It's time for the Coaching Changes Board!

Should have been opened 3 weeks ago...

Yes. It’s time.

It should have been open for weeks.

Too soon. It’s great because it’s rare. The scarcity principle and all that. And it’s not really interesting until the new hires start getting made—or at least seriously talked about—and the carousel begins. Nobody’s hiring a new coach in the 2nd week of October. Patience, grasshoppers. Chicken will know when it’s time.

Why open it? So the MSB goes barren of the most fun topics and the Coaching board is really active for about 2-3 wks, then it dies?

What's the holdup?

While we’re waiting…

What do realistic expectations look like in the 12-team playoff, 16+ team super-conference, largely unregulated NIL era?

A few years into NIL is showing that nobody can consistently pile up stacked rosters anymore. Talent is more evenly distributed between the consistently elite three to five programs and the next tier of plausible contenders.

The first 12-team playoff showed that 10–2 from a power conference makes it. We’re not far from seeing 9–3 make it (when, not if). And it’s becoming very difficult to make it through with fewer than two losses; the teams that did it last year had to win at most 1–2 hard games by fortuitously ducking most of the intraconference competition.

I get the sense a lot of programs are still calibrated around “10–2 or better every year” and that just seems… not plausible anymore? Strictly speaking, in year 2, a few programs could still achieve that. But they’re due for a stumble eventually. And if the realistic average for top-level programs is closer to 9–3, what does that look like?

I know as a fan I’m not calibrated yet. I think Brian Kelly was a great hire in late 2021 to get LSU out the mud and right the ship. But he’s done that now and it really doesn’t feel like he can take LSU to the mountaintop. I assume that’s how Penn State fans felt about Franklin—he came in when their program legitimately could have gotten the death penalty and no one would have batted an eye, he saved them from a death spiral and had them in contention every year. Took them to the semis last year. From the outside, even knowing how bad he’s done in top-10 matchups, it still seems totally insane to fire him. But here I am quietly catching myself wishing Kelly would take that opening…

No specific direction to this, just some thoughts about the coaching carousel in a new era of college ball.