I think with NIL and the transfer portal, being a college coach is shaping up to be an utterly miserable experience. While NFL HCs have plenty to do on the offseason, the GM is the leader of the personnel department. And while scouting the top 250 college prospects and the rest of the NFL for free agents and trades is a tall order, I think it pales in comparison to scouting every high school and NCAA program for recruits. The P5 college program HC is the CEO, GM and Head Coach. That’s a ton of unchecked power, but it’s a pretty brutal job, and while answering to a billionaire owner probably sucks, answering to 500 multi-millionaire boosters sounds way worse.
If Harbaugh leaves, I’m betting it’s primarily because he sees the writing on the wall with NIL and the transfer portal and doesn’t like what he sees. I also think this had a lot to do with Saban walking away.
His stay/go decision is going to be based on the misconduct investigations. The latest reported sticking point in his negotiations with UM is a clause stating he can’t be terminated as a result of the investigations. If he gets that, he’ll stay. If not, he’s gone.
He’s already been dealing with NIL and transfers, and UM is the type of school that benefits from those. He’s not going to leave because of that.
Harbaugh has also shown as long as he’s paid decently, he’s willing to leave money on the table if he likes the job situation. Not that money isn’t important, but he’s not the type to be driven by getting a few bucks more.
If UM shows through its actions it is committed to him, he stays. Otherwise, he leaves.
Everyone wins and everyone loses. The big blue-chip programs used to be able to build depth by recruiting and redshirting 5-star players. They’d get them into the program and have them available for depth and injury. Then as kids left for the pros people moved up. Now, even the best programs, can’t keep kids on the bench. They’ll go elsewhere so they can play right away. They may transfer to a top tier program later but even the best programs need to have a plan to backfill every year. In the past they already had their future stars in the locker room and weight room, that’s changed. The flow in the transfer portal isn’t one-way into the blue-chips. And NIL is difficult. Even if these programs were paying players under the table before, they usually only had to do so during the initial recruiting cycle. Now the players can constantly renegotiate and be poached.
While the two headed monster of NIL and transfer portal aren’t new this year, the kids and teams (and probably agents) are really starting to use them now. They’ve learned the ins and outs and are now following examples of how to optimize and how to be cutthroat. Every year it will get tougher and more expensive. Harbaugh (and others) have had a few years to watch it play out, at first I’m sure they figured it was win-win for them, but now I think they are learning that they have a lot more shit to deal with and it’ll get worse.
Davis has made Pierce just the third interim head coach in the past 10 seasons to become that team’s full-time coach the following year (Mike Mularkey, Tennessee Titans; Doug Marrone, Jacksonville Jaguars).
Pretty rare that an interim coach gets retained, even when they do well, they are usually gone. It’ll be interesting to see what the comp numbers look like. In the world of NFL owners, Davis has perhaps the least resources and he’s already paying 3 head coaches. Him laying out for a big name like Harbaugh was always probably a long shot. Pierce will almost certainly be one of the lowest paid coaches which probably helped his case as much or more than the support in the locker room.
Yeah, in the in-conference divisional rotation, the AFC North and West are paired next season.
If the “Harbaugh Bowl” is not scheduled that way from the beginning, it’s almost sure to get flexed into a preferred slot, short of a Game 1 Justin Herbert season ending injury.
They tend to put more division matchups early and late in the season so I would think sometime mid-season would be better ratings-wise. There’s already going to be a lot of the typical early season excitement, and it would be the kind of game they’d want to prop up an otherwise lackluster week
Panthers set to hire Dave Canales, Bucs OC for their new HC. Seems to have done something to revive Baker Mayfield’s game. It’s as good as they’re going to get I suppose.
It’s kinda weird that no one really wants Belichick. Only one tied to him right now are the Falcons and it seems like things are slowing down on that front.