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The college football season has not yet reached its halfway point, but head coaches believed to be on shaky ground — or even slightly unstable ground — probably should sleep with one eye open.
Trust nothing or no one, and above all else, don't be naïve enough to think that a hefty contract buyout equates to job security.
What little patience that remained in the reservoir of college athletics has been siphoned dry by the hysteria created from ginormous media rights revenue, transfer portal, conference realignment, the name, image and likeness revolution and an arms race that is flying like Tom Cruise in "Top Gun: Maverick."
Schools used to wait until after the season to fire coaches because that was less disruptive to all involved. Oftentimes, schools reluctantly stuck by a coach because firings can be an ordeal and, more important, very expensive with buyouts costing in the millions.
That's so 2010.
Thanks to TV networks pumping ridiculous amounts of cash into their coffers, schools are able to buy their way out of problems with far less hesitation or pain.
Five Power Five coaches already have been fired this season with a combined buyout total north of $50 million. Nebraska was so eager to get rid of Scott Frost that the school could have saved $7.5 million of his buyout by waiting a few weeks but chose to pay him the full $15 million allotment rather than delay the firing.
Ruthless, but not nearly as surprising or symbolic of the state of college football as Wisconsin cutting ties with Mr. Madison himself, Paul Chryst, the two-time Big Ten Coach of the Year who won 72% of his games, three Big Ten West titles in seven seasons and took the Badgers to the Rose Bowl in 2019.
That equity in the bank could not save Chryst when his team started to lose more than usual, the vibe turned stale and fans began to grumble. Rather than wait to see if things improved in the second half of the season, school officials pounced like a lion.
Wisconsin negotiated down Chryst's buyout to $11 million, a figure that would have caused administrators to recoil previously but now is the cost of doing business in the wild, wild West of modern college athletics.
The money flowing through college sports — and college football in particular — has elevated the urgency and the pressure to win. The fear of falling behind rivals in recruiting, in NIL, in facilities, in salaries, in image, in everything, has created underlying tension. Anyone who has followed college sports for any amount of time can feel it.
Thus, a school revered for its stability fires a coach with a successful résumé midseason when cracks start to show.
Frost's tenure in Nebraska was an epic flop. He had zero chance of surviving the mess he created. The headline is that Nebraska willingly sacrificed $7.5 million of the buyout to do it immediately.
One theory with the timing of Chryst's removal is that Badgers officials worried that young, respected defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard would get a head coaching opportunity elsewhere after the season, so they cut ties with Chryst to give Leonhard an audition as interim head coach. Whatever the reason(s), the timing was stunning.
Less patience is the trade-off for escalating coaching salaries. The more they make, they more they better win.
My belief, too, is that schools have become antsy as the portal and NIL have handed more control and power to athletes. The ground is shifting swiftly and dramatically, which has created more urgency in the business.
Everybody associated with college athletics is trying to figure this out in real time, and the only certainty is that a department's chief revenue-makers — football and men's basketball — cannot afford to slide. There is too much at stake.
In-season firings have become a new reality, partly for recruiting reasons. Schools have more money than ever before. They don't have to sit and wait and hope that things get better.
