College Football Coaches Being Met With Increasingly Unfair Expectations

With the new College Football Playoff system taking over the lives of everyone involved with the sports, a coach’s life span has gotten even smaller.

I’ll admit it – I’m just as guilty of doing it as the next person. I’ve written countless articles this season wondering if Jimbo Fisher was the right person to coach the Florida State Seminoles. After the fourth season in Tallahassee with at least three losses, I wasn’t the only one who wondered if it was time to find someone new.

I was wrong…and anyone else who thinks so is wrong to.

The truth is that, as a byproduct of the College Football Playoff that was supposed to make the sport “better”, the expectations for a college football coach at a major program (or one that used to be a major power) have gotten increasingly unfair.

We saw it last season just one state north of the FSU campus. The Georgia Bulldogs thought they could do better than Mark Richt, who led them to their first conference titles in over two decades as well as a bowl game each season – but hadn’t won a national title for a program that thought it was deserving of one (despite only having one in modern history).

How did Georgia do this year under head coach Kirby Smart? A much better…7-5 season that included another loss to Florida, their third loss to Vanderbilt in the last 22 games and a loss to Georgia Tech for the second straight time at home. Yeah, much improvement there.

LSU got rid of a head coach in Les Miles who is one of just three in program history to have won a national title for them. Their reward for being impatient and thinking they were entitled? Getting turned down by Jimbo Fisher and Tom Herman before settling on interim coach Ed Orgeron – who reportedly wasn’t being given the time of day just 72 hours before.

Brian Kelly at Notre Dame? He’s reportedly being pushed out by some after a losing season just five years after playing for a title and one year removed from a New Years six bowl. Oregon’s Mark Helfrich just lost his job two years after playing for the title.

Of course, the icing on the cake would be former Texas head coach Charlie Strong, who was criticized minutes after taking the job by Longhorns boosters who still think it’s 1975 and they are one of the top programs nationally.

In the 80 years of the AP Poll era in college football to decide champions, there have been 30 teams to win at least one title – with 18 of those schools winning two titles or less. That means there are currently 98 teams playing at the FBS level who don’t have a crown.

Still, the playoff system has made it to where all FBS team think if they aren’t playing for a title within three seasons of a new coach, it’s time to move on. If that was the case, Fisher wouldn’t have been in Tallahassee to coach the Seminoles to the 2013 crown.

The amount of patience in college football has decreased immensely over the last three seasons – and it will only continue. Tom Herman will be given amount half a season in Texas before the calls will be for his job if the Longhorns aren’t unbeaten – even though he will have faced both USC and Oklahoma in that span, both teams that are just plain better at this point.

So, FSU fans, here would be my message to you: don’t be like other fan bases and call for Fisher’s head just because we may finish the year 10-3. Yes, I want us to win a national title every single season – but the chances of winning one a decade is tough enough without the seat getting hotter for no reason.