It’s over, it’s done.  After a decade and a half of swooping in and plucking the top college football coaches from University campuses, the NFL’s experiment w/ college football coaches should officially be terminated.  Hopefully in the last decade NFL GM’s and owners have learned that success in the college game doesn’t translate to success in the pros, but in fact usually leads to painful, agonizing failure. 

 Nick Saban’s decision to dump the Miami Dolphins for the University of Alabama just two years into his 5 year contract should have been the nail in the coffin.  He left the Dolphins in abysmal shape, with lots of animosity and a nifty new reference as O'Saban Bin Lyin' to South Florida residents. For now, however, the National Football League should cast a weary eye on hiring even the most successful collegiate coaches.  Honestly though, it seemed more like a bad trend; kinda like Mohawks, Beanie Babies and those strange NBA stockings. However, just like every trend in our culture this one cannot end soon enough.  Seasoned Collegiate coaches are worse fits for the pros than  Charlie Weis in spandex.

After Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer’s brief success as Dallas Cowboys head coaches in the early to mid-90’s, it seems NFL success suddenly appeared more attractive to college coaches and vice versa, thus beginning a tumultuous decade and a half coaching carousel involving the NFL and NCAA.  They were the launching pads for a generation of Nick Sabans, Butch Davis’ and Steve Spurriers.  The NFL is a copy cat league and this was the new blueprint for a champion. 

          A short list of prominent coaches who have gone from college and to the pro’s beginning in 1995 include Saban, Steve Spurrier, Butch Davis, Pete Carroll, and Dennis Erickson who collectively compiled a 511-190 career coaching record along with 7 national titles.  Their collective records as NFL head coaches are a dismal 124-159.  

          And yet even at this moment USC’s Pete Carroll and Iowa’s Kirk Herentz are constantly mentioned as potential candidates for various future head coaching vacancies. 

          Why Pete Carroll would even consider leaving his utopia at USC for the unstable Miami Dolphins is an enigma to me.  In the six seasons since he took over as head coach he has cornered the market in California; one of three states (along with Florida and Texas) with possibly the deepest pool of high school football talent in the nation. He’s gone 65-12, coached three Heisman Trophy winners, been to four consecutive BCS bowl games and won 2 national titles. 

Erickson lead Miami for six seasons winning two national championships in 1989 and 1991 and attained the highest winning percentage in the history of the program before giving in to the draw of NFL glamour for two unsuccessful stints with the Seahawks and 49ers with a very successful stint at Oregon State in the midst of his NFL foray before finally returning to college over a decade later.  Erickson returned for one season in Idaho, then flew the coup to Arizona State and in his first season has coached the program to a 7-0 start in the  Pac-10, and into the forefront of a national championship race. 

Who knows?  If this trend had run it’s course 30 years earlier maybe Woody Hayes and Bear Bryant would have also jumped at the opportunity only to toil in NFL obscurity and return to NCAA football disgraced instead of winning national titles on the at Alabama and Ohio St. respectively.  These are the scenarios that played out for Saban, Spurrier and Davis alike. 

Instead of continually building their programs until they reached legendary status they’ve tainted their legacies.  They bought into the NFL hype and bottomed out.  Spurrier and Davis will never attract the level of talent at North and South Carolina that they did when they were at Florida and Miami.  Saban, now at Alabama, will always walk in the shadow of Bear Bryant as opposed to LSU where he would have left his greatest legacy. 

Contracts aren’t a factor as the top coaches are paid on par with their NFL counterparts as evidenced by Nick Saban’s huge payday at Alabama.  In fact college football coaching positions generally offer better job stability than those in the pros and more longevity.  Can you imagine Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden coaching an NFL team in their 70’s and 80’s?  NFL owner’s desire for instant success creates pressure for NFL coaches to win quickly.
 

His previous stint in the NFL as head coach of the New England Patriots wasn’t exactly memorable as his teams gradually worsened from division champs to 6-10 cellar dwellers in his three seasons before he was eventually dismissed.  Taking history into account why is he even being considered for another NFL head coaching position?

Most baffling to me is Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, whose only NFL experience was a short stint as an offensive line coach with the Browns and Ravens, being rumored in various head coaching vacancies for the second consecutive off season.  From the beginning, the mistake that NFL GM’s made was not recognizing the differences between the professional and college game. 

Let’s face it, the criteria for a great college football a coach differs from the NFL’s definition   

1)   Recruiting great players is often emphasized more than game planning.  While X’s and O’s are still vital to a coach’s success it sure doesn’t hurt to have a few former high school All-Americans on your roster.  Meanwhile in college there’s no limit on the number of All-Americans and five-star recruits a coach can recruit.  In the NFL each team is granted just one first round pick.

2)  Parity is rampant in the NFL, and the NFL’s salary cap (which restricts the amount of money a team can spend on their team roster as a way to balance the league so that wealthiest teams cannot dominant by simply buying the top players) disperses talent more evenly league wide.  College football is dominated by only an elite few, controlled by money grubbing boosters and university presidents who have never given non- BCS teams a championship opportunity.

1)   Many of these coaches are initially overwhelmed with the complexity of the NFL.  Because of the league’s parity, preparation for games is more demanding which explains why many of these coaches such as Pete Carroll, Butch Davis and Nick Saban made great NFL solid assistant coaches.  Assistants don’t have to deal as much with the personalities, the offense, defenses, play calling, etc.; instead they can focus solely on their specialty. (This is why I believe Bobby Petrino will flame out with the Falcons.) 

2)  Talent development in college is essential.  The players are young and many have gotten used to being more talented and physically superior to their competition.  Part of the job of a college coach is to instill these players with the proper skills fundamentals and turn their potential into a reality.  Usually, by the time most players reach the NFL, they’ve established their work ethic or lack thereof and their skill level has been assessed by professional scouts for years. 

3)  The personalities of professional players differ from those of collegiate players.  After a few years, coaches such as Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier end up returning after they realize that their hearts are in the college game after all.  In college they are god like figures to the players because they control player scholarships.

If the NFL has truly learned it's lesson, it will look for future head coaching candidates among it's own and evade the pratfalls of collegiate temptation.  On the other end f the spectrum, established NFL head coaches and assistants such as Bill Callahan, Dave Wannstedt and Charlie Weis are now struggling in their attempts to turn around struggling college football programs.  So far the results have been mixed with the exception of Weis, who has already been to 2 BCS Bowl games, losing both and is now in the middle of a 1-7 season brought to you live by NBC.  However, it is too early too tell where this coaching trend is headed; I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

                                                                                      -- D.J. Dunson