Year 4: ~1.53% and Beating the Odds

"In the back of my mind, I can never forget this could be gone tomorrow - and at this point I think the odds are against me... the chances of succeeding in this business are slim to none; there's only a handful of people that have long careers. You have to put in the work, you can never be satisfied, never take it for granted."

- Zac Efron


Coaches who have ever spent any amount of time looking for a job (i.e. all of them), know just how hard it is to get in the door, but many of them know it is equally as hard to keep that door open. I'm not a big Zac Efron fan, as I'm not a 14-year-old girl, but the quote makes a lot of sense with regards to coaching, as I'm sure it does in many other walks of life as well. 

My first two job searches were long, drawn out events that made me intolerable to be around. Rejection after rejection, many times having nothing to do with qualifications or a good fit. So this spring I decided I wouldn't actively chase jobs. If a school approached me, I would listen, and then weigh my options. Even coming off of a disappointing season, I was comfortable making a return to Emory & Henry. I love the players there, I loved the people I worked with, it was close to home, and I truly feel they can win there. Our head coach stepped down, and I applied for the head coaching position, knowing it to be a long shot. I made the initial cut from over 100 down to 30, and I'm unsure where I stood on that list, but I did not wind up getting the job...not totally unsuspected.

During the waiting period on that job, though, I was contacted by a college to come in and interview. They had heard about me from two different sources and wanted to bring me in. I went in for the interview, I liked the head coach, the area seemed nice, I was enjoying myself. Towards the end of the interview, however, the coach decided to explain to me just how hard it was to make it in this business. He basically urged me to get out while I still could. The scary thing was he actually made some compelling arguments. 

I left the interview feeling uneasy, but saw that I had a voicemail. The message was from a different school wanting me to interview. This school, Guilford College, had been a school I really liked while getting to know the schools in our conference. Guilford has been to 2 Final Fours in the last 7 years. They have had 2 National Players of the Year. They have sent multiple players overseas to play professionally, and even had one player who had a tryout with the Los Angeles Lakers and is still currently in the NBA Developmental League. It is a great program in a city environment (Greensboro, NC), that is also home to four other colleges/universities. I can be surrounded by people my age, in a city environment while winning games at a high level...oh, and it pays more than my previous job? Yeah...I want this job.

I go into the interview hoping to impress. I find out I like the people I would be working with, and really like the area. I am unsure of their interest in me, however, as many people would like to have this job. I leave the interview to head back home not knowing how things would turn out. As I'm sitting in my car, plugging my home address into my GPS, I get a tap on my window. It is coach Palombo, the head coach, and he asks me to think about accepting the position on my way home. I was floored. It is a three-and-a-half hour drive home. I only took one hour of that to call my inner circle before accepting the job. My "search" was done...in May, no less!

I've had a great summer recruiting for Guilford, but that experience will be for my next blog. For now, I wanted to concentrate on beating the odds...

One of the questions I get asked a lot in interviews is, "where do you see yourself in (x amount of) years?" My reply is always some variation of being on a staff at the Division 1 level. The subsequent question is always, "why Division 1?" That question is a little tougher, but my answer is that I want to compete at the highest level, and for college basketball, Division 1 is the king of the mountain.

I'm not alone in this dream. Many others just like me have the same dream. They work hard, they network, just like me. They've tried to put themselves in a position to succeed and move to the next level, just like me. So what sets apart those who are at the D1 level from those wishing to get there? Well, outside of more experience being at that level, not much really.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that if a kid named Mike Krzyzewski Jr. wanted to be a coach, that he would have the same amount of odds as Joe Normalguy. This is seen in the fact that Richard Pitino Jr. went from Manager to Head Coach at the D1 level in 7 years. That just won't ever happen for ol' Joe.

So some have greater odds than others, but for the majority of coaches in this business, it all comes down to a lucky break, and then how you've prepared yourself for that break, and/or your ability to put yourself in positions where lucky breaks are more likely to happen.

