Lang’s World: Giving Thanks for not being a College Football Coach
Lang WhitakerEvery year on Thanksgiving, my Mom prefaces the big meal by making each family member offer a reason (or reasons) that we are thankful on that day. As a kid, this was nothing more than a speed bump on the road to turkey, dressing and gravy.
These days, now that I am several decades older, I understand and can even relish the exercise. Giving thanks is a worthwhile endeavor, at any time, and perhaps being forced to be circumspect isn’t such a bad thing after all.
This year, I am thankful that I am not a college football coach. Because buddy, it is tougher than ever to keep a job on a college sideline.
Florida fans have been sick of Dan Mullen for weeks now, perhaps understandably, despite Mullen taking the Gators to the SEC Championship game not even a year ago. After losing to South Carolina a few weeks back, Mullen fired his longtime defensive coordinator, Todd Grantham, presumably in an attempt to improve the defense. Florida responded by promptly giving up 52 points against Samford. This week they lost in overtime to Missouri, who were 5-5 coming into the game.
- On Sunday, Dan Mullen was fired. Florida reportedly still owes him $12 million.
- Texas coach Steve Sarkisian is finding out what the hot seat feels not even a full year into his tenure in Austin, after the mighty Longhorns lost to friggin’ Kansas, 57-56. (Sark, of course, replaced Tom Herman, who got fired after going 22-13 in four seasons at Texas.)
- Gary Patterson, who actually has a statue of himself on the TCU campus, was fired by TCU.
- Washington fired head coach Jimmy Lake last week, who didn’t even make it through two seasons but was still above water, with an overall record of 7-6.
- Ed Orgeron got bounced at LSU after winning a national title two years ago.
- Texas Tech fired coach Matt Wells, who had a 5-3 record at the time.
- Nick Rolovich is out at Washington State, mostly because he wouldn’t get vaccinated.
- USC fired Clay Helton two games into their season.
- Butch Davis has apparently been out at FIU for weeks, even though we all just recently found out.
- Troy fired Chip Lindsey before he could complete his third season.
- Georgia Southern fired their coach and hired a new one all during this season. (Texas Tech and UConn also hired permanent new coaches before the season was finished.)
- Former Memphis coach Justin Fuente was reportedly sitting on a very hot seat at Virginia Tech, but before I could finish writing this column, he, too, was shown the door.
And it don’t stop. There are plenty of familiar names who may be safe for now, but who are in no way completely out of the woods. Just last week, Oklahoma lost their first game of the season(!), and Twitter was ready to run coach Lincoln Riley out of Norman. Scott Frost is keeping his gig at Nebraska, but the team fired four of his offensive coaches, even though they still have a few games remaining on their schedule. Plenty of people in South Florida seem ready to move on from Manny Diaz, but Miami’s athletic director got fired before anything could happen to Diaz. Penn State’s James Franklin has seemingly been linked to every open job this season, even though the Nittany Lions are just three games over .500 and recently lost a 9-OT game where they somehow scored only 19 points. And rumors are circulating around Herm Edwards at Arizona State, Chip Kelly at UCLA, and even here in Memphis, where if you listen hard enough you can hear people grumbling about Ryan Silverfield.
Heck, after Alabama beat Arkansas on Saturday, even Nick Saban was taking so much heat that he was trending on Twitter. After a win!
We’ve seen coaches get canned before, but looking through this list, it sure seems as though it’s tougher than ever to keep a college football coaching gig.
Why?
Well, losing doesn’t help. Even when a coach gets fired just a few years in, such as with Dan Mullen in Gainesville, there are usually a few red flags flying high before we ever get to that final moment. Expectations are higher than ever, regardless of how realistic they may be. Even considering how short many of these tenures have been, I don’t think any of these coaches can claim they were surprised when the axe fell.
And while losing is clearly a big part of it, it’s not the only thing. Mullen won some big games, but falling to teams like South Carolina and Missouri (in the same season!) are unacceptable for a school that fancies itself as fancy as Florida does. But what was probably just as damaging to Mullen was Florida’s seeming failure at recruiting.
Was Florida actually doing a bad job recruiting? Well, that’s all subjective. Some players who have low ratings from the recruiting services turn out to be great players. Still, one metric had the Gators’ current recruiting class ranked ninth in the SEC, and whether or not that was accurate, it was a number that fans could point to as a failure metric. (And at least one player from that class de-committed when Mullen got canned.) Recruiting is taking more and more of a central position in all this mess, as fans use these random recruiting rankings as some sort of measure of how effective their coach has been when they aren’t coaching. Because other than the actual games, these days recruiting is one of the only quantifiable games.
And that drifts into how coaches need to engage their bases. Ed Orgeron didn’t have a stellar resume when he ascended to the top spot at LSU, but with his funky voice and Cajun pedigree, Orgeron certainly seemed like an LSU guy. Fans loved him, until LSU started losing more than they won, and then, rather quickly, it no longer mattered how humorous Orgeron’s voice sounded.
(You could also probably make a case that the stakes are higher than ever for coaches thanks to the NIL rights players are now being paid. The success of a coach now has a direct monetary connection to the success of his players, and that can and will affect recruiting. I don’t think any of the coaching changes we’ve seen this season are specifically tied to this, but I won’t be surprised when this starts being talked about.)
And let’s be clear, none of these coaches went into this unaware of this scenario. Other than very few situations, when any college coach steps onto campus for the first time, there are high expectations, and a ticking clock. It’s not ideal, but it comes with the territory.
College football is the ultimate venue where recency bias combines with winning and losing to ask, over and over, “What have you done for me lately?”
If it isn’t enough, you might find yourself giving thanks without a job this holiday season.
Hey, we’ll save you a plate.
Published on Nov 23, 2021
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