Officially, the college football coaching carousel has been underway for weeks now. We’ve seen several powerhouse programs quickly move on from their head coach, and we seem to be hitting the accelerator
on the timeline for a football coach.
The sport has changed drastically and I’m not sure if the rest of sports media has caught up, or fully understands how much things have changed. I’m also not sure most fan bases have fully embraced how much things have changed, either.
“Best jobs in football” has always been a short list, a group of teams who could compete for a national championship in any given year. And those jobs haven’t really changed over the years, despite many of them proving the description wrong.
As the carousel has heated up this year, many national outlets and commentators continue to talk about the landscape of college football in the terms of 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. But as Indiana’s Curt Cignetti has proven, any job can be a great job with the right coach. At least if you’re in the SEC or the Big 10. Perhaps fans in the SEC are the ones who need to be reset the most.
So far this season the Administration at Arkansas, LSU, Florida, and Auburn have all fired their football coach. LSU has fired their athletic director also, at the time this all went down, the school didn’t have a president of the university system… everything is being run by the Governor, who apparently doesn’t have enough other things to do for Louisiana. But maybe the people of Louisiana don’t mind, since many are LSU fans.
Immediately when coaches get fired, the media gets to work ranking those jobs. And they immediately begin ranking the candidates. Those candidates seem to always begin with one or two names, and then go from there: Lane Kiffin is first, Eli Drinkwitz maybe isn’t second, but he’s on most of the lists. The thought being neither Missouri nor Ole Miss are top jobs, so of course those coaches can be poached.
The barrier for entry into being a top job is no longer how much they can pay you. Lane Kiffin is paid $9,000,000 to coach Ole Miss, Drinkwitz is paid the same to coach at Missouri. North Carolina forked up over $10,000,000 to hire Bill Belicheck, and we’ve seen how that’s gone.
The highest paid coaching list from the beginning of the year on USAToday.com has Kiffin is the 10th highest paid coach, Drinkwitz is 11th. Cignetti has already re-upped for more with Indiana, so you can probably knock each down a spot. If either Drink or Lane want more this offseason, they can probably get it from their current schools. But what they cannot get, if they asked for it, is better job security.
This isn’t the plea of a fan asking a coach to stay. I can’t tell someone like Drinkwitz or Kiffin what they should do with their career. I don’t even intend to tell either of them what they should, or shouldn’t do this offseason. By all means make the decision you think is best for you, and your family.
Florida, undoubtedly, has better program history than either Ole Miss or Missouri. The Gators can point to a lot of things from the past that make their job attractive, it’s just none of those things have happened in the new revenue sharing era of college sports. The only thing they can point to recently is each of the last four head coaches at Florida have all been fired within four years of accepting the job and they have yet to win more than 8 games since COVID. Their Athletic Director is Scott Stricklin, he’s the same man who’s hired each of the last two coaches. At least Stricklin still has the support of the University and boosters as he was extended in September. You can’t say the same thing for LSU, or for Auburn.
There are flaws with each of these programs from the leadership side. LSU is an train wreck. Auburn is only marginally better, and that’s only because their governor hasn’t yet stepped in to try and fix things. But the relationship with multiple coaches have quickly grown toxic, and it’s only a matter of time before they churn through the next guy.
The reality of college football, especially in the SEC, is everyone has money, and everyone is spending to win. Some are spending a little more, some a little less, but everyone is spending. Every season for the last 10 there have been eight league games against teams who are trying to win. Next year the schedule expands to 9 games. Someone is going to lose football games.
Tennessee fans are already expressing some frustration with Josh Heupel, who is 6-3 with losses to Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma so far this year, and despite the fact Heupel is the first UT coach to have multiple double digit win seasons since Phil Fullmer retired. If you go through the 16 team league, there are 9 teams with a record of 6-3 or better overall, and Missouri is the only team with a losing league record of those 9. Everyone below those teams have either fired their head coach, a prominent coordinator, or there have been open talks about whether that coach should be fired.
The only coach who might be safe in that group is Jeff Lebby, and it’s mostly because he’s only on year 2.
Alignment with your boosters, school administration, and athletics administration are probably the most important thing going in college football these days. Missouri has that. Ole Miss has that. Missouri, in particular, has invested in Drinkwitz. I don’t follow Ole Miss well enough to know if Lane has the same kind of leverage. But the Tigers have given in to everything Drinkwitz has asked for. They’re building a entirely new part of the stadium to keep up with the Joneses.
If the concern is whether you have what you need to compete for a championship, both Missouri and Ole Miss have shown they will commit to the resources. Drinkwitz has elevated the talent level of the Missouri roster to be commiserate with what he’s paid. The Tigers have top 20 talent, and injuries aside, have played like a top 20 team all season.
The only thing holding Missouri back is just being a little bit better offensively, and maybe a healthier kicker and quarterback.
I don’t think Drinkwitz is going to leave Mizzou. I wouldn’t say its out of the question, but for the reasons I outlined above, he’ll never have alignment like he has here. He doesn’t even report to the Athletic Director, he has a clear path to the President, and the Curators love him.
If he’s smart, he won’t even ask for a raise, but rather more financial commitment to the roster. The team talent is top 20, but if you want to be in the playoff, you just need to be better. Play better, coach better. There’s no invisible rope holding Missouri back from being that type of program. Just ask Curt Cignetti.
