In the era of deregulation of college sports, players get paid. They have unlimited transfer opportunities. Schools can facilitate their name, image and likeness agreements. Any team that wants to use technology like headset communication and sideline tablets can use it.
The next step could be the arrival of unlimited coaches.
The Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee presented a proposal this spring to remove the cap on the number of employees a program can perform on-field football coaching duties, while limiting off-field recruiting activities. campus to 10 assistants (or 12 in the FCS) plus the head coach. This would mean that hundreds of quality control analysts and coaches across the country could finally coach in practice, bringing monumental change to the profession.
“The landscape has changed in college football,” said former Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl, now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association and serves on the oversight committee. “Competitive equity has changed.”
A similar proposal was quietly put forward more than a year ago after being discussed by the NCAA Transformation Committee, and many head coaches expected it to pass, even hiring assistant coaches in December 2022 in the hope that they would be on the ground. The Division I Council surprisingly rejected it.
Now it’s back, and Bohl and the AFCA are pushing for it. It will be voted on by the supervisory commission on May 16. If adopted, it will be resubmitted to the DI Council at the end of June.
There seems to be more momentum for it to pass this time. The myth of a completely level playing field is over. The players are paid; who cares if a few extra coaches work on the field in practice? But there are concerns about rising staff salaries and the possibility that the Power 4 will pull more coaches from the Group of 5 as it does players.
After the Council’s rejection last year, no one is 100 percent sure the project will pass. If this were the case, it could further strengthen the division of resources within the FBS. But coaches are adamant it has to happen now.
“This is a hill that AFCA is going to die on,” Bohl said.
The NCAA has limited the size of its staff for decades, aiming to keep programs’ personnel expenses in the same range. In 2017, the maximum number of coaches on the field was increased from nine to ten.
The coaches’ argument for this change is obvious. That means more real coaching jobs, which will help younger coaches grow and give older coaches more chances to stay.
“Man, I’m all for it,” Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said. “I have some really good young coaches that have moved from AG to QC or analyst and it would be great for their growth and great for us to let them coach.”
McGuire said his former quality control assistant, James Lockhart IV, didn’t want to leave Texas Tech but had to for an on-field job, which he got at FCS Texas-Rio Grande Valley in January.
Given the freedom to expand on-field personnel, college football programs would likely follow an NFL model, in which each position group would gain a second assistant, such as an assistant offensive line coach or a assistant defensive backs coach. Most schools typically use their four graduate assistant positions on the field to help at the offensive line, defensive line, secondary and wide receiver. The change could also create coordinators without position responsibilities and special teams coordinators with more autonomy.
Will schools put different recruiters on the road, perhaps keeping an older coach at home? The proposal requires off-campus recruiters to regularly engage in on-the-job coaching. (Military academies would be allowed 14 recruiting assistants.)
There is also a compliance argument for this to be adopted: the current rules are incredibly cumbersome and difficult to enforce, and it is common knowledge within the industry that some schools are already ignoring them, leaving an analyst or assistant to quality control lead special teams meetings. A compliance director said Athleticism that compliance teams are simply too small and too busy to sit in every shift room and monitor what’s going on.
“One compliance department doesn’t allow anyone outside of the 10 to coach, but another doesn’t look at what they do,” Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield said. “The inconsistency is frustrating for coaches who are doing things right.”
It’s unclear what impact it would have on graduate assistants, who are unpaid employees who often begin their careers with the advantage of being allowed to coach in the field. This proposal also won’t change the associated-with-a-prospect rule, which makes it harder for high school coaches to get into college unless they get a full-time job. The IAWP rule will still apply to coaches who are not off-campus recruiters.
The arguments against the proposal start with costs. That’s why the Division I Council rejected it last year, a council member said. Athleticism. Athletic directors expect those assistants and quality control analysts to demand to be paid like the 10 full-time assistant coaches once their duties increase, which could further inflate football’s costs.
This could be especially true if Power 4 programs hire a group of 5 assistant coaches for these new jobs, which could further accelerate the drain of existing talent from players and the transfer portal.
“It’s going to create more unintended consequences,” Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield said. “You’re going to see blue blood programs hire more coaches in the Group of 5. If you’re a MAC wide receivers coach making $80,000 and Michigan will pay you $150,000 to be on the field and you you don’t have to go into the field. recruit on the road, be with your family, a lot of guys are going to do it.
Few Group of 5 coaches have lost more assistants than Western Kentucky’s Tyson Helton, who each year replaced several coaches hired elsewhere because of the Hilltoppers’ success. But Helton supports the proposal, saying it would actually help him fill his position. When Helton lost offensive coordinator Zach Kittley to Texas Tech, he promoted quality control assistant Ben Arbuckle to coordinator. He would have liked to have Arbuckle on the field in a role before taking the job. (Arbuckle left to become Washington State’s offensive coordinator after one season.)
“There’s a lot of value in that,” Helton said.
Some coaches and agents question the extent of the personnel moves. If the rule passes in June, you won’t see coaches leaving their team for a new job immediately before the 2024 season. Many schools already have people in place who were hired in hopes of this measure being passed . The numbers are already numerous.
“When I was at USC and Tennessee, we coaches were complaining that the staff was too big,” Helton said. “You walk down the hall and you don’t know anyone’s name. You are flooded with bodies.
It is possible to have too many coaches. The NFL has no limit, but teams generally have around 22 or 23 members per roster. Bill Belichick had one of the smallest staffs in the NFL every year with about 17 coaches in New England.
“Every person had a defined responsibility (in the NFL),” said Silverfield, who worked as an assistant with the Minnesota Vikings from 2008 to 2013. “The staff grew, but there has to be one voice in a piece. You can’t have four guys coaching quarterbacks. At what point are the returns diminishing?
A separate large bill is also coming due. Power 4 schools could soon have to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits, including House v. NCAA, and share the revenue with players. Texas A&M Athletics laid off more than a dozen employees last month, citing upcoming changes to the administrative structure. Schools may not have the money to significantly increase existing staff.
Again, football programs seem to find the money. Administrators hoped pandemic-related budget cuts would dampen coaches’ salaries in 2020. That’s not the case. Georgia just gave Kirby Smart a $13 million per year raise.
“Competing for championships, teams that want to make it will find a way, no matter what,” Silverfield said.
Less than a decade ago, the focus was on containing the explosive growth in the number of off-field coaches, led by Nick Saban’s Army at Alabama. But times quickly changed. With so many existential crises facing college sports, the NCAA has begun to roll back its regulations. Players can now do so much more. Soon coaches will be able to do it too.
“I’m much more concerned about other issues related to college football,” Bohl said, “than an assistant quarterbacks coach.”
(Photo: Geoff Burke / USA Today)