The scene was Labor Day Weekend, 2020, and college football had, tenuously, began to roll out its season while college athletics, along with everyone around the world, navigated the ongoing uncertainty that surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a Thursday night affair to ushered in that season, Southern Miss’s program launched with a dispirited 32-21 loss to an upstart South Alabama team in a nationally televised game on the CBS Sports Network.
It was the only game in its time slot, and the Golden Eagles had been widely favored.
By Monday morning, Southern Miss and then-coach Jay Hopson had parted ways; officially, a resignation. Semantics.
Still, it was widely viewed that with most stadiums completely empty and no stadiums filled to capacity due to governmental health restrictions regarding the coronavirus, the college football coaching carousel was to be a light one.
Until Hopson’s move became the first of 20 that cycle at the Football Bowl Subdivision.
When the 2021 season rolled out, numerous coaches from coast to coast told FootballScoop that it would be a year of massive upheaval; that the few programs which had shown some modicum of restraint the prior year would have no such qualms for that fall.
There had been more seismic change in the sport, Oklahoma and Texas having announced their intentions to relinquish their Big 12 residency for entrance into the landscape’s most prestigious, and gridiron-successful club, the SEC.
Moreover, broadcast rights contracts and TV revenues were furthering creating a caste system.
Some coaches were always going to be fired for not beating the preferred rival or simply not winning enough games.
Still, others became victims of college football’s frenzied economy, even if most administrators and coaches sought to downplay those components.
On Sept. 6, 2021, with the program in total freefall, Randy Edsall stepped down immediately at UConn after just days earlier he had indicated he would remain until season’s end. The Huskies wanted to fully accelerate their search.
Thus, a week later, and already on borrowed time in the eyes of many in the USC universe, Clay Helton was fired on the heels of a blowout-loss to rival Stanford, a program that eventually would lose the last seven of its games in 2021.
Thirteen days later, Chad Lunsford was out at Georgia Southern.
“I think there could be 30 changes this year,” a prominent SEC assistant coach had professed last fall.
Close.
Those first three coach-program separations set the stage for what would become 29 changes at the FBS level; moves ranged from the hapless UConn program to LSU’s dismissal of Ed Orgeron, along with his $17.1 million buyout, just two years removed from the College Football Playoff championship.
Today, no major college team is deeper into its season than five games. Already, there are five Power 5 conference “Help Wanted” signs on the head coach’s office doors.
The sport’s most-tenured P5 skipper was asked this week about the increasingly normalized pink-slip process that’s occurred before autumn’s leaves change their hues.
“Disappointed, but not surprised,” said Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, off to a bit of bumpy 3-2 start in Ferentz’s 24th year at the helm. “I think it's the fifth one this season, right? The toll has mounted. Ball kind of got rolling last year.
“The one big one I remember was USC the second week of the year, and my question would be if it's that bad, why didn't you do it a year ago or a half year ago. But that's the world we're living in right now. I'm not surprised, but disappointed.”
The first four dominoes to fall this season at college football’s top level came at scandal-plagued Arizona State, downtrodden Colorado, listless Georgia Tech and perpetual find-a-way-to-lose Nebraska.
All four coaches had nearly been let go the previous fall, but schools, for various reasons and many of them centered on the millions of dollars still owed those respective leaders, eschewed the move to rip off the band-aids as part of ‘21’s frenetic cycle.
"It's tough, man; it's tough because you feel for guys that are in your fellow occupation,” said first-year Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, whose Irish will seek their third-straight win Saturday when they face BYU in Las Vegas. “I'm sure it's not a lack of effort, but we are in a results-driven business.
"That's a part of the profession we chose. We chose the profession. But you never want to see that with people with families and because it not only affects the head coach, but it affects all those assistants that are with him. It's tough. I've been on that side. I've been a part of a staff that's been fired. It's never easy. But you continue to work hard. Good things happen to those people that work hard and do the right things."
Freeman was part of the Purdue staff fired in 2016, and he had vowed then with offensive assistant coach Gerad Parker that they, too, would be reunited one day. They talked openly of becoming head coaches, and when Freeman ascended to replace Brian Kelly last December, Parker was hired a month late as Notre Dame’s tight ends coach.
Most jarring was the dismissal last Sunday of Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst, who was seven-and-a-half-years into his tenure atop his alma mater. The Madison, Wis., native had guided the Badgers to multiple Big Ten Championship game appearances and Cotton, Orange and Rose bowl appearances, among others.
Chryst wasn’t naïve to his Badgers’ need to elevate their performance, particularly on the offensive side of the football.
But multiple sources this week told FootballScoop that Chryst’s firing had blindsided many even in the upper reaches of Wisconsin’s administration. Those same sources indicated an extremely heated conversation between Chryst and Wisconsin athletics director Chris McIntosh rested at the foundation of the stunning move. Sources tell FootballScoop neither Chryst nor McIntosh headed to that meeting expecting the outcome that transpired.
