After the Kiffin saga at Ole Miss, college football broke through another barrier. But it was an unforced error because of the current structure and calendar supposedly governing the sport.
If this were a video game it might be time to hit the reset button on the old Sega, because most of what governs the game is from an era when Sega was the state-of-the-art gaming system.
This year for the first time we saw the head coach of a playoff team take a job and be separated from his team before the playoffs started. It’s all about timing, and despite Lane Kiffin expressing a desire to coach the team through the playoffs, Ole Miss rejected that idea.
Given the state of college football, this was inevitable. Kiffin just happened to be the first, and unless things change, he won’t be the last. And with the broken college football model, expect more lines to be crossed.
The current system suffers from a lack of leadership, or centralized control of college football. Everyone complains and yet no one wants that hard conversation of what we should do about it.
Privately many ADs, coaches and administrators will admit they’d like clarification of employee status or collective bargaining and a set of national rules establishing a sane calendar and timetable for recruiting, transfers, the playoff and more. But few if any of them want to step up and state that publicly.
The constant drumbeat is that we need Congress to do something. Eventually that may be the case. But until there are solutions created and articulated by people who are in this, who have knowledge and who present a plan to Congress, how can we expect them to come up with some piecemeal legislation?
I sure hope that there are more important challenges being tackled by our federal government than a college sports system being run by people who won’t regulate ourselves, our budgets or our rules. We look like impetuous children who’ve gotten ourselves into a big mess running to a parent and asking them to fix things.
It is far beyond time for all the stakeholders to get in a room and get something done. Coaches, ADs, presidents, trustees/regents and yes, the players need to sit down and forge a path forward. Everything should and must be on the table. Everything.
Currently, the ever-evolving rules are based on the latest ruling by a judge in the latest case. The whole industry, and yes, it is an industry now, gets jolted into changes from one ruling to the next. The NCAA is usually the defendant in these cases. And it is clear that the legal defense the NCAA is running is not stopping anyone.
Consequently, nothing makes sense in this patchwork system. The early signing period was a good idea before we went to a 12-team playoff. The idea that you fire your coach in October to hire away someone else’s coach was effective before the 12-team playoff. Player transfers and coaching changes are in direct conflict with the playoff schedule.
Let’s make an analogy to the trading deadline in Major League Baseball. Before they expanded the playoffs there were far fewer teams reasonably in the postseason hunt as the trade deadline neared. That meant that there were a lot of teams willing to trade top veteran players for prospects because they were realistically out of playoff contention.
In college football a high-profile team firing their coach is looking for a high-profile hire, most likely a head coach from a team enjoying a successful season. And for the top schools, they would be looking at coaches from teams in playoff contention.
Most head coaches from teams in contention are not looking to move before the playoffs. In the four-team playoff era there would be maybe eight teams in the hunt this time of year.
Looking at the rankings now in the 12-team era, teams like Vanderbilt, JMU, North Texas, Virginia, BYU, Miami, Tulane and Alabama are all still in the hunt. Even Texas at 9-3 is on the fringe. If you back up two weeks ago you could add teams like Houston, USC, Michigan, Utah, Georgia Tech, Navy, USF and Arizona State into that mix.
For schools shopping for a coach two weeks ago, there was far more uncertainty about who was potentially in or out of the playoff field. As a result, many of the coaches of the teams in contention stay put at their school. Many use the rumors to get better deals to stay where they are at. Either way, it narrows the field of high-profile candidates.
That coaching carousel is part of the overarching range of issues that need to be addressed in what can only be looked at as a massive overhaul of college football.
Until now the changes have been piecemeal. We’ve been driving the old reliable pick-up truck that was the amateur model for a long time now. As things have changed we’ve tried to add things here and there to update that old truck and make it new while still running on the old chassis.
The recruiting calendar is an adaptation from a bygone era. The transfer portal is something that has been tinkered on without broad vision. NIL and revenue sharing have been haphazardly thrown into the equation. The 12-team playoff schedule was thrown together to accommodate conference championship games and bowl games, and to try and work around conflicts with the NFL playoff schedule.
It has all created a mishmash of badly matched parts that don’t work well together.
The chassis of that old truck is now driving on a speedway that requires the handling and acceleration of a Ferrari to keep up with the rapid pace of change. We’ve got to take this season to go to the design studio and get ourselves a model fit for the demands of today.
As we redesign college football, nothing should be off limits. A constitutional convention for college football needs to happen, far sooner than later. An equitable, fair and stable model needs to emerge. And once it emerges then we should present it to be backed by federal legislation to provide protection from ongoing litigation.
Until that college football constitutional convention creates an overhaul, we can expect more and more stories like we’re seeing now.