Thinking on this, I decided to do a little research in May on what exactly the odds are that I'll end up as an assistant at the D1 level as well as a head coach. It should be noted that many of the statistics needed to get an exact number are not available to me, so I will do my best to try and note where I've taken some liberty with what the correct statistic would be. Regardless, the number won't be too far off from what it would be if the statistics were available.

So here are some concrete statistics:

There are 340 Division 1 schools.
There are 312 Division 2 schools.
There are 442 Division 3 schools.
There are 251 NAIA schools.
There are 444 (recognized) Junior College schools.

Each of these schools has exactly 1 Head Coach, so there are 1,789 coaches at least who are potentially looking to be Division 1 HC's or trying to keep their current HC job.

Division 1 schools typically have 3 assistant coaches and a Director of Basketball Operations. Some schools have Directors of Player Personnel and things of that nature but they are much harder to track. So for the sake of being fair to poorer schools, I will say Division 1 has an average of 3.5 "non-head-coach coaches" per school. At 340 schools, this means there are 1,190 assistant positions available at the D1 level, and 1,530 positions when you include head coaches.

Division 2 schools average about 3 coaches on their basketball staff including head coaches.
Division 3, NAIA and Junior College schools average about 2.5 coaches on their basketball staff including head coaches. 

Most Division 1, and some lower level schools have Graduate Assistants and Managers. Some of them only want school paid for and do not have the desire to become a coach, but many do, so this number will skew the results as it would be impossible to figure out how many of them want to move up.

If you were to take the positions available from all of these levels, this would give you a pool of  11,917 coaches for 340 coaching jobs as a Head Coach and 1,530 total at the Division 1 level. This leaves the percentages from that fact alone at:

Odds to become a Division 1 Head Coach: 1 out of 35 (2.85%)
Odds to become a Division 1 Assistant Coach: 1 out of 8 (12.5%)

Then you add in that it will take the typical coach around 10 years to become qualified for a head coaching position and by then you have added ~10,093 more graduate assistants and managers to the pool, while the current ones have moved up a level as well.

This number would push the percentages down to:

Assistant Coach: 1 out of 14 (7%)
Head Coach: 1 out of 65 (1.53%)

So there it is...all things equal, I have a 1.53% chance of becoming a Division 1 Head Coach. There are things I have in my corner that push that percentage up a little (I've had 6 years of experience and contacts at the Division 1 level already), but that is a pretty good estimate. None of this takes into account the number of high school coaches, AAU coaches and people who work with recruiting services who are trying to get their foot in the door as well.

Some sobering statistics:

Odds of dying of heart disease: 1 in 5 (20%)
Odds of dying of cancer: 1 in 7 (14.2%)
Odds of dying of a stroke: 1 in 23 (4.3%)
Odds of it raining today: 1 in 2 (50%) 
Odds of Alex Rodriguez taking steroids: 2 in 1 (200%)

It should be noted that I have a higher chance of dying of a cancerous stroke than I do of becoming a Head Coach at the Division 1 level. I bring this up not to say that I have given up on the dream, or that others should give up (though, that would increase my chances... #GiveUp), but rather to show you just how big of an accomplishment it is for those who have made it to that level, and how much of a thrill it will be when I finally make it myself.

Statistics many times give us better understanding of things that we can't easily comprehend. But statistics can be deceiving, especially when all the facts aren't readily available. But what were the chances that VCU makes a run from barely making the NCAA Tournament all the way to the Final Four? Florida Gulf Coast? Norfolk State? Odds are stacked against people all the time, not just in sports. You just have to find a way to curb the odds in your favor until you catch a break.

Overwhelming odds happen all the time in our daily lives. It's why Zac Efron's quote rings true for many professions, not just the entertainment business. But he's right, you can never take it for granted, you can never relax. There are always going to be a new crop of workers looking to knock you off of your spot.

For these reasons, a Zac Efron quote is relevant in an article about coaching basketball...and what are the odds of that?