As tends to happen when a team or program is going through a worse than expected season, the questions of whether the head coach is the right man for the job start to surface. In the case of Oklahoma State, those questions have been there on some level since the hiring of Travis Ford, but the handling of this particular season has seemed to either increase the number of Coach Ford detractors, or raise the volume on the existing ones. And yes, I realize that this intro paragraph is functioning as the creation of a straw man, but I don't really know how to measure week to week coach dissatisfaction, so I will just go with the "it seems like there is a lot more negative Travis Ford talk lately" setup for this one.
I am not really wanting to defend or attack what Coach Ford has done (at least not in this post), I just wanted to look at his team's performance compared to his predecessors to give myself, and by extension our loyal graph loving readers, a starting point to formulate our opinions.
The first thing I take out of that is "damn Eddie Sutton was a hell of a coach". The second thing I notice though is the sharp up-swing in the trend line since Coach Ford took over. And that trend line isn't some bullshit line I drew in there, that is using the regression algorithm that is built into excel (Microsoft plug! I better get some advertising money for that product name drop.) And assuming I were still staring at this marvel of a graphic, the third thing I would notice are the number of NCAA appearances and wins and how those picked back up once Coach Ford took over.
Seeing it in this format, it would be hard to argue against the stance that Coach Ford has brought this program back to a decent level, considering the direction that trend line was heading, and the number of tourney appearances. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean he is the perfect man for the job going forward, and that is where there is room for debate, but seeing this data in a decent format at least gives us all a good place to start from.