Matt Rhule details what recent head coaching departures says about college football

This college football offseason, there has been a ton of movement regarding head coaching and coordinator shifts. And recently, Nebraska Cornhuskers‘ second-year head coach, Matt Rhule, addressed a phenomenon impacting college football coaches.

Since the end of the regular season, a number of individuals have decided to leave the collegiate level to join the NFL ranks. Now, normally, these kind of transactions occur with very little dialogue. However, there have been a number of coaches who have spoken out about the difficulties of being a college head coach, which impacted their decisions to accept positions elsewhere.

During a recent appearance on the College GameDay Podcast, Rhule addressed those beliefs but also added another interesting thought as to why individuals are making the change.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, look how hard it is.’ I think it speaks more to how much money we’re paying assistant coaches,” said Rhule. “Like I can go make $5 million to head coach… or whatever it is, or I can go make $2 million to call plays; I think there’s defensive line coaches making $1.8- $1.9 million now. So it’s more about the money that you can make without all the added stress.

“I’ll say this: being a head coach is rarely about actual Xs and Os of football. There’s obviously the great play-callers like the Lane Kiffin’s of the world. But even in those roles, they have to do so many other things. And it used to be that I would, [around] this time of year, coach the team, go speak and do some developmental type things, and raise some money for that program. Not you add in raising and building relationships for NIL, advertising for your collective; it just added to this timeframe.”

The two most notable transitions were made by former Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley and former UCLA Bruins head coach Chip Kelly. Both shared similar sentiments about wanting to get back to coaching the Xs and Os of football. And that is something Rhule understands. As the Nebraska head coach continued, he explained why becoming a coordinator is a more practical approach when it comes to strictly wanting to coach as opposed to being the head coach of a program.

“I think some guys probably say to themselves, ‘You know what? I’d love to just go coach football; love to go call plays.’ And being the head coach really isn’t about, very often, calling plays,” he said.

“It’s really about running an organization and making sure that everything’s optimized. And we get held accountable for everything. We get held accountable for player academics and player discipline; everything comes back at us. So you’re constantly having to be vigilant about all those things.”