Explaining Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State program dominance. Biggest factors?

Great coaches!!!...also great recruiters/great recruiting and great facilities/great campuses getting results putting guys in the NFL all of the above plus it's really kind of a snowball effect. A great coach can do more with less talent which induces better talent to get on your campus which then induces having a coach who CAN do more with less now having more talent to work with to produce better results ? once a program shows this consistently... voila! And it just snowballs to the point where success almost takes care of itself but yet and still great coaches don't rest on their laurels... Nick saban for example is a great coach... but now if you're asking why is he a great coach how is he great coach what makes him great. The answer is simple the guy can do it all! He has a plan he sells it to his players they produce... He then shows his production to recruits and sells them a plan they see that they can be a part of something great and possibly play on Sunday ? maybe it boils down to being a salesman who is a good salesman because he has a great product and he knows it! He's not a used car dealer or a snake oil salesman. Somebody like Rich Rodriguez for example but I'm not calling him a snake oil salesman exactly but there's a reason why he was hired at Michigan and there's a reason why it didn't work out ??? the guy is selling an inferior product. I mean look at his whole entire career in retrospect from the debacle at West Virginia to the debacle at Michigan to the constantly having defenses that fall apart to his whole sexual allegation scandal and extramarital affair and eventual firing at Arizona... He has a bright mind but he's also kind of sloppy and kind of one big walking testicle... Sometimes I still refer to him as coach Ricky Bobby bc of his "I WANT TO GO FAST!!!" Or "If you ain't first you're last!!!" Mentality... He looks at the world and says  "screw it*** it do it yeah do it!"Dont get me wrong I'm not so much blaming the guy for cheating as it was once said in the great film dirty rotten scoundrels "to cheat that is French to get caught that is American" ? but it's just an allegory or metaphor (I don't know words) or whatever you call it for Rich Rodriguez's coaching career. Just like the guy in Goodfellas had to get a Cadillac... Bobby petrino had to go get a ?️ motorcycle and he had to have his bitchwhore co-ed cheerleader girlfriend ride around on the back of it like a jackass... Urban Meyer just happens to get headaches at just the right time I don't know maybe he's a slime bucket or maybe he just had a great timing and attention to detail ?? so long story shorter I think it comes down to great coaching and great recruiting and selling a great product that you're confident in because you know that it is a great product and attention to detail organizational skills etc... All that plus bag men? but I believe it was Richard Nixon who said they're crooks just out crooked our crooks so I don't know...

Clemson is the interesting point of comparison for us, since (as someone has shown) we actually have had better recruiting classes than us.  Here, the big difference is quarterback play.  Dabo bet the farm on Deshawn Watson and won.  He followed that up with Trevor Lawrence.  You take out Deshawn and Trevor, and you have 9-3 teams, even in the ACC.  We need elite QB play is the conclusion.

Pretty simple really. The top teams have better Jimmies and Joes and superior coaching (in-game, player development, and scheme). When these factors are combined, it's hard to beat.

Unfortunately, one of those teams is in our division, blocking our path each year, and they show extreme motivation to beat us, even to the detriment of their own record some years.

Really hard to get past that.

It's everything.  They have great coaches and staffs, good analytics, top-notch recruiting, administrations that look the other way on things, a penchant for bending/breaking the rules, etc.  

The case of Alabama is simple.  Saban is one of the best coaches and a great recruiter.  

Ohio State has been really lucky getting great coaches.  If Tressel flamed out it would have changed things drastically. 

Clemson is more recent.  I'd compare them more to Oregon under Chip Kelley.  They will ride the Dabo train while it lasts but I would consider their success more fragile than the others.

Coaching seems to be the biggest factor. Saban won a national championship at LSU and brought his success with him to Alabama. Meyer won 2 championships at Florida and replicated his success at Ohio State.

If Rich Rod had taken the Bama job instead of Saban, Saban would have just gone on to build a perenial powerhouse at LSU or wherever he went and Bama fans would be the champs of BPONE.