The quintet of fired coaches are set to collect $55 million in buyout-money – with Chryst having generously negotiated down to roughly 53 cents on the dollar for what Wisconsin had been expected to owe him in return for an accelerated payment.
“It's unfortunate. It's become much more the nature of the beast for our profession with the salaries and television contracts and the amount of money people make,” Georgia’s Kirby Smart, his team the defending CFP champions and Smart the recent recipient of a record new 10-year-deal worth more than $100 million. “The expectations go up and administration makes decisions much quicker, and that's their right to do it.
“It's not necessarily the best thing for our profession, but it comes with the territory. I don't think any of those coaches would tell you that they didn't understand that getting into it, but they would also tell you they didn't get into it for the amount of money they make either.”
Despite his generational wealth now secured, Smart emphasized what propelled him into coaching was the opportunity to help mold and shape young men, much as had been done for him.
“For a lot of us, it's not about the money,” said Smart, who will make more than $10 million this season before any bonuses earned. “It's about the opportunity to be around young people, coach them, pull them in the right direction.
“We all know what's at stake with these administrations and with the nature of beast in college football right now.”
In addition to the five P5 jobs already opened, UAB is playing this season with an interim coach, Football Championship Subdivision team Wofford just parted ways with veteran leader Josh Conklin Thursday and … moves are not remotely finished.
Multiple sources this week told FootballScoop additional changes at the P5 and Group of Five levels are imminent.
Auburn’s Bryan Harsin has faced such chatter almost from his introductory press conference on the plains, and the A.D. who hired Harsin – Allen Greene – already has negotiated his separation from what one coach told FootballScoop was “the most dysfunctional village on the plains.”
“I think every program is different. I really do,” Harsin said this week when asked about the onset of early-season dismissals. “I don’t know if it has to do with anything bigger than that. I couldn’t tell you each and every program’s situation and where they are and those types of things. That’s just part of it. I don’t know if there is a better answer than that.
“I know those coaches and have seen good coaches out there. Every program has different things they’re working through and what they want. So I think that goes back to where they are more than anything and where those coaches are in that program.”
Harsin’s Auburn squad visits Smart’s 2nd-ranked Georgia Bulldogs Saturday in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry, and Louisville’s embattled coach Scott Satterfield travels to face Virginia under first-year coach Tony Elliott.
Charlotte has an open date this weekend but has slumped to a 1-5 start that included a blowout-home loss to FCS William & Mary to open the season.
Far more seats are getting warmer, not cooler.
Aside from the burgeoning TV money, schools also are looking for quick turnarounds via the NCAA Transfer Portal and to burnish their reputations as prime spots for student-athletes to earn Name, Image & Likeness opportunities.
“I don't know all those details, but that's the world we're living in right now,” Ferentz said of TV deals. “It's a results-driven business, and it always has been. That's not new.
“But there's a lot of other things going on in college football, and I've coached in both arenas. When you coach in the NFL, there is no responsibility, accountability towards the players' graduation, towards their personal lives. Somebody else deals with all that, and we didn't deal with graduation.”
Like Smart, Ferentz pointed to the coaches’ impacts on players away from the field. His 2021 Hawkeyes were among the sport’s top academic achievers when they advanced to a bowl game with an 83-percent graduation rate.
“I think that's one of the rewarding parts about college is seeing people that are really changing -- kind of like high school coaching, you're watching kids or young people in real developmental years of their lives,” Ferentz said. “The 2002 team was just here. Twenty years later now you see these guys as young adults. …
"It's a little different train coaching in college, I guess. I've always looked at it differently. …
“Those are the fun parts about college coaching. You kind of miss that in the NFL. It's a little different train coaching in college, I guess. I've always looked at it differently.
“Again, times are changing. We all know that. NIL, transfer portal.”
Coaches no longer are getting five years to rebuild, particularly not with de facto overnight success stories such as Lane Kiffin’s record-shattered rejuvenation of Ole Miss football.
Fourth years hardly are guarantees. And the days when a College Football Hall of Famer such as Johnny Majors at his alma mater Tennessee could go nine years before winning his first SEC title?
Forget about it.
Can the sport (and college athletics in general, from the NCAA down to the conferences and individual institutions) formalize guidelines for NIL?
Are the most recent changes to the Transfer Portal windows going to be effective enough in helping both schools and individuals better comprehend roster management?
Could patience ever again been an applicable tenet for program-building in college football?
“I don't think it can right now, but again, I think my biggest concern about college football is just our lack of structure right now,” Ferentz said. “There's really no framework, a firm framework that we're operating from, whereas in the NFL it's very clearly defined. Every part about it is very clearly defined.
“That's one of the things I've always enjoyed about working here. You walk in every morning knowing what the expectations are, and they've been very consistent.
“But we live in a changing world. We all know that, and you've got to change with the times.”
Otherwise, as FBS athletics programs have shown 54 times since September 2020, coaches can count on getting changed out of a job.