Like any other profession, football coaching is an upwardly mobile business. GAs want to be position coaches, position coaches want to be coordinators, and coordinators want to be head coaches. Head coaches then want to become head coaches at bigger, richer places.
And sometimes, head coaches want to be position coaches.
Amid a cycle with, now, 33 head coaching changes between the beginning of the 2023 college football season and the corresponding point in 2024, 10 of the 31 filled jobs came from sitting college head coaches, and -- in a unique twist of the cycle -- five sitting head coaches left for assistant coaching positions elsewhere.
Jeff Hafley left Boston College to become the defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers; Chip Kelly vacated the UCLA job to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State; Kalen DeBoer filled his new Alabama staff with South Alabama head coach Kane Wommack (defensive coordinator) and Buffalo head coach Maurice Linguist (co-defensive coordinator/cornerbacks coach); and Shawn Elliott left Georgia State to become South Carolina's tight ends coach and run game coordinator.
While South Carolina's hiring of Elliott was far from typical this past winter, the timing was the toughest. Elliott left Georgia State on Feb. 15, while GSU spring practices were already underway. The Panthers canceled practiced on the day Elliott left and, really, what other choice did they have?
I wondered, was there any duty of collegial responsibility for head coaches higher up on the food chain to not disrupt life at lower-level programs? If not, any feelings of remorse or regret? After all, position coaches come and go, but ultimately every player and coach in each program is where they are because the head coach wants them there.
At SEC media days in Dallas on Monday, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said his duty to his employer outweighed any larger duties to the game.
"I've always got to do what's best for my program," Beamer told FootballScoop. "I left that decision up to Shawn, what he felt was best for he and his family. Certainly the timing wasn't ideal for Georgia State, at the same time my responsibility is to my players and coaches and fans and my bosses is to always do what's best for South Carolina football. It was a move that Shawn wanted to make for personal reasons and that's what he did."
Elliott made the move to live under the same roof as his family again. While Elliott spent the past seven seasons coaching in Atlanta, his wife, daughter and son remained in Columbia. Elliott was a South Carolina assistant from 2010-16, and spent the 2010 season coaching alongside Beamer.
"This was not a professional move, but a personal move," Elliott said in February. "We've made it work for seven years with my family still living in Columbia, and I even thought about not coaching this year. I had promised my daughter that I would be there for her senior year of high school and when this opportunity came up to go back to South Carolina and coach again, it was something I couldn't pass up."
Every move comes with its own sets of circumstances. Hafley was tired of leading a college football program in the NIL and Portal era and sought refuge in the NFL, where he coached from 2012-18. Kelly was much the same; he took a pay cut to leave the burdens of head coaching at UCLA to call plays for Ohio State.
Elliott took a slight pay cut in moving from Georgia State to South Carolina (though eliminating the 3-hour commute from Atlanta to Columbia certainly won't hurt); he earned $811,000 at Georgia State in 2023, per USA Today, and will make $750,000 at South Carolina. Wommack and Linguist earned raises upon leaving their Group of 5 schools to join Alabama's staff. Wommack made $810,000 at South Alabama and Linguist $685,000 at Buffalo; Wommack will make $1.55 million this year, and Linguist $875,000.
SEC programs have also shown that proximity is the path to power. Of the 16 sitting SEC head coaches, seven hopped to their jobs while serving as assistants at SEC or equivalent programs, while only four moved into the conference from Group of 5 head coaching positions. Elliott, Linguist and Wommack will now check both boxes on their respective resumes.
The college football coaching job market is no different than the food chain in nature. The big take what they need from the small, but the small ultimately survive. Georgia State paused spring practices for more than a month, but resumed in March under new head coach Dell McGee and held a spring game in April. After treading water at 41-44 (27-30 Sun Belt) under Elliott, his departure -- untimely as it was -- offers the program an opportunity to reboot and, ultimately, improve.
After last offseason, Group of 5 programs are now on alert to lose their head coaches to Power 5 head coaching and assistant coaching positions, but the world keeps spinning and, as a Hollywood actor once said, life finds a way.