College football coaching isn’t nearing an apocalypse. It’s changing, like every other job

Chip Kelly’s departure from UCLA last Friday to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State marked the fourth time since the end of the season that a head coach willingly left a highly-paid position to do something other than lead a college football program.

It has led to a chorus of hand-wringing about the state of the sport, speculation about more coaches fleeing to the NFL or getting out altogether and the usual complaints about greedy players trying to leverage their ability to transfer freely for more money in name, image and likeness deals.

“The two weeks after we beat Rutgers was the two toughest weeks I’ve ever had as a college coach because of this portal, NIL, you know, your third-team tailback coming in saying I need $100,000 or I’m going into the portal,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said last week during a radio interview with 106.7 FM in Washington, D.C.

“You’re like, ‘Where is this magic $100,000 number coming from?’ I sat in my office and every meeting I had was basically … ‘I want this, I want that.’ And the greatest team sport has now become kind of individualized, and I went home and was like, I don’t know how much I can do this.”

While noting later in the interview that he was “not complaining” and is in favor of players being paid with “guardrails,” Locksley’s comments feed into a refrain that has become more and more familiar around the college landscape over the last couple of years: The job just isn’t what it used to be.

Former UCLA head coach Chip Kelly left the Bruins to become offensive coordinator for Ohio State.

That’s true. Just like the journalist, the computer programmer, the airline pilot or the dentist, few people leave an industry doing the same job the same way they did at the beginning of their careers. Most of us can relate to the idea that change in the…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football-coaching-isnt-nearing-194203979.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2024-02-13 19:42:03

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