even a full season of "final say". The Eagles won the Super Bowl in a season where 5 of 6 team captains were Chip Kelly favorites-- guys he not only kept around or self-picked but players he publicly espoused. The only non-Kelly captain was Wentz, who after going down, was replaced by a Chip Kelly-developed player who went and won the Super Bowl. The Eagles have sucked since they brought back the biggest locker room cancer that Kelly himself disposed (for nothing in return) despite his massive talent. Kelly ridded the team of It's 3 most visible all-stars, and consistently won until the awful organization undermined him and publicly put him on the firing line. Players sensed this, and the 3rd season happened. Parents know inherently that if authority is not a united front, even a 5 year old figures out how to undermine the system. After Chip Kelly transformed the culture of the 49ers, at the expense of his win-loss record, what happened afterwards? 3 years later 49ers are in the Super Bowl. Coincidence again? Kelly's biggest mistake has been picking loser-organizations (Philly, San Fran) with poor ownership. This is his biggest ding-- but that counts so he has no one to blame but himself. At UCLA Kelly is in a messed-up season 3, thanks to Pac-10 madness. But he'd need this season plus 2 more to show what his program can actually do. Same goes for Leach at Miss State. Leach is a guy that after a few seasons turned a school with major disadvantage recruiting-wise into a national contender for the BCS. That's amazing, and he did it with Texas Tech as well. Imagine what he could do with a tier--one program? Kelly may not have all the tools, but establishing culture is something only long-term-thinking coaches do, because it's risky. It's much easier to just ride the LeSeans and DeSeans talents to a winning record and finish in 2nd or 3rd place and keep job. Time will tell, but if great coaches are always relegated to dis-advantaged teams/programs,we may never see the ultimate results. It's like being a professional poker or bridge player, but never really getting premium cards over their career. They might be profitable, but less so than if dealt random hands over a lifetime. One way we can SEE what happens when innovation is applied to tier-one, is Epstien's employment in Boston and Chicago. He converted perennial losers into winners in short time periods. Using the same innovations as used perhaps originally as Billy Beane. Beane's record is the best in baseball, but ONLY if you measure by performance above salary. But at a tier-3 / tier-4 team in Oakland which plays 2nd fiddle in its own local geography, we never saw the obvious results of a pure win. but we saw it elsewhere. This very year, Beane's underling who introduced baseball to the coordinated team innovation (flyball pitchers combined with a top-notch defensive outfield), won the World Series in a tier-one town, the LA Dodgers. My opinion is that Beane is now leaving bc there's nothing left in baseball to exploit, that hasn't already been exploited. In Boston, for instance, they were even looking into putting statistics to locker-room culture! That's probably going too far, but shows how desperate baseball has become for any statistical advantage to expoit. (something that happened in chess a long time ago, and has now happened in Texas Hold'em as well-- with bot exploits on online poker). I'm a huge believer in culture, in team sports, particularly with 11 men on the field at a time. That's orchestra level control-- remember all the struggles just 4-man rock and roll bands have of staying together and maintaining relevance? No imagine the Big Band era, keeping a small legion of people together and playing to top shape. Culture becomes huge. The nice thing about culture-coaches, is it's an area where the stat-monkees cannot easily penetrate. Culture is tribal, anti-tech. These are my deep sports thoughts. But the same ones I used to predict the Eagles would win the Super Bowl just 2 days after Wentz was ruled. out for the season. That's just from knowing how Philly sports works, it's always a fluke bc the ownership in Philly is seemingly forever flawed like the city itself. One can predict almost on sense of smell here-- if remaining objective and keeping ear to the grindstone and excluding nothing as potential evidence.