What Ohio State has done - winning back to back championships across two different coaches - is a singular accomplishment in the modern era. There's a lot of luck there - hitting on a FCS coach from Youngstown State, and then having one of the two best coaches in country become available the same year that they were forced to make a coaching change. 

Erase Saban and Meyer from the earth and suddenly there's a lot more parity among the remaining teams.

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THE BAG, and not having to play school at all.

I digress... I'll say I'm impressed with Day has done... he hasn't missed a step at all, and I wonder, how Urban found him, ie, what exactly he did at BC that said to hire him.

EASY!!!!   $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Simple: Alabama (Nicks Saban's leadership style and RECRUITING. Clemson: Steve Spurrier's retirement at USC/hiring Venables instead of keeping his buddy Kevin Steele and RECRUITING.

Ohio State: Jim Tressel keeping Ohio's best players in Ohio-instilling a national championship attitude and letting go of the "let's win the conference and the Rose Bowl mentality" then the hiring of Urban Myer- (excellent coach and powerhouse coach)

and of course they ALL cheat in different ways even MICHIGAN. The naivete on this board by some people is astounding when it comes to claiming that everyone cheats and has bagmen and that's why Michigan can't get over the top OR we don't do this at Michigan. That crap is why the entire nation laughs at the Michigan fan base and their massive DELUSION about the program. Michigan is my favorite team BUT I realize that they are a good program but not a GREAT program like the true Blue Bloods of college football. Having a great helmet, large stadium and playing since the Civil War does not get automatic respect or automatic wins. Just like this year. I picked Michigan to finish 9-3 and head to Florida and actually win a bowl giving Harbaugh his 4th 10 win season out of 5. Pretty damn good but many on this board wanted him fired just a few weeks ago. Michigan does NOT have the QB to beat OSU/Clemson/ Alabama and several more teams this year. PERIOD! 

All the schools you’ve mentioned have won enough to where their success begets more success. Top recruits want to play for the top schools, the schools that win all the time, so it makes it very difficult for other schools to break through. 

That and recruiting advantages. Clemson and Alabama are surrounded by all the top talent in the country. They could field elite teams without ever having to go out of a 200 mile radius of their school. If you’re Michigan and you want to field a team capable of winning a title, you’re getting your ass on a plane and flying all over America in order to do it. 

And then OSU has the built in advantage of being the only P5 program in a state that is inexplicably loaded with football talent. A school that has had boatloads of historical and recent success, and a school that all the top instate kids dream of growing up and playing for. They have no instate competition for kids who can’t fathom the idea of playing anywhere else. What other state in America has that qualification? Where you’re the only instate competition, and any top recruit from your state wants to play for you?

My money is on nowhere else. BC may be the only P5 program in Massachusetts, but any top recruit won’t ever consider playing for them because they’re BC. They want to go play for Alabama, USC, Texas, OSU, or Michigan. 

1. Good in the trenches on both sides of the football.  Goes without saying.

2. Strong QB play.  It's no coincidence that Tua, Justin Fields Jalen Hurts, Trevor Lawrence and (recently) Joe Burrow find themselves on CFP contending teams.  And they're all in the Heisman discussion.

3. Offensive strategies that utilize their best players and are designed to create mismatches with defenses.  Michigan has seen some of that this season but not nearly enough.

I think it's two things:

1) the playoff. If you make who goes to the national title game less random, it gives the consistently great teams better odds of making it to the championship.  

2) The early signing day. I don't think it ever would have passed if the powers that be would have known that 90% of kids would sign early, making the ESD effectively THE signing day. So schools that have had stability at the HC position have just gotten that much stronger. The transition from Urban to Ryan Day was so seamless it didn't hurt Ohio a bit. But look at what's happened to the former powers who have tried to replace a HC after a firing. Your first signing day is a disaster. And in Willie Taggart's case, the fact he couldn't take any of his Oregon staff forced him to throw together a new staff on insanely short notice and he whiffed on both coordinator hires, and bang, now he's dead. All the ESD has done is give a huge advantage to stable programs while making it way more difficult to get a moribund program back on track.

