Mo' money, mo' problems
Remember when a coach could endure a 7-5 or 8-4 season every once in a while and not have his name on one of those "coaches on the hot seat" lists that help feed the beast between Saturdays in the fall?
Whatever happened to those good ol' days?
I know the answer - money, and gobs of it, is what happened.
You pay a coach a million or two or more to win football games and take your program to big-name bowls (read: "not ones named after computers or tires, or ones played in Boise"), and you expect him to do just that. And if he doesn't, well, it's not like there is a shortage of people out there who don't believe deep down to the core of their beings that they could do it, if only they were given the chance.
And so it is that we have names like Larry Coker and Chuck Amato and Al Groh and Ralph Friedgen as being among those on the proverbial hot seat - if only because they work at schools where the feeling is that they have the profile and the facilities and the donor base and the rest that it takes to do a lot more than go 9-3 or 7-5 or 5-6.
I would feel sorry for them - but then again, I mean, they're getting paid gobs of money, like I said above.
- Chris Graham