First Impressions: Troy coaches’ debut games (Updated for 2024)

September 6, 2022 Thomas Gleaton

2024 Update:

It’s only been two years since Jon Sumrall’s first game (and first outburst) in Oxford, Mississippi, and he’s already moved on. Now it’s time for Gerad Parker’s debut, and this time he gets to start his Troy career as a favorite in the Vet.

As you’ll see, that’s a bad sign for Troy’s modern coaches, but there’s an exception to every rule.

Original article:

Saturday’s loss to Ole Miss hurt, and there’s no other way to put that. It’s easy to look at the negatives, but there’s one positive everyone is overlooking: The fact that Troy lost.

Stick with me here. It’s a good sign, at least for Jon Sumrall’s career at Troy.

Let’s start by looking at how his two predecessors began their Trojan campaigns.

Three years ago, Chip Lindsey’s high-powered offense smoked Campbell 43-14. It’s bizarre to think that at the time, the defense had a plethora of holes and the offense was one of the most powerful in the country. It’s a very different story now.

Compare that to the 49-21 blowout Neal Brown suffered to start the 2015 season. It was an underwhelming performance on the road at a power five school. Sound familiar?

The debut games for each coach stand in stark contrast to the final winning percentage each coach holds as a Troy coach. Neal Brown has a .686 record, and Chip Lindsey has a .429 record.

Brown’s win percentage is a little bit better than his predecessor, Larry Blakeney, who’s sitting at a .611 record over 24 seasons in the Wiregrass.

How did all that get started? You guessed it.

A 21-10 loss to UCF.

As a matter of fact, the First-Loss trend goes back all the way to Troy’s 1984 National Championship.

Rick Rhoades took over after Chan Gailey left, lost the 1985 opener to Nicholls State, almost walked away from the Trojans, then led Troy State to its third national title and a .789 record.

His successor, Robert Maddox, is a curse word to older Trojan fans. He took down Southeast Missouri State in his first game, but that kicked off Troy’s first losing season in six years.

Maddox’s Trojans only won 13 games in three years, so that three-year stretch is mathematically better than the Chip Lindsey era… by just two games.

It’s worth noting that all of the wins came on the road. The 1985 opener against Nicholls was Troy’s sixth road debut by a coach, and its first since 1955, when William Clipson beat West Alabama.

Since then Troy has had five coaches; three of them coached their first game away from The Vet. The other two are obviously Lindsey and Maddox.

The bottom line is that should the trend continue, Sumrall will at least leave Troy with an overall winning record. That’s the takeaway.

Troy is in a solid position to do that this year, with the move to the Western division of the Sun Belt and the high percentage of returning players. Louisiana’s loss leaves the division wide open, too.

But I promised you the data… all the data. I went back to November 5, 1909, the first Troy football game ever.

So let’s keep going.

The 1955 and 1985 games represent changes in data correlations, the beginnings of new trends. (Insert Back to the Future reference here.)

Rick Rhoades was the first Trojan head coach to lose his debut since Jim Grantham lost at Florida State in 1951. Every coach between not only won their debut… with the exception of Clipson they all left Troy with a winning record.

Most of them dominated that game too.

Billy Atkins (the ’68 national champion coach), Tom Jones, Byrd Whigham, Charlie Bradshaw and Gailey all represent Troy’s rise from the NAIA to a Division II power. Jones pulled out a 28-24 win over Elon, but the next closest score was a 19-point difference.

We’re not done though.

Going back even further, the trend before that dominance is surprisingly familiar. Wartime-era coaches also fell victim to the First-Loss trend.

McCollum, the first postwar coach, dropped a close game to Union University in Tennessee, and he barely pulled off a winning record: 20 wins, 18 losses and 3 ties.
Choate beat South Georgia 27-0 four days before “Peace for our time,” won Troy’s first three conference titles, hit pause after hitting .500 at the end of the 1942 season. He went 3-4 the first year after the war ended.
Elmore, the coach behind the “Red Wave” name, lost his first game against Norman 0-19. He finished with a .550 record.

The Trojans cancelled football three times over the course of its history: once for each of the two World Wars, and once in just 1929. We don’t officially know why, but we can probably chalk it up to the Great Depression.

Troy went 1-2 in 1930… without a coach. That should be enough of a warning about the program’s first two decades. They are part of a trend even more chaotic than the First-Loss.

Coaches who scored in their debut—at all—left Troy with a record above .500.

George Penton was the only coach to win, 16-5 over Columbus, and he went 7-1-1 over two seasons. That includes the 1912 “undefeated” 3-0 year, which was followed by an eight-season break, thanks to World War I.

Otis Bynum lost to Ramer 14-12 in 1925. He led Troy to a 7-1-1 record in 1926, and a 12-4-1 record overall.

The other five coaches failed to score in their first games at all. Gladwin Gaumer (what a name) and J.W. Campbell lost, but they stuck around for at least a second season.

The other three coaches held the other team to scoreless ties. None of them returned after that year.

Ross Ford led Troy to a 0-0 tie against the Samford Reserves in 1924, the beginning of a 2-1-4 season.
Virgil McKinley led Troy to a 1-0-2 record in its first year, starting with a 0-0 tie at Union Springs.
The next year Dan Herren led the Trojans to a 0-0 tie against Wetumpka.

Troy went 2-1-2 in its first two years. That’s a 4-2-6 record across three coaches and three years. You can’t call it anything but chaotic.

Thankfully Troy’s data has calmed in the century since. All signs point to more success under Sumrall, though we may be overdue for another trend change.

Bear in mind Blakeney and Brown both followed up their debut losses with wins over lower-division opponents (West Georgia and Charleston Southern). I expect similar results to the Ole Miss game… except in Troy’s favor this time.

I’m not about to study game-two data though. Y’all have fun with that.