3) The biggest cause is realignment though. Go back 30+ years and we had 7 major conferences and a host of powerful independents. You had room for a lot of schools to be consistent 9-11 game winners every year and basically control their back yard for recruits. Even 15-20 years ago with the SWC dead and all the independents gone except ND, you still had six power conferences. Now that it's consolidated to 5, that just means fewer schools having the opportunity to have great seasons. Think about how many coaches are at jobs trying to "resurrect" some traditional blue blood. The math of it all says 90% of those schools will fail, because you just can't have as many 10-11 win teams when the teams are clustered into a smaller number of conferences. 

As many have noted, Bag Men and coaching quality+stability are obviously huge factors.

Also, the playoff has given these teams a mulligan that they did not have before. Two of the five champions were 4-seeds that would have been aced out in prior systems. A bit early to say how much of a factor this is, but it certainly cuts down on the randomness that was always a feature of the sport.

The longer we continue to hold onto this belief that the reason we aren't at their level is from bagmen the longer we look like gullible goofs. Are there bagmen? 100% yes but is this THE reason or even one of the big reasons? hell no. If that was the case then Ole Miss and other programs that middle around in P5 conferences would start seeing success. 

The reason they are succeeding and continue to get bigger and better is because winning breeds winning.  Kids want to go to places where they can win a championship, play on TV, have their names in lights.  Elite coaching with top recruiters to boot you have a recipe for success.  These programs operate at such an elite efficiency it's almost scary.  Top S&C coaches, Top support personnel, elite facilities that focus on recovery.  Videographers, new equipment, etc. It's crazy. 

Kids want to go to places that they KNOW will be successful but even then if you don't have the right coach it's all for not. Look at FSU. They won a national championship not too long ago and they still get ELITE athletes there but they haven't done SHIT with it. Terrible coaching. 

Location is another factor that I think doesn't get talked about enough.  We are pretty far north and it gets fucking cold here. Who wouldn't want to go to the south or southern California where it's sunnier longer and the girls wear less.  osu has tradition, facilities, elite coaches, coaches that have great nfl track records. 

This is the recipe for success, not bag men or steroids.  Shit, if this was the 80's i'd say yes to steroids but now a days there is very few guys out there juicing like they use to. With all the advances in the science of recovery as well as strength and conditioning it's not as prevalent anymore. 

I realize it's popular - well, on this board anyway - to say "I hate the NFL/pro sports" but maybe you could expand on why you prefer college football over the NFL. Many posts here give reasons that suggest that the dominant programs are dominant because they simply bypass amateurism and pay the players.

If that's the case for much of the P5 (I suspect it is) how can one prefer an illicit professional sport (college) over an overt professional sport (NFL)? Style of play?

Yes.

I agree with the people who stated that an elite quarterback is probably the biggest factor. Alabama, Clemson and OSU all have great QBs who didn't need much development. 

I also believe that many schools still operate under different scholarship rules that allow them to cut players who aren't performing well. It's often not a guaranteed 4 year scholarship.

Nick Saban could just get rid of some guys who didn't pan out and bring in a new group of highly ranked players.

It's sometimes a two or three year scholarship and the head coach decides whether or not he wants to renew it.   

The rule might be helping a program like Alabama stay fully stocked with great players. 

I believe Michigan's football program only offers guaranteed 4 year scholarships and a player would have to break the rules to be removed from the team.

Isnt it obvious?  The teams that are willing to shade the rules here and break the rules there and cover it up and deny deny deny are the ones competing in the playoff every year. The NCAA has created a system that encourages cheating.  All that’s holding a school back is whether the AD and administration have a conscience.  So all the schlups that play by the rules never get anywhere and the same dirty programs are at the top year after year. It’s hard to care anymore. 

They understand that football is a man's game. And they act like men wanting to be the best at playing football.

 They don't run a country club for the players. They expect greatness. And don't accept less.

Brand, coaching, recruiting perks and lighter schedule are pillars that help sustain the domination. Talent and coaching both are necessary to repeat the dominance year after year.