College football coaching carousel: What makes a good job anymore?

In the modern era of the Southeastern Conference, only four times has a coach willingly left one job in the conference to take another.

To this day, the incident that stands out in SEC lore occurred in 1998 when speculation bubbled up around Tommy Tuberville’s future at Ole Miss. Two days after he said on his weekly radio show, “They’ll have to carry me out of here in a pine box,” he signed a contract to go to Auburn, saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about the opportunity. I think we can win a national championship.”

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Despite the misdirection, Tuberville’s decision reflected the reality of the times. Both within the SEC and across college football, there was a clear hierarchy that remained rigid for nearly three decades.

Based on history, geography, fan support and of course money, Auburn was a better job than Ole Miss.

All these years later, the Ole Miss coach is once again the subject of speculation on other SEC campuses. In many ways, the coaching carousel will only truly begin when it becomes clear whether Lane Kiffin is going to stay at Ole Miss or become the new coach at Florida or LSU. Oh, and Auburn? They’re hiring a new coach, too.

Even five years ago, Kiffin taking one of those jobs would have seemed like a no-brainer. But in a sign of just how much things have changed across the college football landscape, there’s no guarantee Kiffin will be wearing a different logo on his visor next season.

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Sure, he might go. But he really might stay. Because in the current pecking order, accounting for what people in college athletics consider important in 2025, Ole Miss is largely viewed in the same approximate tier as Florida, LSU and Auburn.

Yes, for each situation, you can point out strengths and weaknesses. But in an era with an expanded College Football Playoff, revenue sharing for players and the potential to supplement rosters through NIL payments, many of the old stereotypes no longer apply.

“These jobs are becoming like NFL jobs where it almost doesn’t matter,” one high-level industry source told Yahoo Sports. “Ole Miss people, if they’re winning, you’re not going to lose on money there. They’re going to pay their assistants, they’re going to pay Lane and they have a better [NIL] collective [than most in the SEC]. Everybody likes their chancellor. Their AD is good. They sell out every game. They have a top-five basketball coach. They won the College World Series two years ago. So what are we doing here?”

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What we’re doing, to be precise, is watching the paradigm of an entire sport shift before our eyes.

‘The money’s stupid, and we’ve got more parity than ever’

Indiana is No. 2 in the country and just gave Curt Cignetti a $93 million extension. Oregon has made its coach, Dan Lanning, practically untouchable. The winner of Texas Tech-BYU this weekend will be close to a lock for the College Football Playoff. Ole Miss could, if Kiffin chooses to stay, make him the highest-paid coach in the country. And Vanderbilt, having one of its most successful seasons in school history, will soon face a big-picture institutional decision about how much to invest in its football program as competitors pursue Clark Lea.

But the mere fact that Kiffin could stay at Ole Miss, Lea could stay at Vanderbilt, Jeff Brohm could stay at Louisville and Brent Key could stay at Georgia Tech is, on its own, a reflection of how much things have changed over the past few years.

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In this two-part series examining the current environment around the coaching market, Yahoo Sports is not trying to predict the future or project what decisions individual coaches might make. After all, with 12 jobs open and several more likely to come, we are currently in the middle of a leverage game on all sides as agents try to position clients for the best situation and schools start to focus their searches on a small group of candidates.

Rather, the purpose of Part 1 is to explain the new dynamics of a world where the fundamental definition of a great coaching job has changed, and why many of the historically prominent schools may not end up with the kind of coach their stakeholders envisioned at the start.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of fan bases at press conferences say, ‘Who?’” a veteran of the industry with an inside view to multiple searches told Yahoo Sports. “I’ve been through this with a lot of schools, and those big jobs are the hardest to fill. A lot of good coaches talk a big game, but they don’t actually want to go into the fire like that.

“I’m not saying nobody will take the jobs. I’m just saying that even though you have a better chance of winning a national championship at Penn State or LSU on paper than some of these other schools, a lot of people don’t like the pressure of being at a place where they want to fire you for losing two or three games. It’s not a good quality of life.”

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And, at this moment in time, it doesn’t seem necessary.

When coaching agents like Jimmy Sexton first started to control the market, there were two primary factors driving movement: Life-changing money and access to talent, which ultimately translated to more wins and championships.

Then college football morphed into a facilities arms race. If you didn’t have shovels in the dirt at all times to build the latest, greatest indoor practice field or glitziest locker room, the perception in coaching was that you weren’t as committed to win.

Next came the multi-million-dollar assistant coaches and multi-year, guaranteed contracts for coordinators. Even few dozen strength coaches now get paid high six figures.

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Now, many of those factors are a bit more in equilibrium. Everyone at the power conference level is making life-changing money. Everyone has great facilities and big staff budgets. And with player compensation entering the picture, the advantages a Florida or LSU might have had in proximity to talent hotbeds has been greatly diminished.

