Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the Division I Council’s approval of the rule change removing caps on programs’ on-field football coaches.
In the deregulation era of college sports, players are getting paid. They have unlimited transfer opportunities. Schools can facilitate their name, image and likeness deals. Any team that wants to use technology such as helmet communication and sideline tablets can use it.
Up next: the arrival of unlimited coaches.
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The Division I Council has approved a proposal to remove the cap on how many of a program’s staffers can do on-field football coaching, while still limiting off-campus recruiting activities to 10 assistants (or 12 in the FCS) plus the head coach. This means hundreds of analysts and quality control coaches around the country will finally be permitted to coach in practice, bringing a monumental change to the profession.
“The landscape has changed in college football,” said former Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl, who is now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association and sits on the Football Bowl Subdivision oversight committee. “The competitive equity has changed.”
A similar proposal was quietly put forth more than a year ago after it was discussed by the NCAA transformation committee, and many head coaches expected it to pass, even hiring assistant position coaches in December 2022 with the expectation they’d be on the field. But the Division I Council surprisingly rejected it.
There was more momentum for it to pass one year later. The myth of a completely level playing field is over. Players get paid; who cares if a few extra coaches work on the field in practice? But there are concerns about growing staff salaries and the possibility that the Power 4 will pull more coaches from the Group of 5 like they have with players.
The rule’s passage could further solidify the resource divide within the FBS. But coaches are adamant this needs to happen now.
“This is a hill the AFCA will die on,” Bohl said.
The NCAA has limited staff sizes since 1976, an attempt to keep programs’ staff expenses in the same ballpark. In 2017, it expanded on-field staff limits from nine coaches to 10.
The argument from coaches in favor of this change is an obvious one: It means more actual coaching jobs, which will help young coaches grow and provide more chances for older coaches to stick around.
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“Man, I’m all for it,” Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said. “I have some really good young coaches that have come up through GA to QC or analyst and it’d 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 staffs, 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 assistant defensive backs coach. Most schools typically use their four allotted on-field graduate assistant spots for help at offensive line, defensive line, secondary and wide receiver. The change could also create coordinators without position responsibilities and more standalone special teams coordinators.
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-field coaching. (Service academies would be allowed 14 recruiting assistants.)
There was also a compliance argument for this to pass: The current rules are incredibly cumbersome and difficult to self-enforce, and it’s common knowledge within the industry that some schools already ignored them, letting an analyst or quality control assistant run special teams meetings. One compliance director told The Athletic that compliance staffs are simply too small and too busy to sit in every position room and monitor what goes on.
“One compliance department is not allowing anybody outside the 10 to coach, but another doesn’t look at what they’re doing,” Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield said. “The inconsistency is frustrating to the coaches doing it right.”
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The rule change will not alter the status of graduate assistants, who are unpaid staffers often beginning their careers with the advantage of being allowed to coach on the field. It also won’t change the Individual Associated With a Prospect rule, which has made it harder for high school coaches to move 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, one council member told The Athletic. Athletic directors expect that those quality control assistants and analysts will ask to be paid like the 10 full-time assistant coaches once their duties increase, which could further balloon football costs.
That could especially be true if Power 4 programs hire sitting Group of 5 assistant coaches for these new jobs, which could further accelerate the talent drain already in place with players and the transfer portal.
“It’s going to create more unintended consequences,” Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield said. “You’re going to see blueblood programs taking 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 don’t have to go on the road recruiting, get to 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 has annually replaced several coaches hired elsewhere due to the Hilltoppers’ success. But Helton supports the proposal, saying it would actually help him backfill. When Helton lost offensive coordinator Zach Kittley to Texas Tech, he promoted quality control assistant Ben Arbuckle to coordinator. He would’ve liked to have Arbuckle on the field in a role before he took over that job. (Arbuckle left to become the offensive coordinator at Washington State after one season.)
“There’s a lot of value in it,” Helton said.
Some coaches and agents question how much staff movement there will be. With the rule passing in late June, it’s likely you won’t see coaches leaving their teams for new jobs right away before the 2024 season. Many schools already have people in place who were hired with the expectation this would pass. Staffs are already large.
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“When I was at the USCs and Tennessees, the complaint from us coaches was that the staff was too big,” Helton said. “You’re walking down the hall and you don’t know somebody’s name. You’re flooded with bodies.”
There is such a thing as having too many coaches. The NFL doesn’t have a limit, but teams usually come in at around 22 or 23 to a staff. Bill Belichick famously had one of the smallest staffs in the NFL every year, with around 17 coaches in New England.
“Each person had a defined responsibility (in the NFL),” said Silverfield, who worked as a Minnesota Vikings assistant from 2008 to 2013. “Staffs have grown, but there needs to be one voice in a room. You can’t have four guys coaching quarterbacks. At what point is it diminishing returns?”
A separate large bill is also coming due. Power 4 schools will soon have to pony up tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits, including House v. NCAA, and share revenue with players. Texas A&M athletics laid off more than a dozen staffers last month, citing upcoming changes to administrative structure. Schools may not have the money to dramatically grow the staffs they have in place.
Then again, football programs seem to find the money. Administrators hoped that pandemic-related budget cuts would rein in coaching salaries in 2020. They didn’t. Georgia just gave Kirby Smart a raise to $13 million annually.
“Competing for championships, the teams that want to do it will find a way, no matter what,” Silverfield said.
Less than a decade ago, the attention was on reining in the explosive growth in off-field coaches, led by Nick Saban’s army of staffers at Alabama. But times have quickly changed. With so many existential crises facing college sports, the NCAA has begun to pull back on the regulations. Players can do a lot more now. Soon, too, can the coaches.
“I’m a lot more concerned about other issues in college football,” Bohl said, “than an assistant quarterbacks coach.”
(Photo: Geoff Burke / USA Today)