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Remember the narrative about college head coaches bolting for the NFL? That’s still not happening
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When Kellen Moore agreed to become the next head coach of the New Orleans Saints, it concluded the NFL head coaching cycle. It did so without a single college head coach bolting for the same job in the NFL.
Imagine that.
When Jim Harbaugh made that move last year after winning a title, we were told that it was a sign of things to come. As in, the NFL was going to be a landing spot for college coaches who were fed up with all the NIL/transfer portal/year-round calendar issues. In a not-so-stunning development, that didn’t happen.
Instead, Bill Belichick went directly against that narrative and took the UNC job. While there’s still potential for Belichick’s move to UNC to rival Urban Meyer’s tenure with the Jacksonville Jaguars, that’s somewhat irrelevant to the discussion today.
College head coaches bolting to the NFL is not going to become a true trend.
What about Harbaugh, you ask? Tell me that the combination of his NFL background, finally winning a national championship and the looming NCAA investigation into the Connor Stalions scandal had nothing to do with that move.
What about Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley’s move to become the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator last year? Tell me that his 12-22 record vs. the ACC heading into a pivotal Year 5 had nothing to do with that move.
So much of this discussion lacks context. If you actually want to look at those who left for the NFL on a case-by-case basis, you’ll gain more perspective. Instead, however, some still fire off takes like this that push a narrative that shouldn’t exist:
By the way, it’s an entirely different discussion to make that point when referencing a college assistant making that jump instead of a college head coach.
If NFL executives truly feel that college head coaches are going to start leaving for the pros, ask yourself this: Why have they not hired them?
Since 2000, there are only 12 first-time NFL head coaches who were hired from the college ranks, and none in the past 4 cycles (that excludes someone like Pete Carroll because he was the New England Patriots’ head coach before he was at USC):
(The funny thing is that besides Meyer, who hasn’t coached at all since his flameout with the Jaguars, every one of those coaches ended up spending at least 1 season back in the college ranks after their NFL tenures ended.)
Yeah, that tweet is from Jan. 14, 2021, but there aren’t any updates to it in the 4 years since the Meyer-to-Jacksonville disaster began (that counts Harbaugh’s Stanford-to-San Francisco 49ers move and not his Michigan-to-Los Angeles Chargers move). For what it’s worth, Meyer wasn’t employed by a college team at the time, so it wasn’t even a poaching, much like Belichick going to UNC.
To recap, the 3 most recent college head coaches who moved directly to become first-time NFL head coaches were Matt Rhule, Kliff Kingsbury and Bill O’Brien, who made the Penn State-to-Houston Texans jump before the College Football Playoff era began. Rhule and O’Brien are back in college running their own programs, while Kingsbury made that jump to the NFL after he was fired as Texas Tech’s head coach and was set to become USC’s offensive coordinator. Really, he shouldn’t even count for the “directly from college head coaching jobs” group.
That’s hardly an imminent trend.
If it were an imminent trend, the NFL head coaching cycle would have claimed established college coaches like Steve Sarkisian and Ryan Day. Shoot, we didn’t even have an NFL team poach an up-and-coming coach like Rhule was at Baylor when he left for the Carolina Panthers after the 2019 season. Shouldn’t a “farm system” have a few examples of that during the 2020s?
The better way to view this trend is to do so through the lens of top-flight assistants. Those have become more interchangeable. Guys like Joe Brady, Liam Coen, Todd Monken and Al Golden have all had successful stints as college coordinators and NFL coordinators. Last year, Ryan Grubb opted not to follow Kalen DeBoer to Alabama so that he could stay in Seattle and be the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator … which lasted 1 year before Grubb reunited with DeBoer.
There’s a ton of appeal for a college assistant to take the same position in the NFL. Kelly’s contract reportedly tripled by leaving Ohio State for the same role with the Las Vegas Raiders. Doing that without having to recruit or deal with those aforementioned moving pieces of the college game makes sense.
But let’s not pretend those rules are the same for head coaches, who still have more roster control in the NIL era than they do in the NFL. There are also 4 times as many FBS head coaching jobs as there are in the NFL, and there are twice as many Power Conference jobs as there are NFL jobs. The numbers will never support the narrative that college head coaches are flocking to the NFL.
It also doesn’t help that only 4 of those 12 first-time NFL head coaches who came from college in the 21st century got a Year 4, and only O’Brien got a Year 5. There’s not some long track record of it working out. And even compare that to the SEC, which is considered to be the ultimate revolving door for head coaches. In 2025, 12 of the SEC’s 16 head coaches will be entering Year 4 or more, and 9 will be entering Year 5 or more.
That context will be lost by the NFL crowd, who insists that the college game keeps losing head coaches to the pros. Nope.
Until we actually see this trend play out, let’s stop pretending that it exists.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
