After going 34-14 over a little under four seasons at LSU, coach Brian Kelly was fired by the school on Sunday after a 49-25 home loss to No. 3 Texas A&M.
Kelly never won less than nine games in a full season at LSU, and even though the Tigers were 5-3 this year, all three of those losses were to teams ranked No. 17 or higher.
At LSU, however, the expectations are SEC titles and national championships — Kelly is the first Tiger coach since Gerry DiNardo (1995-99) to not win a national championship at the school — and the powers that be felt like he could no longer lead the Tigers to those goals.
In the current NIL and revenue sharing era, big-time boosters are less patient than ever after collectively contributing millions to fund teams’ rosters.
Penn State’s James Franklin, Florida’s Billy Napier, Arkansas’s Sam Pittman, Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry, UCLA’s DeShaun Foster and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy were all fired before the calendar turned to November. Florida State’s Mike Norvell still has a job for now, but that position could open up after this season, too.
The collection of open jobs right now might be the most attractive in modern college football history, and this offseason will certainly feature a coaching carousel for the ages.
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham is already an anomaly — with Gundy gone, he stands alone as the second-longest-tenured coach in the nation with 21 years at Utah — and that’s doubly true in the current college football landscape.
With how much money is being poured into a football roster each year — tens of millions of dollars — boosters and athletic directors are willing to cut bait faster than ever if a coach is underperforming, or in a case like Franklin’s, not winning national championships.
“When big boosters are pumping millions of dollars into rosters, they want results,” Whittingham said at his weekly press briefing. “Pressure’s on more so now than ever as far as needing immediate results.”
“The boosters, if you’ve got a guy that’s giving you 40, 50 million bucks, he’s going to have some say in what goes on. If he’s not happy with what’s going on and he wants a change, most likely there’s going to be a change.”
Boosters and athletic directors aren’t deterred by hefty buyouts, either.
Kelly’s buyout is approximately $54 million, according to USA Today, though LSU is trying to negotiate a lower sum with Kelly. Franklin’s buyout is more than $49 million, according to ESPN.
In addition to the buyouts, schools will pay tens of millions for the next coach and his staff, then tens of millions for the roster each year via revenue sharing.
College football is big business, and now more than ever, you better produce results — or you’re out.
“I think Coach (Nick) Saban had something along that same line about a week ago … that (NIL and revenue sharing) was really accelerating a coach’s shelf life,” Whittingham said.
“And so I don’t see that changing unless there’s a dramatic change in the structure of college football and how the players are compensated and where it heads. I think as long as it’s in the current climate, you’re going to continue to see massive turnover like that, especially at the upper-echelon schools.”
