Bernstein: College Football Coaching Chaos Is Coming
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) In the good old days, college football waited until bowl season to begin its annual dance of money-grabs and half-truths, with schools and coaches uncoupling and rejoining in their lucrative, deceptive mating ritual.
The hot guy from the smaller place took the big money at the larger place, but only after professing his loyalty to his players and exiting through the side door, leaving his assistant to game plan for the Tater Tot Bowl while he took off to buy a house and start recruiting.
Now we're just past Halloween, looking at the initial College Football Playoff rankings, and already an unprecedented 10 major college jobs have become available. Add to this the two firings of NFL head coaches and the likelihood of several more, and we have full-blown lunacy ready to explode. In some ways, it has already begun.
We have the firings: Steve Sarkisian at USC, Tim Beckman at Illinois, Randy Edsall at Maryland, Al Golden at Miami, Norm Chow at Hawaii and Dan McCarney at North Texas. And then there are the retirements: Jerry Kill from Minnesota for health reasons, Steve Spurrier at South Carolina, George O'Leary from Central Florida and Frank Beamer from Virginia Tech, the latter announcing he'll step down at season's end.
And not all the leaves have fallen from the trees yet.
Pete Fiutak is the managing editor of Campus Insiders and the publisher of CollegeFootballNews.com. He hasn't seen anything quite like the coaching change landscape that's now developing so rapidly.
"Never. In the middle of the season, too," he told 670 The Score in Chicago. "Beyond this, there are five to 10 other jobs that will be open, considering what happens when guys move. It happens at the end of the year, but nothing like right now. It's going to be a crazy and wacky offseason."
So crazy now that nobody is spared from rumors that are indistinguishably ridiculous and reasonable. Eagles coach Chip Kelly fleeing the pros to find a smaller kingdom more conducive to his beloved system? Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly finally making the jump? We are even at the point where Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase is being linked to the open Titans job and the one currently but tenuously occupied by Chuck Pagano in Indianapolis. Gase has coached seven games for a 2-5 team.
The truth is that any head coach on the move must also have a solid idea of a staff in place, too. At least provisionally, calls have to be made behind the scenes, even at this point, to have an idea of who else would be willing to relocate where and for how much. It can't be left to the last minute. So one imagines a flurry of back-channel arrangements that account for countless domino-effect scenarios. It's mind-boggling to consider the multiple permutations from the college level up to the NFL and back down, and it's amazing that anybody involved can be appropriately concerned with all this while actually attending to daily coaching responsibilities.
And there's no satisfying explanation for why this is happening, either.
"You only have a few weeks left of the season," Fiutak said. "So it's not really an advantage in any way to fire your coach now. It doesn't help in recruiting. It doesn't help in any way unless you have an interim head coach or an assistant you want to give a look-see. Minnesota gets a long look at Tracy Claeys, and at USC and South Carolina you get to see what these guys can do a little bit, just to see if they might be able to handle the work.
"It doesn't really normally make any sense."
The 10 college jobs and the Dolphins and the Titans vacancies in the NFL are soon to be followed by any number of others there. Take your pick from the Lions, Colts, Browns and Jaguars, or even the Chiefs, Texans and the team in Washington. And that doesn't just mean head coaches — but full working staffs, with opportunities and piles of desperate money there to be gobbled up.
The offseason has arrived midseason, with one now accelerated into the other and not slowing down.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.