College football is in a 'strange place' and the coaching carousel is making it stranger

At the midpoint of the college football season, here’s a quick recap – or a quick clap, unless Kirby Smart decides he doesn’t want a timeout.
It hasn’t been great for Trents or Brents. Trent Bray (Oregon State), Trent Dilfer (UAB) and Brent Pry (Virginia Tech) were all fired. Brent Venables is still employed at Oklahoma, but he took some strays from the Big 12 Conference on Twitter on Tuesday.
Venables was asked about the difficulty of playing in the SEC with a lot of one-possession games.
“This isn’t the old Big 12 days where Oklahoma destroys everybody every single week except one game of the year,” Venables said.
The Big 12’s Twitter account accurately pointed out that Venables lost eight conference games in his two seasons in the Big 12. Venables was 10-8 in the Big 12. Not exactly destruction-type numbers. If former OU coaching legends Bob Stoops or Barry Switzer had said that, the Big 12 Twitter account probably would have hearted that post.
But Venables is no Bob Stoops or Barry Switzer. Venables has bigger problems than being trolled by the Big 12’s Twitter account. Saturday, Venables dropped to 1-3 against Texas (losing those three games by a 106-9 margin). He’s in his fourth season in Norman and already has two losing seasons. Since joining the SEC last year, his offense hasn’t scored more than 27 points in a game against a power conference opponent. OU may be 5-1, but it closes the season with five consecutive games against Top 25-ranked opponents.
James Franklin’s struggles against ranked opponents (4-21 at Penn State vs. Top 10 teams) played a big role in his firing at Penn State, athletic director Pat Kraft said. Franklin would be the first to admit this season has been a big disappointment, but there was still a path (albeit a very, very difficult one) to reach the playoff.
So Penn State decided it wanted a new look. Needed to go in a different direction. “Attack the transfer portal and develop at the highest level,” Kraft said. Yada, yada, yada … appease the big money folks.
Duke coach Manny Diaz, who was Penn State’s defensive coordinator under Franklin from 2022-23, said – and I’m loosely paraphrasing – everyone in college athletics has lost their damn minds. If that’s not what Diaz meant, then I’ll say it: everyone in college athletics has lost their damn minds.
Not convinced? The richest conference in the free world – the Big Ten – is flirting with private equity to add billions, trillions, gazillions more dollars to its coffers.
Back on Earth, Penn State was 3-0 three weeks ago, ranked No. 3 in the country and leading No. 6 Oregon in overtime. The Nittany Lions lost to the Ducks in double OT, then dropped consecutive games to UCLA and Northwestern. In the blink of an eye, from 3-0 to 3-3. From employed to unemployed.
“It does say a lot about where we are in college football right now,” Diaz said.
“And this is going to happen more. I don’t know that we’re fully aware of how our sport is changing rapidly. It’s changing, and you can’t build these massive conferences (through realignment) … (without) losing more games. That’s just what’s going to happen.
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“We’re talking about in (the ACC) about having a schedule, it was sort of tiered towards who finished at the top,” Diaz said. “It’s common sense. The more you put people at the top and they’re going to play each other, someone’s going to lose the games. It’s just going to happen.”
Diaz mentioned Sunday night, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Detroit Lions in that other professional league. You know, the NFL.
“The Chiefs won to go to 3-3, right? And no one thinks that Andy Reid’s not a good coach and no one thinks (Detroit’s) Dan Campbell is not a good coach,” Diaz said. “They’ve only won four out of their first six and they’re in second place.
“It’s just that’s where they (the NFL) have a big thing at the end of year called ‘the playoff,’ which is what we’re getting to, right? I think we’re in a strange place in this sport because if you could have a bad three weeks, then it can go like that quickly …”
If it can go that bad that fast for James Franklin, who – please bear with me – accomplished the following: in his last nine seasons, Penn State was one of four teams to rank in the College Football Playoff final rankings at least seven times (along with Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State); Franklin, Ryan Day, Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney are the only active coaches to win five New Year’s Six or CFP games in the playoff era and Franklin led the Nittany Lions to three consecutive 10-win seasons for the first time 35 years.
Where was I? Oh yeah, if Penn State’s power (money) brokers can pull the plug on Franklin, then buckle up. Anything and everything is possible.
Note to aspiring reporters: I screwed up, I buried the lede. The coaching carousel is going to resemble a state fair’s Super Himalaya. Florida, Auburn, Wisconsin, Florida State, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, even ranked LSU or Oklahoma are just some of the power conference schools that could/will all decide by December they want someone better. Someone different.
Be careful what you wish for.