With National Signing Day move, coaches will be 'getting fired much sooner'

Take a college football coach entering the final two weeks of the season with a 5-5 record.

In past years, an athletic director would probably let the coach have a fair shot to finish the regular season 7-5. At the very least, a chance to go 6-6 and reach bowl eligibility. Reassess after the season finale where things stand and make a call in early December. If the coach was fired, the hiring process would get started and the next head coach would have at least a week or two to put together a recruiting class before early National Signing Day toward the end of December.

With Wednesday’s news of the December National Signing Day moving to the beginning of the month, the coaching carousel is expected to change. Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher last fall on Nov. 12 and hired Mike Elko on Nov. 26. That is the new coaching calendar in college football, multiple coaching agents have told On3. They were granted anonymity to speak freely and candidly about college football’s new firing timeline.

“I think that you’re going to see coaches getting fired much sooner,” one agent said. “Now, the cycle is going to start a lot sooner. If they stumble out of the gates, even if it’s not their contract year, they could be one or two years in, a lot more moves are going to start being made. The pressure coaches are under is going to be tremendously amplified. It’s going to cause a real issue with the coaching stability in the marketplace.”

The first taste of the earlier National Signing Day will come from Dec. 4 to 6. That’s the same week as conference championships. Days before the transfer portal opens. And it’s in the same month some programs will be competing in the College Football Playoff.

Another agent provided the example of the Matt Rhule hire at Nebraska in 2022. Scott Frost was fired in September after losing two of three to open the season. Mickey Joseph stepped in as interim, delivering a win over Iowa on Friday, Nov. 25 to close out the year.

Athletic director Trev Alberts announced the hire of Rhule the next day.

“Every AD would love to do a Trev Alberts,” the agent said. “Mickey beats Iowa on Friday. And on Saturday morning, Matt Rhule is shot out of a cannon. You and I know that that’s highly illogical and practically impossible. But that’s what they’d like to do.

“If you’re moving it up, and it’s going to be the Wednesday before the conference championship games, then what you’re doing is you’re activating all the other mechanisms earlier. The December signing should be shot into fucking orbit.”

Coaching buyouts will ‘explode’

Fisher’s buyout in November was historic and jaw-dropping. The final number was more than $76 million, in part because he signed a new 10-year contract with $95 million guaranteed in 2021. Before Texas A&M fired Fisher in November, the previous high was when Auburn fired Gus Malzhan. After finishing the 202 season 6-4, the Tigers owed him $21.5 million of a $49 million, seven-year deal.

With the expectation that more athletic directors will want to move earlier, due in part because of the calendar, coaching buyouts will surely be larger.

“This is going to cause the cycle to start in early November,” an agent said. “The pressure is going to be so intense and look, the institutions are going to want to get ahead of the game, right? They’re going to want to start looking for the next guy sooner rather than later, especially if they know that they’re going to make a move. The other ramification of this is the school’s buyouts. Oh, they’re going to explode exponentially.”

Importance of NIL collectives grows in college football

Donor-funded NIL collectives have become increasingly important in the top echelons of college football. While legal pressures may force the NCAA to start revenue sharing or view athletes as employees, the NIL Era is the stopgap. Collectives handle payroll for the top programs, from roster retention to talent acquisition.

With a recent preliminary injunction granted in the Eastern District of Tennessee, collectives can now openly negotiate with high school and transfer portal recruits. Arrange lucrative financial packages have become commonplace since the summer of 2021. But the injunction has made the NCAA powerless. The governing body recently announced it has halted all NIL investigations into collectives, too.

But with the new college football calendar and the carousel expected to spin earlier, collectives will be crucial in keeping together top recruiting classes. Athletes are not tied to the head coach.

“It used to be that if the coach was fired, then the whole recruitment class fell apart,” an agent told On3. “Now, they fire the coach, and it doesn’t matter because this guy from the collective still called me and said that they’re going to honor my deal.”

Earlier this week, members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team voted to form a union. They’ll now have the opportunity to collectively bargain with the university. That model could be coming to college sports. But the wholesale change isn’t there yet.

Instead, collectives are dishing out payroll and ensuring athletes enroll. With an accelerated coaching carousel will come more responsibility.

“If players are going to be asked, and they’re going to have the ability to sign three weeks earlier, I feel like there’s more importance now on the collectives,” the agent told On3. “You and I both know collectives are really the backbone financially of roster management roster acquisition. I think some of these programs are going to have a lot more reliance on them.”