College football now has “Help Wanted” signs in the head coaches’ offices at a half-dozen Power-5 programs, ranging from Arizona State to Auburn to Colorado to Georgia Tech to Nebraska and Wisconsin.
One or more of those programs may hire its interim head coach. And one or more of those programs could hire a rival team’s head coach or one of the sport’s up-and-coming young offensive or defensive coordinators.
Lane Kiffin, the Ole Miss head coach and perhaps the sport’s hottest commodity, has an idea of who he would hire.
Deion Sanders. As in Jackson State Tigers head football coach Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime.
“I think he would be great,” Kiffin said Wednesday on the Southeastern Conference’s coaches’ teleconference. “I think that’s a great name, and they should hire him.”
Kiffin didn’t stop with just a bold, surface-level statement. The former Tennessee head coach and Alabama offensive coordinator pointed directly to the Coach Prime persona and how Sanders has translated his cache into recruiting success that has led to arguably the single-greatest turnaround of the past decade-plus in Football Championship Subdivision play.
“He’s a great recruiter, a great name,” Kiffin said. “This is a different world we’re in now.
“Because recruiting, it’s always been important, but now that you have the (NCAA Transfer) Portal, you can change a roster faster than you ever could before, and you could lose your roster faster than ever before.
“The ability to hire Deion and have that name right away and Portal people who want to be playing for him right away …”
Kiffin pointed to his own roster and said that Sanders also could potentially help usher in an instant roster-overhaul.
“Before, it would take two to three years to turn that roster around,” Kiffin said. “Teams get depleted and look completely different the next year, like our team. Picture our team without the Portal, and take those guys out of there and look at what it looks like.”
As for Kiffin’s own potential candidacy at Auburn or any other institution, Ole Miss’s third-year coach who earned a hefty raise after last season’s 10-win campaign said that it was neither a distraction or a topic of conversation around the Rebels’ program.
“We don’t typically talk about that in the season,” said Kiffin, who said such attention was the result of the players’ and overall team success.
Kiffin also said his name being buzzed about as a candidate has not been an element he has felt needed to be broached within the locker room.
“I don’t tell them anything [that isn’t about the job at hand],” he said. “We have a pro mindset here; that players have jobs to do and coaches have jobs to do and that’s how we run a program.
“This is the toughest conference in the toughest division. It’s really like the NFL. Every week’s a grind, every game.”