Will CFB soon stand for Not For Long?

On January 21, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman—arguably college football’s most respected reporter—published a stirring story about Ohio State coach Ryan Day’s triumph and how his family weathered some of its darkest moments in the process.

The story sheds some light on just how difficult the 2024 season was for Day and his family. After Ohio State lost to archrival Michigan in late November, Day’s son endured ridicule at school. His wife’s phone number got leaked. The Day family had to go so far as to hire around-the-clock security for their home.

While reading the story, one particular passage stood out.

One of the subjects for the story was Day’s father-in-law, Stan Spirou, a legendary former basketball coach at Division II Southern New Hampshire University. When speaking with Feldman about his son-in-law’s redemption arc, he compared it to Sisyphus of Greek methodology, saying: “You keep pushing that rock, and pushing that rock, and tonight, he put it over the mountains.”

That quote got me thinking…

In a sport that’s morphed into a 24/7 365-day beast clouded by NIL money, player agents, the transfer portal, increased exposure and unrealistic expectations, for how long should we expect elite college football coaches to keep pushing that rock up the mountain?

Let’s face it, the current college football schedule is not for the faint of heart.

And I don’t say that from a “woe as me” perspective for coaches. College football was already a ton of work a decade ago. Now? It’s hard to wrap your mind around how the coaches at the top of the sport do it.

Power 5 head coaches make an exorbitant amount of money. Most people would do just about anything to reach a comparable level of wealth. Even so, all the money in the world won’t fix burnout. And while every head coach has a hefty support staff, no amount of staffers can fix the ‘always on’ nature of the modern college football game.

From recruiting and juggling boosters to roster management and, well, you know actually running practices and coaching the games…it’s an incredible amount of work.

An oversimplified look at the current calendar:

As I said, Power 5 coaches get paid handsomely, so it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to feel too bad for them.

But it’s certainly understandable why we see coaches begging for more legislation, especially around the transfer portal windows. What a grueling calendar!

In the December 2024 portal window, over 3,000 Division I college football players entered the transfer portal. Almost 2,000 of the entrees came from the FBS ranks, with the remaining 1,135 coming from the FCS.

In the 2023–2024 school year, 2,707 FBS scholarship football players entered the transfer portal. This is roughly 25% of all FBS scholarship players.

That’s a ton of player movement. Couple that with not one, but two portal windows (one in December, the other in April), it makes for a particularly time-consuming and soul-draining experience, I’d imagine.

While I’m an advocate of player movement (to a degree) the current set-up makes it nearly impossible for coaches to keep up. Sure, P5 general managers and support staff do a ton of portal work, but it would be remiss to think the head coach isn’t involved at almost every step of the way.

From the sheer number of players entering the portal to the mere threat of an important player leaving via the portal…it’s no wonder coaches are constantly on edge. In the old days, you recruited high school kids and occasionally had to worry about one of your own bolting to another program.

Now? I’d imagine coaches spend as much time (if not more) recruiting their own players to stay than they do recruiting other kids to join. It’s just a truly wild thing to think about.

The mere threat of losing players has pushed some coaches to the brink. Just ask Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule, who last week made national headlines when he suggested that the Huskers wouldn’t host a traditional spring game in 2024 due to the threat of having his roster poached. Incredible!

Speaking of two transfer windows…I hate to break it to you if you weren’t aware of this, but I fully believe that coaching staffs are negotiating NIL/compensation with their own players twice over in the same calendar year. Why? Because if a program doesn’t pay up, players now have two opportunities to leave and more than a few programs that might be willing to pay them what they want.

From the constant haggling over compensation to dealing with agents, it’s no wonder why college coaches are on their hands and knees begging for tighter regulations around the transfer portal.

Kirk Ferentz.

Mike Gundy.

Kyle Whittingham.

Dabo Swinney.

This distinguished group of Power 5 head coaches have all been at their respective schools for at least 15 years and now more than ever that trend feels like a thing of the past.

Start naming off the current Rolodex of “elite” college football coaches. You won’t get far without names like Dan Lanning, Kirby Smart, Marcus Freeman, Kalen DeBoer and others.

And while traditional wisdom suggests that this group could follow in the footsteps of legends like Bowden, Spurrier and Saban, is it crazy to think we might need to start counting coaching tenures like dog years?

There will always be a next-man-up mentality in college coaching. If a head coach wants to step down, there’ll be many others ready to step up. Sometimes it’s for the love of the game. Sometimes it’s about money or opportunity. Perhaps it’s all of the above.

For as long as I can remember, the expectation was that college football coaches, by and large, would keep pushing that rock up the mountain. Now? I’m not so sure.

In the summer of 2022, former Boise State and Washington head coach Chris Peterson opened up on why he decided to retire and leave the sport after nearly reaching the apex.

"This job is so 24/7, 365 and it is hard to build in recovery skills and I just didn't have that. I didn't have someone to talk to, I didn't have recovery skills. So it was a long eight years as a head coach of taking calls every day on vacation of something going on in the program. There is no time down."

Peterson decided he could no longer push the rock up the mountain. I wonder how far away we are from others deciding the same.