With so few elite jobs open, decent schools could land the kinds of coaches they normally couldn’t get.
The coaching carousel is spinning more slowly than normal this year, as SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey recently explained. In the Power 5, only LSU, Purdue, and Baylor are open for next year.
Texas might come open, as could Oregon. But coaches who began the year on the warm seat at good jobs like Penn State, Auburn, USC, West Virginia, and Tennessee now seem to be safe.
Schools like Notre Dame and UCLA, who are having awful years, have coaches who’ve won a lot recently and don’t seem to be going anywhere.
The coaching carousel dominoes always begin from the top down. If the top moves as little as projected, so too will the middle and bottom.
And with a lot of talented, young coaches available, like Houston’s Tom Herman, USF’s Willie Taggart, and Western Michigan’s P.J. Fleck, there is a glut of coaches and a dearth of jobs.
Some schools should leverage the buyer’s market.
If you’re an AD who has a coach likely to enter 2017 on the hot seat, consider making the move this season.
Schools willing to pull the trigger now have all the leverage. Coaching stars burn hot, but fast. Great success at a mid-major job can be fleeting. Many coaches in this cycle cannot afford to be picky as they try to cash in their stock when it is hottest.
For a coach having success at a lesser school on the backs of a senior-laden roster, it’s time to go.
And for that reason, an average job could be filled in 2016 by a much stronger coach than might be available come 2017, when the market could again go crazy.
Take the ACC, for example.
Virginia Tech, Miami, Syracuse, and Virginia made inspired hires in 2015. Unless the schools who did not make those are very confident in who they have running the show, they should consider making changes now, especially if they are likely to drop the pink slip in 2017 anyway.
Some jobs in the ACC are not top-25 jobs, but are certainly top-45 jobs. And in this market, it’s possible that those teams could land coaches like those typically signed only by top-25 programs. It’s taking advantage of the market to make an upgrade.
If you’re Georgia Tech, and you’re watching Kirby Smart shift Georgia’s recruiting machine into overdrive with the No. 3 class nationally, are you confident Paul Johnson is still the right coach? Or could you swing for the fences with a Chad Morris type?
Imagine being Boston College and trying to fill a position in the likely seller’s market of 2017, having failed to make a move in 2016. Could the Eagles get someone like Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead or Tennessee defensive coordinator Bob Shoop this year more easily than they could next?
In the SEC, there are even tougher questions.
Butch Jones has improved Tennessee from five wins, to seven, to nine, and he could crest that number this year. But he’s also had embarrassing losses, and, in one of the worst years the SEC East has ever had, is far from a lock to win the division. As excitement wanes, recruiting does as well, with just 23 percent of current commitments rated four- or five-stars, compared to a 44 percent ratio in the previous four classes.
If Tennessee decides Jones has peaked, it could make the shrewd move of filling a top-25 job with a coach who normally might hold out for a top-15 position.
Texas A&M was having a nice year before QB Trevor Knight went down with injury. But if the Aggies are worried about Texas potentially getting Tom Herman, might the school try to make a surprise play for Herman, who has as much influence recruiting the crucial Houston market as anyone? Houston is A&M’s primary feeder city, located 100 miles outside of College Station.
This might seem extreme after such a hot start, but Sumlin is going to have a losing SEC record over his last four seasons if he does not upset LSU on Thanksgiving weekend.
Plenty of other schools have things to consider.
Arizona, Arizona State, Minnesota, NC State, and Texas Tech are a few others who should think about their options.
While schools win in this buyer’s market, coaches lose.
Even though mid-majors are paying better money now than ever before, with hot names like Herman making $2.8M, and Taggart $1.7M, the gap between the Group of 5 and good Power 5 jobs is still big.
It’s an even worse market for hot coordinators.
Take Florida’s Geoff Collins. The Gators have the No. 4 defense nationally according to S&P+. Collins is a rising star, but Florida is likely to lose the vast majority of its elite defenders to graduation or early NFL entry. It is hard to see a coordinator in this spot raising his stock any more without becoming a head coach. And with the lack of open jobs, coaches who have to move on out of fear of seeing their stock fall are going to have to settle.
There’s a risk, though.
Of course, if several great jobs do happen to open up after some average schools have made the decision to cut bait, those lesser programs could lose serious leverage. That’s an unlikely scenario, but one that cannot be ignored.