Ending the Coaching Carousel

One of the great things about college football is there are four seasons within any calendar year. It starts with Bowl Season around New Years, then you have Recruiting Season on National Signing Day in early February, then the actual season in the fall that we all live for. Finally, at the end of every season but before bowl season, we have the annual circus that revolves around coaches getting fired and coaches leaving jobs. Ironically, the coaching carousel gets fans as worked up as any other part of the season. Last season, it was WVU fans losing it over RichRod leaving for Michigan. This year, we had Lane Kiffin to Tennessee and Gene Chizik to Auburn as the two high profile coaching jobs, along with the drama of whether Charlie Weis would be kept on at Notre Dame. But, then we had BC suddenly enter into this mix last week when coach Jeff Jagodzinski was fired for interviewing with the New York Jets.

Now, I'm not going to blame either side for causing the coaching carousel. In colleges, there is a clear hierarchy. Some schools get better students, some schools get better faculty members. In academia, money follows prestiege in endowment, facilities, and salaries. You'd never fault a professor for leaving his tenured position at Minnesota for a job opening at Harvard, it's clear which job is better. This holds true for coaching jobs as well. BCS schools get better athletes because they have more money and better facilities, so coaches leave jobs in the MAC and CUSA for BCS jobs all the time. Coaches also leave some BCS jobs for the really "big" jobs-- Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, USC-- because they have the combination of money, history, prestige, facilities and fan bases, or if they leave for the NFL. When coaches jump ship for "bigger" jobs, it's no different than faculty members jumping. It's part of the business, and I don't fault the coaches for jumping from one job to another.

Now, I also don't blame BC AD Gene DeDeFillipo for taking a stand with Jagodzinski. If I was the AD at a school like BC, and I was only two years removed from losing coach Tom O'Brien to a parallel coaching move to NC State, I'd be fed up as well. The thing is, structurally, something has to change in the hiring process to prevent the carousel from staying at the ridiculous levels it's been the past couple of seasons.

Let me tell you a story. My parent's recently got a new kitten named Biscuit, who while adorable, has drawn the ire of our current cat Maizey. Maizey is emotionally fragile, as she was already taking feline anti-depressants (not joking) and had survived a wild dog attack (not joking), so having a new cat did not go over well with her. Biscuit was found in a dumpster, so she's got a bit of street fighter in her as well. Well, one day when my mom came home from work, she found Maizey waiting for her at the door, looking absolutely disgusted. It turns out that Biscuit had grown tired of Maizey's bullying, so she got revenge: she pissed in the cat's communal water dish. It then became a prisoner's dilemma. Both cats were in a contest to see who could piss in the dish first, since neither could trust the other not to do it.

This is what has happened with the coaching business-- it's become a pissing contest. AD's aren't willing to give coaches 5 years anymore to build a program with their own recruits. It's win now or fired (see: RichRod next December if Michigan goes 6-6). With coaches, they want the prestige jobs with big money, and they also know that you may only get one chance to land one of those jobs so they leave as soon as they are offered. The hope on both parts was the "buyouts" in the contract would prevent the carousel. Buyouts are a percentage of the contract that either side has to pay if they leave before the contract ends. RichRod's at WVU was $4.5 mil, so he had to pay it when he left early. Tommy Tuberville's at Auburn was $5.1 for "resigning," which Auburn had to pay for not letting him finish the contract. Good ideas, but obviously it's not working.

So how do we stop the pissing contest? Simple. Guarantee the coaching contracts. Eliminate the buyout and put all the money on the table. If you get fired 3 years into a 5 year, $10 mil contract, the AD owes you a $4 mil check. If a coach pulls a Bobby Petrino and leaves after one year of a 5 year, $15 mil deal, the coach owes the school $12 mil. It makes the economics of the whole thing a lot more realistic. It will force schools to give coaches the chance to actually build a program, while also forcing school to wait for the right promotion, and not to jump at the first one they get out of fear it'll be the only one they get.