College Football Coaching Insanity is Everything Wrong With Sports Today
If you want a clear explanation as to why outside the "Power 5" most every other college football program in America is nearly broke we offer one explanation---The Coaching Carousel.
Every season it seems coaches are fired from high profile programs earlier and earlier in order to position themselves to hire the next "High Profile" candidate. Often at great expense due to buyouts and almost always causing chaos at the "High Profile" candidates current job.
Yeah, sure it's a little different this season in that one of the "Biggest" names is not a current coach. It's former New Hampshire, Oregon, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly.
Kelly is on the beach so-to-speak this season, he's working weekends as an "Analyst" for the unemployed coaching haven known as ESPN. And on Sunday, he was asked--in a scripted moment---if he was going to be a coach again. Specifically at Florida.
This would be his non-denial....denial on Saturday.
I should add, they came back to Florida without their guy. Proof Here
We won't even go into the deranged and delusion pursuit of ESPN NFL Analyst Jon Gruden (who hasn't coached in a decade) by The University of Tennessee. Partially because of its sheer comedy and partially because I've already explained why this is the perfect example of College Football lunacy.
The point here is more simple: This is insanity. I don't understand why the NCAA cannot or won't step in and say "No coaching hires until the season ends".....
What happens is, it becomes a distraction. You're going to see a TON, multiple coaches who won't coach in their teams bowl games this year. Just like last year....and the year before that and the year before that one.
Rumors of Active Coaches changing jobs have already started. There are rumblings coaches who are just 1-year into their tenure (Charlie Strong, Willie Taggert, Lane Kiffin) are already being rumored as leaving to go somewhere else. That's just wrong---on so many levels. Athletes can't do this.
This is what is totally fucked up. A coach can sign a 5-year contract and recruit kids to come play for him because he tells the 18-year old he will be there. The next season, if that coach gets a better offer and leaves, the kid is screwed. The kid can't leave without having to sit out for a season.
Where's the justice in that?
Yeah, sure College Football is not really a sport any more--it's a business (thanks ESPN). But that doesn't make any of this right. A coach can sign a deal and put a buyout into his contract that schools with money don't seem to care about paying. Heck, Texas A&M is "rumored" to be courting CURRENT FSU coach Jimbo Fisher and aren't blinking an eye about his astronomically large buyout.
There is a flip side. LSU--a school with struggling finances is basically bound to Coach Ed Orgeron. The reason. Somehow Orgeron's agent got the school to agree to a nearly $12 million buyout.
College Football can and often is a lot of fun to watch--much more so than the NFL. But like the NFL it's a business. A business set up for rich boosters and alumni. It's a game where coaches while not necessarily pawns--more like Rooks---are used as expendable pieces. The players are the pawns---they almost always choose a University because of the coach. And then are stuck there when said coach gets a better offer.
That is not fair on any level. And yes, we too will get up in the Coaching Carousel Hysteria....but it doesn't make any of it right....
