Football Coaching Carousel

In the current state of NCAA and NFL football, the job security involved with being a head football coach is minimal if not non-existent. Schools and owners expect success and revenue from the time a coach walks in the door and when things do not go according to plan regardless of one’s length of tenure, they are kindly (many times unkindly) escorted out the door. 

This past season in both the NCAA and NFL, many prominent and successful coaches were giving their walking papers because their superiors felt they had underachieved. Larry Coker, recently fired from the University of Miami after six seasons, had an overall record of 60-15, won a national championship in 2001, and lost in the national championship game in 2002 in a double overtime thriller. 60-15! That is a winning percentage of .800, which is by all standards as close to perfection as a program can wish for. Coker was fired after a six loss season in 2006 and a few on and off the field problems involving his players. Another coach in the same boat as Larry Coker is Dirk Koetter, former head coach at Arizona State. In six seasons at the helm of the Sun Devils, Koetter had a record of 62-41 and led his team to 4 bowl games (2-2 record). Evidently winning football games is not enough because both of these coaches won a great deal of games but were still ushered out. Expectations are so high these days and everyone believes their program is capable of winning championships when most times they are being unrealistic. In the NFL, coaches are being fired after two to three years if they do not lead their teams deep in to the playoffs or win the Super Bowl. Art Shell was fired after one year of coaching the Oakland Raiders. What can an owner expect out of a coach after one year with a roster of players he did not get to choose? The whole scenario that the head brass of colleges and NFL teams believe in for success is ridiculous and needs to be re-evaluated.

There is one reason why I can see where the schools and owners are coming from believing they should get these astronomical results and that is due to the amount of money they are paying their coaches. On January 3, 2007, Nick Saban agreed to become head coach at the University of Alabama by signing a contract guaranteeing him $32 million over 8 years. $4 million a year to coach a football team. He is not finding the cure for cancer, he is not saving lives; he is trying to win football games. This is just one example of how absurd the pay scale is for football coaches. Several coaches in the NCAA and NFL make over a million dollars a year and this figure is not going to do anything but increase as the decision makers for the schools and teams continue to expect perfection and offer no job security.

Obviously people in the sport of football at both the NCAA and NFL levels expect to succeed. But what baffles me is the pace and consistency of winning they expect of their coaches.  Until the level of success expected changes, the salaries demanded by coaches is going to increase and coaches are going to continue to jump ship for more money at other institutions.

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