Group of Five head coaches leaving for assistant jobs is sign of college football landscape shift

As strategic and adaptable as Nick Saban was while racking up one national title after another at Alabama, his attempt Tuesday to convince lawmakers how tough coaches have it right now was like trying to run the football against a nine-man front.

“It’s whoever wants to pay the most money, raise the most money, buy the most players is going to have the best opportunity to win,” he said during a round table on Capitol Hill hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). “I don’t think that’s the spirit of college athletics. I don’t think it’s ever been the spirit of what we want college athletics to be, so that’s my major concern; the combination of pay-for-play, free agency and how that impacts development.”

Even if Saban is right about some of the problems that the new world of college sports has brought, it’s hard to stomach a former football coach with a private jet waiting to fly them back to a $17.5 million oceanfront mansion talking about the corrupting influence of money.

A 72-year old man who no longer liked his $11 million-a-year job enough to keep doing it is the wrong messenger delivering the wrong message.

But there is a more compelling story going on in college sports right now about the need for some order and how financial inequities are pulling the game in a direction that a lot of people — not just highly paid coaches and administrators — have some legitimate concerns about.

Saban’s retirement in January was an inevitability — if not this year, then sometime in the very near future. What flashes like a big red warning light happened further down the coaching food chain when four Bowl Subdivision head coaches walked away from their jobs voluntarily to become assistants at bigger schools. They are:

Kane Wommack gave up a promising tenure at South Alabama to become Alabama’s defensive…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/group-five-head-coaches-leaving-195045639.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2024-03-13 19:50:45

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