Express Word: College football’s weird coaching cycle

The Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, our annual preseason basketball predictions.

ON THE FOOTBALL COACHING LANDSCAPE

Let’s put aside for a moment the increasingly one-sided debate about what Purdue should do about Ryan Walters after the season and look at a market dynamic here that seems to be guiding a lot of schools’ actions.

There have been zero Power 4 firings this cycle thus far and the remote possibility exists that there won’t be any. Hell the SEC alone is usually good for a few a year, yet much to their insane boosters’ and fans’ chagrin, there are Florida, Mississippi State and Arkansas all seemingly standing pat as their coaches have been dead men walking in a league where the last game is all that matters. People in Oklahoma may be grumbling about Brent Venables and people at Auburn may be groaning about Hugh Freeze, but neither of them seem to be in real danger.

Nationally, Lincoln Riley is dying on the vine at USC. Mike Norvell at Florida State is drawing every ounce of good will from last season. At Oklahoma State, forever-40 coach Mike Gundy is 0-7 in the Big 12. None them are likely to open. West Virginia and Baylor seem to be sticking with their hot-seated guys.

Ordinarily, the coaching carousel would be a Red Wedding of coaching bodies starting in the fall, the blood being sopped up by stacks of theoretical-money buyout cash.

But no one is firing their coaches. There has to be a reason for this. It’s too uncommon. No one has jumped at the chance to be the first or only P4 job to open. Again, there has to be a reason for this. Coordinator heads are rolling, but head coaches stand.

As with everything else in college football, it has to be money; it has to be related to that $22 million that power-conference teams now have to pony up. Nobody wants to — or in some cases, can — afford to be paying two staffs at once, plus funding whatever enticements have to be made to get the next guy.

I have no idea how big of a deal this is for Purdue but there are too many jobs not opening for this to be nothing nationwide. It may not always seem like it in a world of billion-dollar TV contracts and seemingly made-up buyout numbers, but money actually is a tangible thing and a finite resource.

Money factors in elsewhere, too.

Anyone hiring right now can’t possibly know what the job they are hiring for is even going to look like.

Are you hiring coaches or are you hiring recruiters? If you’re hiring recruiter, are you hiring a high school recruiter or a transfer recruiter? I do think there are modest differences.

Or are you hiring a cap guy?

Are you looking for Bill Belichick or Billy Beane?

It is going to be up to schools to decide how they want to divvy up their $22 million, and even more ominous, up to coaches to determine who on their team gets what. Purdue football has not been immune to the pitfalls of dudes in their locker room knowing what other guys are getting paid. Truth be told, Portal Era NIL shopping has been an abject failure for Purdue to this point. You shouldn’t judge coaches by what they have in NIL as much as how they’re spending it.

(Mid-major programs with no revenue-sharing, or NIL, concerns haven’t avoided using the guillotine.)

Matt Painter has it figured out, but he’s uncommon and basketball is inherently different than football.

Schools making hires now have to gauge coaches’ ability to to manage a semiprofessional organization.

How?

You can’t tell me this existential question isn’t the reason that there are now major programs firing their coaches.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL’S IN-GAME FLOOR

So this came to mind Tuesday night at Marquette, that of all the things Zach Edey gave Purdue — and it’s stupid to write about it, because he’s not coming back — one of the most valuable was also easy to not even notice.

That baseline of productivity I wrote often about is what this team may miss at times, times like Tuesday night, when it was really hard to score.

Before, during those dry-spell stretches, you could almost set your watch to Edey getting a putback or two and drawing enough fouls to where Purdue could grab a cheap whistle or two and score off them. Those elements were good for a handful of points per game in the best of times and worst of times alike and were the epitome of “stealing points,” a knack that makes great offensive teams even better.

How does this Purdue team steal points? Shooting better at the foul line would help. Forcing more turnovers would help, though this is not a turnover-factory sort of program anymore. Offensive rebounds are always gold, but something less when you don’t finish great at the rim, which Purdue didn’t at Marquette.

Fletcher Loyer‘s steadiness and consistency have boosted Purdue through some spotty patches and he is pretty good at Jedi-mind-tricking his way to the foul line and Braden Smith can make something out of anything, but Purdue does not have the physical force Edey provided or the transition punch Lance Jones did, so easier, “cheap” scoring isn’t going to come as consistently. There’s just less safety net.

It just means Purdue has to be that much better and sharper on offense, play with a little less margin for error on defense and be that much more diligent taking care of the basketball. It just has to be that much better.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• The online warring occurring right now over which teams belong in the CFP — the season’s not over, by the way — is a reminder that it doesn’t matter how big the Playoff is; someone is always going to be first out and its stakeholders irate.

It’s also kind of funny that in the last year of the prior four-team structure, the CFP drew a nightmare scenario with Florida State’s situation, and now in Year 1 of a 12-teamer, the SEC and Big Ten might be complete quagmires.

But as Joe Tiller used to say, “Whatever gets people talking about college football is a good thing.”

Tell that to Tennessee when IU gets in, or IU when Tennessee gets in.

• Walters talks openly about next season, as he should, since when he speaks publicly, it’s not just to you and me, but to his players, recruits, etc.

But even though next season can’t possibly be considered a certainty, he has to carry on like it is.

That means being pragmatic about these last two games and getting next year’s guys out there now. There aren’t that many of them since many of your best players next season have to be incoming transfers, but get as many of your current first-year transfers and freshmen out there now. It does stand to reason that some of these multi-year transfers can improve from what you have seen this season, but they still can use all the experience they can get. Same for the freshmen.

Purdue may be starting anew in a lot of ways, assuming the portal again consumes a key player or two or more. But if there’s anybody you will need next season whose development you can accelerate now, that should be kept in mind starting Friday night.

• Told you Zach Edey could shoot threes. He is hurt right now, but he is making a lot of people look pretty dumb.

• Pet peeve that does pertain to ongoing conversations about Purdue basketball. Never cite a ranking north of like 200 as anything credible. The rankings media people use with Edey or Smith or whoever, they are synonymous with, “We don’t know who this player is, but he got a scholarship to a good school, so let’s make it look like we do.”