If your college football team has a head coaching vacancy, chances are you're clinically insane. Need to be committed. Lost your marbles. (Insert your own euphemism or cliché for insanity here). This is not an exaggeration. When it comes to college football, the only thing more popular than the games is the head coaching search. And sometimes it seems like the search itself is much more important than the actual games.
The coaching obsession manifests itself everywhere. You can't escape it. Last Friday I was at the gym and the head trainer came over to me and said, "Clay, I just got Tommy Tuberville going to LSU at 90-1 odds in my offshore account." I'd like to say I'm shocked there are offshore markets for head coaching searches, but I'm not.
I get home in the middle of the day and Arkansas fans are e-mailing from work addresses, asking what I've heard about who they're going to hire to replace Houston Nutt. They might as well e-mail Les Miles and ask him what he thinks about the Kyoto Protocol for all the help I can give. But it doesn't matter what anyone says; when there's a coaching vacancy, fans are insatiable. And if one person doesn't say your preferred coach is a candidate, check out another website and you'll find his name somewhere. There seems to be no limit to the fan interest.
Don't believe me? What are the two greatest topics of sports attention in the Internet age? Recruiting and coaching search rumors. There's not even a close third. Go on the message board of any sports program in the country and I guarantee if the coach has been there for three years or longer, there is a vocal argument for his firing. It used to be married couples dealt with the seven-year itch; now sports fans deal with the seven-game itch. No one is ever satisfied and the great panacea of future hope, a coaching search, is always on the horizon.
This year alone we've had jobs open at Michigan, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Nebraska, UCLA, Ole Miss and other lesser programs. Before everything is finished, more coaching dominoes are likely to fall when some of these big-name places bring in coaches from lower-tier schools. The mad scramble for lucre is the NCAA equivalent of the California Gold Rush of 1849. Everyone wants to trade up. Meet coaching loyalty circa 2007, where ending up with a trophy-wife school makes hoisting a trophy easier. And if it doesn't, well, $4 million a year offers plenty of hundreds to staunch the tears.
The coaching search obsession is most prevalent in college sports because NCAA coaches don't face anti-compete clauses in their contracts like NFL coaches do. If you're under contract to coach one NFL team, you can't leave and coach another one. Not without recompense via draft picks, cash or both. Not so in NCAA football, where no matter how many years a coach is committed to a university under contract, he can leave tomorrow and coach against his former team. Ah, sweet loyalty, you're always a new contract away.
The modern-day coaching search is the ultimate male soap opera and we're all familiar with how the narrative details are going to play themselves out. Yet, even still, we dive in anew each time a new job opens up. We all know the roadmap to change. First, your current coach receives a "vote of confidence" from his superior. Chances are, if this stage is reached he's a goner. Votes of confidence are the herpes of coaching -- they never go away.
Second, your coach faces a "must-win game," only your coach attempts to stave off the pressure by saying something trite like, "They're all must-win games at (insert university here)." Then he loses. Penicillin's not helping what ails him.
Third, he's either fired or more likely he resigns and your school has to pay this guy money not to work. Fourth, the search begins and you become giddy with anticipated championships to come and then, eventually, you become clinically insane.
Fifth, the coaches play coy to their suitors. Up until he signs with your team, every coach swears fealty to the current job situation he has. Generally the coach makes a statement like, "I love it at (insert school here). There's no better place than (insert stadium name) on Saturday afternoon." Which is completely true until the coach hops on a plane and steps off wearing a new baseball cap.
Sixth, the manic hysteria of a fan base begins to reveal itself. The longer a search goes, on the more fanciful the rumored possibilities become. Several of my Kentucky friends swear Bill Parcells was about to become coach at the University of Kentucky prior to Rich Brooks' hiring -- until the Dallas Cowboys swept in and stole Parcells away. If your school is near the top tier, Steve Spurrier has been spotted on campus. If your school aspires to the top tier, Mike Leach of Texas Tech is interested. (There has never been a decent job Mike Leach didn't want to be a candidate for).
Seventh, hand-wringing begins about how bad your program is looking on the national stage. And then mercifully you have a coach.
Once he loses, the cycle repeats itself anew. Ultimately, the college football search in the Internet age is cyber-stalking with a pigskin.
Eleven signs you're clinically insane during the college coaching search:
1. You plot flight paths via flightaware.com to figure out when a university plane is being used to pick up a candidate or visit a particular candidate's hometown.
2. You want to hire Les Miles.
3. When watching a desired coach's team play, you break out the yellow legal pad and try to take notes about how well-disciplined his current team is and where his team's strengths lie. This is despite never having played football in your life. At the end of the day you can't tell any difference, but you go on the message board and write about swagger, honor and decency. Then you bill your client 3.2 hours for research. (Note: This stage may only work for lawyers.)
4. You blow off your wedding anniversary dinner to stay online at the message board because pantysniffingqbstuffer86 has an inside source that news is breaking tonight.
5. There comes a time when you believe a television network is trying to make fun of or ruin your program. You've reached that stage where you're more protective of your own program's honor than you are your wife's. People could accuse your wife of posing for Hustler and you wouldn't be so angry. How dare they? The program, they can't insult the program.
6. You get banned from the fan website where a current coach you desire coaches. This ban will be for "flaming." Then you'll go on to your own team's website and people will congratulate you for getting banned.
7. At some point, you'll feel compelled to post disinformation about a candidate you don't like or don't trust with the program. The black arts are necessary for all ninjas and unpaid coaching search analysts. You'll become an expert in exaggerated résumés and alleged mistresses. Late at night, while sitting in front of your computer screen, you may find yourself silently whispering, "It's rolling baby, it's rolling."
8. You post information comparing the school districts of a candidate's current home with that of your preferred home for him in your new town. Even after doing all of this you remain uncertain which high school your own child is zoned for.
9. You start identifying trends in North Texas State's rushing efforts from when your desired coach was a youthful running backs coach. Then you print off all the stats from his coaching career and hang them on the walls in your office with highlighted markers to illuminate particularly pertinent stats. When your wife enters the room, you insist that she not touch the stats lest her fingerprints cause you to mistake a 5.7 yards per carry average for 5.1.
10. When your co-worker jokingly says, "I think we should have just kept (insert coach's name here)," you refuse to talk to him until he apologizes for insulting the program by drafting a personal apology letter to you. Upon receiving the letter, you eat it so that no one else knows about his transgressions to the program.
11. You hold mock coaching interviews in your home and play both the role of questioner and questionee. When your wife comes downstairs and asks what you're doing you wave your hand in her direction and say, "Quiet, Coach is talking."
