Coaches jump around every year in college football.  They're getting fired, retiring, going to the pros as a coordinator, taking over another team when they were a coordinator, taking a better opportunity elsewhere, and probably some other options in there as well.  Either way it shows that college football coaching positions are some of the most unstable career paths.  It's somewhat sports in general that teams are quick to hire and fire, but college football is the worst.  In college basketball you will at least have some coaches that really want to build up the program.  It's not always about finding the next stepping stone with them.  New programs emerge and became perennial contenders and tournament attendees.  Teams such as Creighton, Gonzaga, and Butler are ranked annually.  Other teams from the powerhouse conferences still can build up their programs as well.  Oklahoma emerged last year as a big time program in in the Big 12.  Teams like Florida State and Miami have even built themselves up amongst the elite of the ACC.  The coaches confront the obstacles in their way and try to make their program better instead of college football coaches that think it will be too hard to contend with the powerhouses so when a big name position opens up they leap for it.

The days of coaches being at a program for over 15 years seem long gone.  We just recently saw Bobby Bowden get excommunicated from the Seminoles for having a few bad seasons.  Would one more really have killed this team?  This is a coach that built the program up from nothing into one of the most notorious college football schools.  His track record speaks for itself and he deserves a whole lot more than what they gave him.  It's sad that this is the state of college football, but the reason this is the state of college football is money.  College football is unlike college basketball in so many ways and the biggest difference is money.  College basketball has the greatest tournament in the world, but did you know that the majority of the money earned from the tournament goes to the NCAA and not the schools?  This is the reason college football continues with the bowl system.  The bowl system provides the schools or conferences the money and we sure know that nobody wants to change that.  This is also the problem why the big time programs reign over everyone because they annually get the most amount of money and are able to build up their program larger and larger every year.  College football is basically Major League Baseball except there are a few more Yankees and Red Sox teams and a lot more Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals.

So hopefully someday we can have college football programs that are built up and continue to be built.  Programs like TCU and Boise State are trying to do so, but they really need their shot in a BCS conference to see if they could still succeed.  Hopefully someday we will have a college football playoff and the money earned can be distributed a little more evenly to help the lesser teams.  Hopefully someday we won't have such a coaching carousel every year.  It's easy to blame coaches for leaving and being upset over it.  I'm sure Cincinnati or UConn doesn't want to see Brian Kelly or Randy Edsall leave for Notre Dame, but that's just the state of college football.  We shouldn't blame these coaches for leaving either, because college football almost forces them to leave if they want to succeed with a a successful career.  If you want to be part of the Tampa Bay Rays and have a one year shot at the title you coach at a school like UConn or Cincinnati.  If you want to be part of the Yankees and Red Sox and have a shot every year then you go to Notre Dame or another school with lots of money that allows you to do so.  If college football continues it's powerhouse monopolistic program ways then we will continue to see coaches hoping around every year until they get to the top and we will never see coaches like Bobby Bowden build up a program to elite status again.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Add Comment