I don’t think I need to tell you all that it’s been a deeply chaotic week in the college football coaching cycle. Lincoln Riley did something that basically no coach has ever done, and then Brian Kelly did the exact same thing a day later, leaving two of the biggest jobs in the sport open after the initial wave of openings at Florida, LSU, TCU, Texas Tech, USC, Washington and Virginia Tech (among others).
This is one of the most significant cycles in years, with more movement on the way as the Sooners and Fighting Irish eye a number of sitting head coaches for their own vacancies.
Despite that, though, there seems to be something of a trend developing. Even with all of these openings, quite a few of the top coaches at the Group of Five level are… staying put?
Only three of the P5 jobs that have opened up tabbed G5 coaches to fill their vacancies – Sonny Dykes (SMU) at TCU, Kalen DeBoer (Fresno State) at Washington and Billy Napier (Louisiana) at Florida. Notre Dame and Oklahoma seem unlikely to reach down into the ranks, though the former reportedly has plenty of interest in Luke Fickell. Duke is reportedly eyeing Jeff Monken at Army, but we’ll see if that actually develops.
More P5 jobs could open depending on what those two powers (and potentially Miami) do, but right now, we’re going to say that three G5 coaches have departed, leaving the vast majority of these ranks untouched, including quite a few coaches that many have expected to make the jump for much of the season.
Fickell, Jamey Chadwell, Jay Norvell, Kalani Sitake, Brent Brennan, Jeff Traylor, Charles Huff, Dana Holgorsen, Hugh Freeze, Troy Calhoun, Sean Lewis, Thomas Hammock, Shawn Clark, and countless others look right now as though they’ll be sticking around next season, rather than moving up to the P5 ranks.
I’m not here to break down in detail where this shift is coming from. I think that the Early Signing Period plays a role, with a number of these coaches unwilling to abandon their jobs before the season ends, leaving suitors without a coach in play for that recruiting holiday – or unable to flesh out relationships in time to salvage the group. A splashier P5 assistant (or sitting P5 head coach) is more likely to have relationships with those recruits, I suppose. A hire from within obviously does.
It seems as though recent struggles for G5 to P5 coaches have painted this batch in a negative light too, though I’m not sure how much we can credit that with this.
Regardless: This kicks ass. It’s very good.
The worst-case scenario here is that Fickell does leave for Notre Dame, Monken jumps to Duke and maybe one more G5 coach makes the leap to a job we don’t know about yet, but I think just two of those things happening is fairly unlikely, and three would be full-on surprising.
Even if Fickell – one of the brightest of the bunch – bolts for Notre Dame, just about every person with a Twitter account has reported that Marcus Freeman would take over the job with the Bearcats; plus, Fickell has already stated that he won’t listen to any pitch before the playoff anyway.
That’s still, largely, a win for these programs and this level of the sport. G5 football is not a monolith, but one of its own potentially locking up a playoff spot in the same year that we could see Fickell, Traylor, Sitake and several others turn down serious pushes from power programs would be a huge coup for the perception of these schools on the whole – especially as realignment gets ready to set in and the playoff eyes expansion.
I don’t know how closely tied these decisions to stay are to moves to new leagues and more spots in the postseason, but I think there’s certainly a strong case to be made that it’s playing a big role, both in the pure decision making and in the money these schools can dole out to inspire some of that decision making.
That’s good for the sport. This trend is good for the sport. It’s been a tremendous season for G5 football at large, we have five really strong conference title games to look ahead to this weekend and potentially a playoff representative, and the vast majority of the coaching pool is staying put.
New hires at Akron, SMU and UMass have inspired optimism (especially Akron, somehow) and I have high hopes for Troy and Louisiana. With more eyes on these leagues in the coming years as they finally get the chance to compete on the national stage (hopefully), there are going to be more quality coaches and programs than we’ve seen at this level in a really, really long time.