Been chewing on this, ready to see what's wrong with it.  Assume there is a balancing move allowing hiring to be easier, something like, "on the last day of jobs all open jobs become available a full letter grade lower than they were."

1.  You cannot be fired:
     a.  Immediately after winning an NT, or after the next four seasons
     b.  After the first three seasons at a new job
     c.  Immediately after a Final Four, or after the next two seasons
     d.  Immediately after winning a CT, or after a Sweet Sixteen appearance.

2.  If you are not "unfire-able" as above, you are fired if you meet one of the following 7 conditions:
     a.  You have not made the NT for 5 consecutive seasons
     b.  You have had 7 or fewer conference wins for 4 consecutive seasons
     c.  You have had 5 or fewer conference wins for 3 consecutive seasons
     d.  You have had 3 or fewer conference wins for 2 consecutive seasons
     e.  You go 0-16 or 1-15 in conference
      f.  Your end-of-CT projection report is 250 or worse
     g.  Your prestige is a full grade below your school baseline.

Have at it, let me know what I'm missing here.  Again, this is for Big 6 conference jobs only.

those are good principles but I think there needs to be some variation based on the prestige level of the school.  You should get fired at UCLA for a record that would keep you in good standing at Fresno

I think we can all agree that firings need to be ramped up, but I think this is getting too aggressive in the other direction. Turning around a bad BCS school in a top conference is very difficult. Many believe it to be the most difficult thing to achieve in HD. Under your system, there's a very good chance you're fired after 4 seasons at a new job. IMO, that's too fast.

I also think it's a little harsh to fire someone after only 1 or 2 bad seasons, which would happen under your system. I went 0-16 in conference in my 6th season at Oklahoma in Smith after back-to-back NT appearances in seasons 4 and 5. They were the first NT appearances for the school in over 20 seasons, as I was rebuilding the school back to respectability. I lost a ton of upperclassmen after Season 5, and brought in an outstanding recruiting class, but being extremely young, we went 0-16. The next two seasons, I went a combined 51-11 with those kids. Yet under your system, I would have been fired after the 0-16 season. Because of one bad season, which was a clear and designed for rebuilding year. That seems awfully harsh.

Also, under your system, you could take over a C+ Michigan State team, and after 4 seasons have them up to a B+ with back-to-back NT appearances, the team clearly being on the upswing... and you're fired.

Many more possible examples like this for your various cases. I just think you're being overly swift and arbitrary with a lot of these.

Posted by professor17 on 6/7/2013 9:19:00 PM (view original):
I think we can all agree that firings need to be ramped up, but I think this is getting too aggressive in the other direction. Turning around a bad BCS school in a top conference is very difficult. Many believe it to be the most difficult thing to achieve in HD. Under your system, there's a very good chance you're fired after 4 seasons at a new job. IMO, that's too fast.

I also think it's a little harsh to fire someone after only 1 or 2 bad seasons, which would happen under your system. I went 0-16 in conference in my 6th season at Oklahoma in Smith after back-to-back NT appearances in seasons 4 and 5. They were the first NT appearances for the school in over 20 seasons, as I was rebuilding the school back to respectability. I lost a ton of upperclassmen after Season 5, and brought in an outstanding recruiting class, but being extremely young, we went 0-16. The next two seasons, I went a combined 51-11 with those kids. Yet under your system, I would have been fired after the 0-16 season. Because of one bad season, which was a clear and designed for rebuilding year. That seems awfully harsh.

Also, under your system, you could take over a C+ Michigan State team, and after 4 seasons have them up to a B+ with back-to-back NT appearances, the team clearly being on the upswing... and you're fired.

Many more possible examples like this for your various cases. I just think you're being overly swift and arbitrary with a lot of these.

+1. I think the standards should be a quite a bit more lenient than your suggesting. But it's a good idea to post something like this. I'll be curious to see just how much we want the firings to be ramped up.

can't imagine anyone has been fired after any of the situations under category #1

Yeah, love this thread, but definitely think the OP has overlooked this point. I'd amend the no-fire list to include these two things: 

1.b. (revised). In your first five seasons with a new school. 
1. e. If your prestige is higher than it was when you took over (applies only during your first ten seasons with a school). 


Suggestions made on the grounds that (1) Three seemed too short and (2) It's important to ask whether you've made the team better than they were when you took over (although this loses its power the longer you've had the job). 

yeah 2 is very strict

Agree with most concerns here.

tarvolon-- the intent of 1b is to give everyone FOUR seasons; you can't be fired after the first three.  Still, up one or two more is reasonable; one of the worst things about my approach is that it will potentially worsen the "Rutgers Churn" where bad BCS jobs vacate all the damn time (although, that's what they do in real life).  Also, while I think 10 is too many, I like the principle of your revision to 1e.

prof-- I think that's an unusual situation, but one season protection after back-to-back NTs is not unreasonable.

Like to hear more criticisms-- mostly trying to prove the concept that a simple, transparent, harsher firing system could be easily programmed and would help the game.

Yeah, 10 was just a round number. 8 sound better? 7? 

In RL, there were 5  BCS coaches fired this season....Minnesota, Northwestern, Texas Tech, UCLA and USC.

  In 2012, there were 4 firings...Illinois, Mississippi St., Nebraska and South Carolina. 

By whatever critieria, there should be a minimum # of openings each season. The 3 schools with the lowest standing fire their coach.  If the BCS already has 3 or more  SIM teams, noone gets fired that year. 

Posted by alblack56 on 6/8/2013 5:42:00 AM (view original):
In RL, there were 5  BCS coaches fired this season....Minnesota, Northwestern, Texas Tech, UCLA and USC.

  In 2012, there were 4 firings...Illinois, Mississippi St., Nebraska and South Carolina. 

By whatever critieria, there should be a minimum # of openings each season. The 3 schools with the lowest standing fire their coach.  If the BCS already has 3 or more  SIM teams, noone gets fired that year. 

A firing quota is an interesting idea. It would certainly make firings more realistic, but I think that although we need to increase firings, this is one of those things (like EE's, injuries, dilemmas, etc.), where we're not seeking to correspond exactly with real life. I don't want to get to a point where we have Ben Howland-like firings, no matter how realistic that may be.

My two initial concerns with what you've proposed are the following:

1. If there are 3 or more Sims among the BCS schools (not that uncommon), which would prevent any humans from being fired, you could actually be protecting some truly bad human coaches who deserve to be fired.

2. There are 72 BCS jobs. At any given time, roughly 20 of those are held by coaches too early in their tenure to be considered for firing. That means our firing quota is potentially hitting coaches #48-52 out of 72. Once you've initiated this system for a few seasons and have weeded out the truly bad coaches who've been hanging around for too long, firing coaches #48-52 could mean giving the axe to some guys who aren't great coaches, but who aren't terrible coaches, either. Depending what criteria you're using, this could impact someone who simply had a couple down seasons, etc, or who really haven't done anything to necessarily deserve being fired other than satisfying the quota.