Florida coach Billy Napier, the expected face of this year's college coaching carousel, offered some simple wisdom earlier this summer when explaining the complex new realities in college sports.
"It has not been easy here the last couple of years now," Napier said at SEC media days. "This is not for the faint of heart. And then the game has evolved and changed every six months."
Since Napier took over at Florida in November of 2021, college football has experienced an unprecedented flurry of change -- free-flowing transfers, NIL payments, looming revenue sharing, the emergence of the superconference era and playoff expansion.
With the season getting underway, a new question looms: Will this impact the annual movement of head coaches in college athletics? Will all this change end up changing the behaviors of schools?
Amid everything, industry experts remain skeptical that pragmaticism will suddenly enter the coaching market. There's a theory that paying the players and setting aside money from revenue sharing will mean that schools will get away from the hundreds of millions they have been forced to budget every year to pay coaches not to coach.
The short answer, recent history and industry sources indicate, is probably not. The enduring beauty of college sports -- the emotion and passion -- hasn't wavered during a global pandemic or when buyout price tags top $76 million. Could this be the year that the buyouts trump emotion?
"It all depends on how much pain the athletic director is under," an industry source said. "I think we always come up with ways to say it's going to be a quiet year. Usually the quickest way for the pain to go away is to fire the coach."
Predicting corrective behavior in a market that has paid more than a half billion in buyout money seems about as wise as investing in the Yellow Pages as a growth industry. As eye-popping as Texas A&M's $76 million buyout for Jimbo Fisher was last year, it was just as eye-popping to see basketball-centric Indiana willing to pay up to $20.8 million for Tom Allen's firing. The stakes are so high, the have-nots are desperate to not get left behind.
There were a record 32 FBS openings in 2023, per statistics kept by the NCAA. There has been an average of just under 24 per year over the past 15 years.
While there's no reason the coaching market will pull a hairpin turn, there are likely variables that will impact the timing and decision-making on the carousel as we enter the 12-team playoff and settle into the transfer portal era.
Hiring a playoff head coach is going to create tricky dynamics. The Florida fan fever dream is for Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin to end up as the head coach at Florida if Napier can't find winning ways. For that to happen, the Gators need to simultaneously root for Ole Miss to lose. Florida's regular season ends Nov. 30. The first college football playoff date is Dec. 20, and Ole Miss is a solid contender to get there. Same goes for whoever the Group of 5 champion is, as its coach would have a hard time taking a job in the traditional timeline.
"If a school really wants a coach and they really want the job, there's going to be some strange things that happen," predicted an industry source.
Another factor that's never been baked into a coaching carousel is the length of the season. The national title game is Jan. 20 this season, accentuating the complications of hiring a blueblood assistant or coordinator in late November. It means they'd be pulling double duty for nearly two months. They'd have to manage the portal, sign high school recruits and have players arrive on campus all while coaching and game-planning for up to four CFP games. While the juggling act has been done before -- Dan Mullen to Mississippi State and Luke Fickell to Cincinnati come to mind -- this could mean added awkwardness for weeks longer.
A factor for power conference assistants and lower-level FBS head jobs is the widening gap between power leagues and the rest of the FBS. LSU's Blake Baker is the highest-paid coordinator in college football for 2024 at $2.5 million. The only Group of 5 head coaches expected in 2024 to make that much are UTSA's Jeff Traylor ($2.5M), Tulane's Jon Sumrall (private), USF's Alex Golesh ($2.5M) and Liberty's Jamey Chadwell (average of more than $4M).
The gap is growing. No Mountain West coach will make more than $2 million in 2024. Jason Candle was the MAC's highest-paid coach last year at more than $1.1 million, and no one in the Sun Belt made more than $1 million.
There are twice as many Power 4 assistant coaches slated to make more than $1.5 million this year (nearly 30) as there are known Group of 5 head coaches slated to make at least $1.5 million (13).
The ability of schools outside the power conferences to recruit and retain players will be under more strain in the power conference era. A league like the AAC gets about $7 million in media revenue this year for its incumbent schools, which is approximately one-eighth of what Big Ten and SEC schools are expected to get.
"The market has changed," said another industry source. "I'm not sure guys are going to be lining up for those [G5] jobs like they have been. The Houstons of the world have moved up, and NIL is at a significantly lower level than assistants at big brands are accustomed to dealing with."
One way that the modern financial realities could impact the carousel is that athletic directors could be firing coaches earlier. Last year, the first firings not for an off-field issue came on Nov. 12 (Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher and Boise State's Andy Avalos). Both UConn's Randy Edsall and Southern Miss' Jay Hopson exited in the first week of the 2021 and 2020 seasons, respectively, and in 2022 there were six power conference jobs open by Halloween.
One industry source noted that athletic directors can feel the financial momentum slipping away earlier than in prior years because they are raising NIL money in the spring and can't get traction. When that momentum is gone, it can expedite a change earlier in the fall.
"If they realize a team isn't going to make the playoff," observed another industry source, "they'll get a head start on the next job."
What will those jobs be in this cycle? One last observation is that power conference teams are generally going to have to adjust to more difficult schedules with the influx of strong teams into the SEC (Oklahoma and Texas) and the Big Ten (USC, Oregon, Washington and UCLA). There's talk that six wins is the new eight wins in the middle of those leagues, but will the emotional fan bases grasp that?