Copyright outkick
Pretend you are an athletic director at a major college football program for a second (don't worry, most of them are super incompetent anyway, so it shouldn't take too much suspension of disbelief). You are currently employing an underperforming head coach and apathy is starting to set in among the ranks of your fanbase. The coach in question has a pretty hefty buyout, but your boosters are prepared to pony up the money and, most importantly, it doesn't look like a lot of other programs are going to be firing their coaches this cycle anyway. Do you keep the underperforming coach and hope he turns it around (knocking down the buyout number in the process), or do you pull the trigger and become the top job of the current hiring cycle? If you answered the former instead of the latter, then congrats, you are a case study in the "sunk cost fallacy." You're also likely a lame duck AD, too. This is something both Florida and Penn State fans (among others) are dealing with after hanging onto their coaches too long. For the Gators, it was evident rather early on that head coach Billy Napier was not "the guy." They had a chance to cut him loose after a dismal September last season, but he was given a lifeline and rallied the troops just long enough to buy himself and his staff another season, before ultimately getting the axe 13 months later. It's a slightly different case at Penn State, but the same rules apply. Coach James Franklin continuously underperformed relative to a championship level, yet he was rewarded with a salary (and buyout) reserved only for those with a heavier trophy case. Instead of recognizing Franklin for what he was (a very good but not championship-level coach), the Nittany Lions locked themselves into coaching purgatory. A similar issue has taken place in Tallahassee, where Florida State has an impotent head coach with a massive buyout. The truth of the matter is that all of these programs, including others who may be in the market for a new head coach sometime in the very near future (looking at you, Auburn, LSU, and Texas), are now frantically searching for a coach in a cycle where demand outweighs supply. Look at it this way: using our previous example of Florida, if they had just fired Billy Napier before their first bye week in 2024, they would likely have Lane Kiffin roaming their sidelines for the next seven years. Now, they'll have to pray the Rebels miss the playoffs once again while LSU goes on a miracle run and keeps Brian Kelly employed for another year. All of this because their athletic director failed to recognize the holes he patched on his ship were about to rip open again. I've mentioned before how 2025 may end up being the craziest hiring cycle in college football history, but I didn't see it getting this wild. Someone is going to end up with coal in their stockings; there aren't enough elite coaches to fill these openings. The next time someone says it's too soon to fire a head coach, point them to the 2025 coaching carousel, it might be the difference between a championship-level head coach and five years in college football purgatory.
