As I was watching Bill Belichick and UNC get totally destroyed by TCU on Labor Day evening, something dawned on me. Over the past five years, we've seen an influx of “celebrity” coaches in college football. Many seemingly are drawn to the sport after seeing Deion Sanders' success and the groundswell of attention around him. It isn't coincidental. Schools are actively going after these big names in an attempt to make a splashy hire and satisfy alumni, boosters, and fans of the teams—a show that they're trying to fight for something better.
But early in this experiment, it seems the notion of substituting real college football coaching experience for celebrity and clout isn't fully working. Although this experiment hasn't fully taken shape yet, it seems more often than not, the celebrity coaches actually have to be coaches to be successful in college football.
We're in a revenue-sharing era. We're in an NIL era, and of course, the transfer portal. A part of me wonders about the allure of the high-profile, “celebrity” coach. At a certain point, you have to be able to actually coach versus just bringing in highly touted recruits, prospects, or attention.
I think that attention is a premium because with it sometimes comes money, donations, and groundswells of support. But at some point, to really justify hiring a “celebrity” coach or a former NFL guy, you have to win. You have to make moves that make sense and make decisions on the field that make sense.
I think that Deion Sanders is someone who's interesting as this concept of a celebrity coach because Deion is the archetype for celebrity coaches, but he circumvented the pitfalls we've seen early from the higher-profile, non-traditional hires in recent years. He had a level of experience in high school football coaching, and he got that spring season with Jackson State to fully get his sea legs under him.
And then from there, he had his first season at Colorado, where there were a lot of expectations for what he was going to do because of the success he accrued at Jackson State and then recruiting Travis Hunter, bringing him to Jackson State, then retaining him when he went to Colorado.
But he had a down year in his first season at Colorado in 2023, even with the improvement from the 1-11 season the year prior. You saw the success in that 2021 season at Jackson State and the 2022 season. Then you see the success for him at Colorado, where he went 9-4 in his second season with the team.
I think that what Deion did well was that he was able to get players who were talented, but also fit his scheme, rather than players who were just demonstrably better than everybody else on the field. I think that's an improvement from how he seemed to view building his team at Jackson State, just looking to get the most talented prospects he could to overwhelm other teams that didn't have that influx of highly-touted prospects or transfers.
And that, to me, means that the “celebrity” coach is on the same playing field as the traditional college coach who worked their way up the coaching ladder over a number of years to helm their own programs. How alluring is celebrity when it doesn't seem to bring the recruiting advantage that allows you to build mini-super teams that overwhelm your competition?
Take Belichick's moniker for his UNC squad as the “33rd NFL Team.” They aim to replicate the success and efficiency of NFL organizations that Belichick is familiar with and bring it to college football. But, anyone that saw how TCU dominated every facet of the game against the Tar Heels on Monday night saw that they were far from an NFL team.
Bill Belichick is openly leaning into the notion that his success in the NFL lays the foundation for future success in college football. But everything we've seen from successful programs is a focus on addressing the needs of the program, getting players that fit the scheme that you set, and making adjustments to put your team in the best position to win. I don't doubt that he can do that, but would someone with more experience coaching in college football in this era have been more effective?
What sets Bill Belichick and other high-profile hires like Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson apart is their relentless focus on sustained team building and strategic in-game implementation over time. It might sound obvious, but just listen to the discussions surrounding these hires. A lot of people's perception of Belichick's possible success sounds like, “You have Bill Belichick. Guys are going to come to play for Bill Belichick because he's arguably the greatest coach in NFL history. He has six Super Bowl championships with the Patriots. He was all over the sports world; he's like sports royalty because of the success he accumulated in the NFL alongside Tom Brady.”
That could be true. But, I don't think that will be the main determinant of these celebrity coaches' successes. Clearly, there needs to be a push to get a defense that can stop the run or a quarterback that can hit more than one pass in a two-hour time span. That does go to recruiting and convincing a talented prospect with plenty of scholarship offers and NIL money prospects to come play for you.
The advantage these “celebrity” coaches have to employ is their knowledge of the game. That football IQ has to be what sets them apart. If not, this new coaching era of college football will end quicker than how it started.