Thus, the calculation is different and, for many coaches in this cycle, will revolve more around personal satisfaction and ensuring whatever program they work for is positioned from a revenue share/NIL standpoint to compete for College Football Playoff spots.

“The money’s stupid, and we’ve got more parity than ever,” said another insider close to multiple power conference searches. “A lot of coaches are looking at it thinking, ‘I can get to the playoffs from where I’m at so why go to the pressure cooker of an Auburn? I can get 8-to-10 years out of a good job and be pretty happy or I can go to Florida and be fired in 3½ years.’”

So who’s on the market?

One coach who already made that decision was SMU’s Rhett Lashlee, who was a theoretical candidate for nearly all the so-called bigger jobs but took himself off the market with an extension believed to be in the $10 million-per-year range.

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While Lashlee cited loyalty to a school that made him a first-time head coach in 2022 as the primary factor in choosing to stay, there was another factor beyond his salary or the school’s commitment to be competitive in NIL: “The path to the playoff is easier in the ACC,” according to someone familiar with his thinking.

It’s part of the same pitch Georgia Tech is currently making to Key, who has generated significant interest on the market as his team sits at 8-1 and No. 17 in the CFP rankings.

Georgia Tech, according to sources, most likely cannot put a financial package together for Key that will match what he’s offered to leave. The school’s administration, though, will hope he takes a more holistic view of being in a place where he fits (Key is a Georgia Tech alum), is not under a media microscope in the same way he would be at Penn State or Auburn, and has a good chance to be in the playoff on at least a semi-frequent basis.

With Cignetti, Lashlee, Lanning and Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman off the market, Texas A&M working on a contract extension with Mike Elko and Matt Rhule re-upping with Nebraska after weeks of being linked with Penn State, the home-run swing doesn’t really exist.

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Nick Saban and Urban Meyer aren’t coming back. Jon Gruden, despite publicly flirting with the idea of coaching in college (again), is likely to continue being a media personality. Dabo Swinney’s massive 10-year, $115 million contract signed in 2021 probably prevents him from bolting for a reset somewhere else. James Franklin has been deep in discussions with Virginia Tech, sources say, but for now is stalling on a commitment to see what else might shake loose. Jimbo Fisher also wants back in but is largely viewed, at least for now, as damaged goods.

That reality has raised the stakes in the tug-of-war around Key, Kiffin and Lea in particular, as they’re considered the most movable of the high-profile coaches this year along with Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham, Washington’s Jedd Fisch and Louisville’s Jeff Brohm.

At this moment, though, the odds favor at least four or five of them staying put, whereas half a dozen years ago there might have been a mad scramble to move up the ladder.

“A lot of jobs in this new era are just much better than they used to be,” one industry source said.

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So then what?

While some high-level searches are focused on the aforementioned power conference head coaches, others have already bypassed that group and locked in on the next tier of names, largely from the American conference (Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, South Florida’s Alex Golesh, Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield and North Texas’ Eric Morris), but also Bob Chesney from James Madison and Charles Huff from Southern Miss.

Why? Because they want to lock something down before Penn State, Florida, LSU or Auburn whiff on their top targets.

“If you can do a deal and put it in the desk drawer, you do it,” a person involved in multiple searches said. “The candidate pool is what it is. There won’t be a different group of guys come Thanksgiving, but there could be a lot of panic come Dec. 1.”

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A few years ago, as the latest conference realignment landscape took shape, there was a theory that coaches would be desperate to get to the SEC or Big Ten because of their financial advantages and the far-off possibility of some kind of split with the rest of college sports or the formation of a so-called superleague.

The reality, though, suggests just the opposite.

When coaches see the speed with which Brian Kelly’s tenure fell apart at LSU, the unhappiness at Penn State despite Franklin winning 34 games over the previous three seasons and even some angst beginning to bubble locally around Josh Heupel at Tennessee despite pulling the Vols out of a two-decade run of dysfunction, the perception changes a bit.

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On Tuesday, Swinney told reporters at Clemson about a conversation a few years ago where Duke’s Manny Diaz predicted that playoff expansion would lead to more coaches being fired, not fewer, because of the perception that your program wasn’t successful if it didn’t make the CFP.

“We’ve created this system that’s not sustainable,” Swinney said. “We’ve lost our way.”

Does that mean coaches will just be fired and recycled every few years like the NBA, or does it mean more coaches will stay at a comfortable place rather than chase one of the blue-blood jobs?

Unlike the late 1990s when Tuberville had little choice but to leave Ole Miss for Auburn, it’s still an evolving conversation in this new era. The next couple months will tell us which way the profession is heading.