Dave Doeren on coaches being fired across college football: 'It's a different world'

Recently, there has been a rash of coach firings around college football. This comes amid a trend of teams firing coaches earlier in the regular season than before. It’s a trend that coaches around college football, including Dave Doeren of NC State, have taken notice of.

Doeren explained that the sport and the coaching landscape has changed a lot over the years, with things like the transfer portal, National Signing Day coming in December, and now this shift in how much time coaches are given.

“Yeah, it’s sad and interesting, at the same time,” Dave Doeren said. “For a guy to get a $70 million-plus payout at one school and the other wasn’t even there a season. So, it’s a different world. College Football has changed a lot. The two things you just mentioned are a part of it, but I think the world in general expects things to happen really fast and there’s not a lot of patience anymore.”

Dave Doeren was referring to Jimbo Fisher and Zach Arnett who were fired at Texas A&M and Mississippi State respectively following the weekend. Over the same weekend, Doeren was taking on Wake Forest in ACC play.

“So, I think Coach [Dave] Clawson said this to me before the game when we were talking about how our team is playing and he said, ‘You’ve built a program, not a team.’ He said that why you were able to overcome what you guys went through, and that meant a lot to me that he said it but I thought a lot about that statement and it takes time to build a program,” Doeren said. “It’s not something you can just do overnight. You’re gonna join a new place, wherever you go, if you’re a coach and everybody there is not gonna understand what you want to build right away.”

This is Dave Doeren’s 11th season at NC State. He has a 79-57 record during that time and is set to go his ninth bowl game during that time frame this season. However, NC State has never gotten over the hump and won the ACC during that time.

“It takes time. You’ve got to be able to dig in and have an AD and a chancellor or president that’s willing to dig in with you, and obviously you’ve got to get results. You’ve got to show results somewhat quickly, which we were able to do here in that second year. We went from three wins to eight wins from year one to year two. Then, be consistent. I think one thing we’ve done here is that. Going to our ninth bowl game here in 11 years,” Doeren said.

“So, you have to be able to provide those kinds of results. It is a results business. You know that as a coach. When you go somewhere, you’ve got to do your job, you’ve got to do it fast, and do it well. But you need alignment and leadership that wants it done the same way that you want to do it.”

Dave Doeren wants to see a trophy for most in-state wins within North Carolina ACC schools

There is a lot of value in winning games against schools within your state. That’s especially true for the North Carolina schools in the ACC, with four of them there to compete for recruits and attention. So, Dave Doeren wants to celebrate what team earns those in-state wins in the classic college football manner, with a trophy.

Yeah it’s kind of funny you know, the beginning of the season the rivalry was gonna end every year and now it’s back. So we never had that miss which is good. I love that we’re playing all three other schools in-state every year for at least the next seven it says, so I think that’s awesome,” Doeren said.

“I would be in favor of a trophy for whoever wins the most in-state games between the four of them. Paint each side of it the school color and let that team keep it, I think it’d be awesome to have some kind of trophy for the four teams moving forward after this season. Because we are actually gonna have bragging rights for a whole year based on that. But we’ll see if anyone bites on that one, but we’ll put it out there. But it’s gonna be fun to have the opportunity to play Duke, play Wake, play UNC every season and occasionally we’ll get one of the mid, non-Power Five, ECU, App [State], or Charlotte on our rotation. I know the other schools are as well, so we’ll see how that all plays out.”