COACHING CIRCUS
The college football coaching carousel started the day after Charlie Weiss was ousted at Notre Dame. The Irish hired Brian Kelly away from undefeated and Sugar Bowl bound Cincinnati. The Bearcats lost to Florida, 24-51.
Cincinnati hired Butch Jones from Central Michigan. The Chippewas won the GMAC Bowl in overtime. On January 12 Central Michigan introduced Dan Enos as their new coach. He has been a Michigan State assistant the past four years.
Immediately after Kansas lost to Missouri in the Jayhawks' season finale, Mark Mangino's contract was terminated for alleged player abuse. The corpulent coach and AD Lew Perkins never really hit it off despite the fact Mangino put KU back on the football map. Kansas hired former Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill away from Buffalo, a program with which Gill had considerable success. Gill had been interviewed last year for the Syracuse job.
The Mike Leach saga dominated the airwaves and Ethernet for days following the disclosure of his treatment of Adam James after the player was diagnosed with a concussion. James is the son of ESPN college football analyst Craig James, which only magnified media coverage. The Red Raiders, under interim coach Ruffin McNeill, beat Michigan State in the Alamo Bowl. The fact that Leach and the Tech administration had been at odds since Leach's exploratory foray into other coaching opportunities following the 2008-09 season and that Leach was due an $850,000 cash bonus on January 1 further muddied the waters. While Leach pursues possible legal action, the university hired Tommy Tuberville as the new head coach.
Jim Leavitt, the only coach the University of South Florida has ever known, was fired January 9 following allegations of player abuse. The fiery coach has asked for and received an administrative hearing in an effort to save his job. USF seeks to end his contract "with cause" to void any monetary termination penalties. It has been reported Leavitt's style was wearing thin with players, administrators and assistants. USF, which joined the Big East in 2005, hired Leavitt in 1995 to build a football program from the ground up. He has compiled a 95-57 record with five consecutive bowl appearances and two straight bowl wins.
With USC facing an NCAA investigation and possible sanctions, Pete Carroll bolted the Trojan program for another shot in the NFL, this time with the Seattle Seahawks. "Slick Pete" denies any connection between his sudden departure and the NCAA probe.
That brings us to yesterday's news from Knoxville. After only one year of stirring up trouble for the University of Tennessee, Lane Kiffin (The Mowf in the Sowf) has headed back to the sunny climes of SoCal to replace his old mentor. He's taking Daddy Monte to be the defensive coordinator and is reportedly on a raiding party to woo his pal Norm Chou away from the Tennessee Titans to serve as offensive coordinator.
These coaching changes are just the tip of the iceberg. ESPN reports there have been 21 head coaching changes in the FBS since season's end.
Like many professions in our world, coaches (and their families) live in a pressure cooker under intense scrutiny from administrators, alumni, fans and the media. There aren't many Joe Paternos left on the college coaching scene. It's just a fact of life that coaches come and go.
Unfortunately, some of them bring on their own demise, apparently (like some of the prima donna athletes they coach) putting themselves above the bounds of civil behavior. Some, like a few former Missouri coaches, just aren't good enough to keep their jobs; and some are so good they naturally climb the ladder of success.
This year's coaching merry-go-round seems to magnify inherent problems with the way the system operates. First, the money head coaches command is obscene. With big money comes big problems such as buyout clauses, bonuses and tampering. But the most striking aspect of this game of musical chairs is the effect on the players left behind and the recruits coming in. Mardy Gilyard, Cincinnati's All-American receiver, was visibly angry when Kelly left for the Golden Dome. Understandably, he felt betrayed. The same can probably be said for the future freshmen Kelly had signed to commitments.
It is in the area of recruiting I see the biggest problem. For example: After John Calipari bailed on Memphis for Kentucky following last year's college basketball season, he loaded up his recruits and took them with him to Lexington, leaving Memphis' cupboard almost empty and facing an NCAA investigation, the second time he's left a program in shambles. Because college football recruiting is in full swing during December, coaches moving to different programs are forced to do so immediately. That leaves the program they are leaving in a bind, facing post-season play without the guy that took them to success and leaving signed commitments in limbo. And, often, they take with them the assistants who have recruited and built their teams into contenders.
One possible cure for the problems of "coach jumping" at season's end and during the height of recruiting would be to put a moratorium on recruiting December through January and to move the signing date for football scholarships to March 1 instead of early February.
The NCAA, in all its wisdom, has enough rules to fill an encyclopedia, but there's always room for one more:
No NCAA member institution may hire (nor contact) any coach under contract with
another member institution until the conclusion of the Bowl Championship Series.
Before the legal eagles start tearing this argument to shreds, claiming it violates free enterprise, realize the NCAA operates as a quasi-monopoly anyway. Yes, the Supreme Court stepped in a decade ago to open the doors for individually negotiated television rights; but the governing body for college athletics still carries a big stick when it comes to dictating rules for members.
A moratorium on recruiting and hiring until the bowl season ends (or until March Madness concludes, in the case of basketball) could ameliorate some of the chaos that we saw at the end of the 2009-10 football season.
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