College football isn’t just evolving—it’s exploding. What used to be a developmental pipeline built on patience and tradition has become a billion-dollar enterprise defined by turnover, volatility, and instant gratification.
This season alone, Power Five schools owe more than $170 million in buyouts to fired coaches, money that could fund entire athletic departments, scholarships, or facilities upgrades. In 2022, schools spent $94 million on buyouts; by 2024, that figure nearly doubled. At this pace, universities will burn through half a billion dollars on fired coaches before the 2026 season kicks off.
The New Economy of Chaos
Every Saturday delivers another upset, and every week brings a new casualty. The old guard of —Bowden, Osborne, Paterno, Spurrier—has been replaced by a reality where a coach’s shelf life is shorter than a freshman’s eligibility window. Florida, UCLA, Penn State, Oklahoma State, and Virginia Tech have already made moves this year. The median tenure of a head coach in the Power Five is now just 3.8 years, down from nearly seven a decade ago. Patience has vanished. Success is measured not in culture or development but in how fast a program can flip its narrative, or its coach.
And this churn isn’t just emotional. It’s structural. The NIL era and transfer portal have fundamentally rewired how programs are built. Donors have become de facto GMs, wielding unprecedented control over rosters and leadership decisions. When the same booster funds your starting quarterback’s NIL deal and your coach’s buyout, accountability becomes a game of optics, not outcomes.
The math is unsustainable. You can’t pay $10 million to fire one coach, $13 million to hire another, and another $15 million to build out an NIL war chest, all while Olympic sports are fighting to keep their budgets intact. Yet that’s where college football is headed: a self-cannibalizing marketplace where money is both the oxygen and the accelerant. Even Congress is starting to take notice. The COACH Act (Correcting Opportunity and Accountability in Collegiate Hiring), introduced this fall by U.S. Representative Michael Baumgartner, would cap coaching salaries and limit buyouts. Whether or not it passes, the fact that lawmakers are debating the economics of college football is a warning sign—the sport’s financial model is no longer a private matter, it’s a public issue.
From Coach to CEO
The modern head coach is no longer just a play-caller. They’re a CEO, recruiter, media strategist, and crisis manager all rolled into one. They’re expected to win the press conference, the donor dinner, the recruiting war, and the social media cycle, all while keeping 100 college students and 50 staff aligned in a 24-hour news environment.
No surprise, then, that burnout is rising. The mental and emotional toll of leading a “mini Fortune 500” disguised as a football team is staggering. College football’s greatest threat isn’t the transfer portal. It’s the revolving door at the top.
Programs can’t build culture when they’re constantly rebuilding brands. The sport has entered a new era where dominance is temporary, patience is extinct, and the only constant is the reset button. The programs that can evolve within the chaos, blending business strategy with cultural leadership, will survive. The rest? They’ll keep writing buyout checks.
Fire. Hire. Repeat.
Justin J. Giangrande is the founder and CEO of NETWORK.