The topic of how much teams can improve in the second year of a head coach’s tenure has been a fascination of mine for a long time. Back in college in the summer of 2006, I started a Florida football blog titled “Year 2” in anticipation of an improvement in Urban Meyer’s second season in Gainesville after his second-year improvements at Bowling Green and Utah.
The 2000s were a golden age for sophomore surges for head coaches. Bob Stoops (2000), Jim Tressel (2002), Meyer (2006), and Gene Chizik (2010) all won national championships in their second years on the job.