Kenny Dillingham's break into college coaching is a well documented story.
Once a former high school coach, Dillingham built relationships with the Arizona State staff during his time as an assistant at nearby Chaparral HS (AZ) by sticking around practices at every opportunity, and eventually elbowed his way into staff meetings to soak up everything he could about being a college coach. That persistence eventually led to an offensive analyst position with the Sun Devils.
Of course, that went on to open doors with Mike Norvell at Memphis, where he quickly rose to offensive coordinator before holding the coordinator title at Auburn, Florida State and Oregon before getting his shot to return to Tempe as the Sun Devils new head coach prior to this last fall.
There has been a reoccurring, and some would say popular narrative among the mainstream media that being a college coach is too hard in the wake of changes to NIL and institution of the transfer portal.
The narrative has popped up this past cycle from coaches like Jeff Hafley, who left Boston College after four seasons and a 22-26 overall record for an opportunity to run the defense for the Green Bay Packers.
Back in late-January, ESPN shared after Hafley's departure that one of the reasons for the move was that "college coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There's no time to coach football anymore," and added that "a lot of things that he went back to college for have disappeared."
That happens to be just one of the growing number of recent examples.
Dillingham isn't listening to any of that.
During a recent interview with AZSports, Dillingham let people that believe in narrative have it, speaking from his own personal experience.
"I literally spent nine years of my life doing anything to become a coffee boy."
"So, don't give me the 'Oh, it's hard to be a coach right now.' Yeah, it's hard. Then quit."
Amen Kenny. Amen.
There's no shortage of coaches out there willing to adapt to the new landscape of college football that are willing to follow in Dillingham's footsteps with a similar "do anything to become a coffee boy" approach to get their foot in the door in college football. It's those guys embracing changes that are the future of the coaching profession.
Not the ones running from it, or ones drinking the "it's too hard to coach" Kool-Aid.