Getty Image
ESPN broadcaster and football analyst Kirk Herbstreit took to X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday night to explain why he believes the exodus of college football coaches to the NFL is just beginning, claiming the sport is “spiraling out of control.”
With Nick Saban retiring, Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan to go coach the Los Angeles Chargers and Jeff Hafley giving up the head coaching job at Boston College to become the Green Bay Packers’ new defensive coordinator, is this becoming a trend?
Pete Thamel, a college football senior writer for ESPN, reported that Hafley, while doing very well at Boston College, “wants to go coach football again in a league that is all about football.”
Thamel’s source told him that Haley feels like “college coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore.”
He’s not wrong.
If these football coaches wanted to coach professional athletes they wouldn’t be coaching in college. At least in the NFL the head coach isn’t responsible for contracts and making free agent moves, which is basically what they are doing now in college, in addition to the actual coaching.
Pete Fiutak, the publisher of College Football News, replied to Thamel, “The NFL is the NFL.”
Kirk Herbstreit disagreed and explained what he is seeing.
“No. CFB in its current state will be seeing more and more coaches heading to the NFL,” Kerbstreit wrote on X.
“Without boundaries and regulation that make sense coaches that get real opportunities in the NFL will be gone.
“This trend will continue until there is a new governing body and it creates a CBA with a players entity or union that would include issues like NIL-Transfer Portal-and eventually revenue sharing.
“The sport is spiraling out of control as we know and many these coaches are not sticking around and waiting. Just a new reality for the sport.”
Think about it.
College football right now is essentially what the NFL would look like if after every season, every player in the league was an unrestricted free agent and teams had zero salary cap, only with hundreds more teams and players.
No wonder coaches are no longer interested.