December 12, 2024 | Read Online

No, college football and the NFL aren't the same thing...yet.

I understand why everybody wants to hire ex-NFL front office types right now. But should they?

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

I realize this will not get me invited on any AM Sports Talk Radio segments this week, but my official take on whether UNC made a good or bad decision in hiring 72-year old Bill Belichick as their new head football coach is…I don’t know.

If there was a true science in hiring college football coaches, it would have been cracked by now. Can’t-miss hires like Scott Frost at Nebraska or Tom Herman at Texas flame out all the time, while unconventional head-scratchers occasionally work out. How successful a particular coach is has a lot to do with their Xs and Os knowledge, sure, but also about their relationship with their AD, boosters, recruits, and good ol’ fashioned luck.

I’m not going to sit here in your inbox and pretend that I’ve solved that particular puzzle. No idea.

But there is something else that goes with the Belichick hire that is making me really scratch my head. Take this, from Yahoo!’s esteemed Ross Dellenger:

North Carolina’s week-long courtship of Belichick ended in an agreement on Wednesday between school and coach. While jarring for many, the hire is understandable and timely given the state of college sports.

Belichick knows pro ball.

College isn’t so different any longer.

…

Soon, the only things separating major college football from the NFL is the tether to higher education (they must still go to class!) and absence of employment (they have not, yet, been deemed employees). Even college recruiting is changing. Players and their parents aren’t necessarily courted through in-home visits or campus trips. These are, often, transactional relationships with guaranteed cash in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (for elite QBs, that number is often in the millions).

I completely agree with the sentiment expressed here that college football has significantly changed, and that recruiting and roster management is (especially at the elite levels) far more transactional than it used to be…and it’s always been transactional. Nobody is going to expect Belichick to get in front of a camera and say “Skibidi Toilet Rizz Sigma” in an attempt to sound cool and relevant with the #kids.

I also understand that more and more major college football programs are coming around to this way of thinking. While UNC does seem to be the program leaning into this principle the most, (not just with Belichick, but by reportedly bringing along former Cleveland Browns GM/former Sports Gambling Network host Michael Lombardi to serve as program GM), they aren’t alone. Georgia Tech just hired former Chicago Bears Manager of Football Administration J.J. Cosh for a player management role. Oklahoma hired a former salary cap executive from the Eagles. The Washington Huskies are hiring a former New York Jets GM to help with revenue sharing and player negotiation type stuff. The list goes on and on.

I get it. Assuming the House settlement is approved and implemented on time, colleges will be able to directly compensate athletes via revenue sharing for the first time. That looks an awful lot like the professional model of roster management.

But you know what? Despite both the NFL and big-time college football both paying football players a lot of money to play football…they’re still not the same thing.

I could be wrong. I’m just a guy with a keyboard, after all. But there’s one particularly huge difference that I think could make the NFL Front Office → College Front Office pipeline a much harder transition than you might think.

The NFL has rules.