Bye-bye college, hello NFL. A roundtable with NFL coaches on lifestyle change (2024)

INDIANAPOLIS — College or the NFL? It’s the age-old question. Some coaches are better suited for the power and control that comes with picking your own roster in the college games. Others will do anything to never have to recruit again, which drives them to the NFL.

The money? It’s outrageous in college … if you’re a big-time head coach or coordinator.

And if you’re not?

“These roles have grown so much faster than their salaries have,” says one ex-college coach. “You’re helping a multi-millionaire coach run an organization for a fraction of what he’s making, and the salaries just haven’t kept up with it.”

The time commitment hasn’t kept up, either. That aforementioned control? It’s waning by the day in the era of NIL and the transfer portal, as college players utilize their leverage in a way that they were never able to in previous years. Recruiting, which was already a grind in and of itself, has become a 365-day affair of managing your own roster, in addition to replenishing it.

The NFL isn’t always a picnic, either — you get hired to get fired, and you’d better be prepared to move every couple of years — but it has undoubtedly become more and more attractive to folks fatigued by the marathon that is the college game.

The Athletic surveyed a half-dozen NFL coaches who have college experience to discuss the differences between working at both levels of football. Anonymity was granted to speak freely on their situations.

One indisputable truth after listening to these coaches vent: the current state of college football coaching is simply unsustainable.

The coaches, for reference:

Coach 1: A first-year NFL assistant who came from college coaching

Coach 2: A college and NFL coaching and personnel veteran

Coach 3: A college and NFL coaching veteran

Coach 4: A college and NFL coaching and personnel veteran

Coach 5: A college and NFL coaching veteran

Coach 6: A college and NFL coaching veteran

What are you doing at this time of the year in the NFL?

Coach 1: “We’re getting together as a staff and establishing an identity on offense, defense, special teams and getting stuff prepared and ready to go so we can hit the ground running after the draft. To me, it’s the learning curve, to learn, OK, there is no spring ball now, what do we do? Obviously, we’re in a time right now where there’s draft preparation, helping out the scouting department, putting in evaluations and that sort of stuff. And at the same time still talking ball, learning offense and terminology and all that sort of stuff. So by the time we have the draft, OTAs and all that leading up to spring and summer, our playbook and our identity of who we want to be is kind of established.”

Coach 4: “One of the biggest differences is once our season is over in the NFL, most staffs are in the office for the next three-to-five days to have exit interviews with players and staff and, after that, staffs are typically off till after the Super Bowl. So if your team doesn’t go to the playoffs and you’re retained, you’ll usually get a three-to-five week break. In the NFL, I think the head coach and general manager have the mentality of, with staff changes, let’s wait till all of the changes happen before re-grouping as a staff. That way we don’t start working on stuff if we lose people and get new people. It’s the mindset of knowing there’s going to be some healthy transition on staff, let’s wait till all is done before getting back together. Based on my time at the college level, everything keeps moving. You have new coaches? It’s up to them to get up to speed. Another thing is colleges don’t get time off after national signing day. Teams will play a regular season, a bowl game and then come back from the bowl and student-athletes are back on campus for class. Coaches are going to the AFCA convention. They’re on the road. A lot of times if a team has success, you’re not getting a breather till after signing day, and a lot of teams don’t even give their staff the week after signing day off. A lot of times college coaches are going from spring through March or April before they’re getting substantial time away. With that said, at the college level, when you’re away, you’re still expected to be communicating with recruits, you’re still expected to be communicating with your student-athletes and staying on top of them and dealing with issues if there are issues, and making sure that even though you’re away, the organization doesn’t miss a beat.”

Coach 5: “Some self-scouting. We’ll have guys on the road for a day trip or two days going to pro days. The combine has come and gone, which is really one-stop shopping for all of that. The other thing they are bringing back — they hadn’t done it the last few years because of COVID — is top-30 visits. So you have your 30 players that come in and visit your complex for a day and it’s beneficial, because it gives you an extended period of time to interview a prospect, whereas at the combine you get 15 or 20 minutes only. Here, you can have a prospect in a meeting room for six or seven hours. A lot of those guys in a 15-to-20 minute informal interview are scripted. Their agents prep them on what to say. You can see a more authentic person when you’re in that meeting room for an extended period of time.”

Are you around any of the players you’re coaching?

Coach 1: “Yeah, they come in and out for the most part, but during this time if they want to go train somewhere, they can do that. If they want to be around here and get training in with the guys, they have the ability to do that. But other than that, the new guys and free agents coming in, getting their contracts and physicals done, we get to interact and meet with them. They’re not technically required to be here and stay, but we do get to be around them.”

Coach 3: “People talk about relationships, and I think you know how I was at (my old college). I had my guys over and built relationships with my players, and people talk about how you don’t have that in the pros. And I think it’s just different. I don’t think it’s necessarily you don’t have relationships with the players. Instead of an 18-year-old, 19-year-old, you have relationships with 26-, 27- year-olds who are just getting married or having their first baby. And so those are things that we can talk about, and relate about, just like I did with the 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds who are just trying to figure things out or coming to college and are missing their parents and all that type of stuff. And so it’s just different things you talk about, and it’s different relationships, but you still have relationships. So I think that’s a little bit of a misnomer, that there’s no relationships. It’s just very, very professional in the league.”

Coach 5: “The players are not around. April 4 is when players can come into the building if it’s a new program with a new head coach. The (18th) is when everybody else can get started, and that’s all time limits and rules, and I think it’s only like an hour and a half of football, an hour and a half of conditioning and lifting weights. Very, very minimal. It builds up over the course of the spring and over the middle of June. It’s like three or four days a week.”

What would you be doing at this time of the year if you were still in college?

Coach 2: “Right now colleges are heavy into Junior Days, because February was never dead and now it is. March heats up with Junior Days, spring ball, recruiting constantly. In the NFL model right now we just really hone in on free agents and evaluations and draft evaluations and offense and defense.”

Coach 5: “We’d be in spring ball and after that, doing weight training, then getting ready for spring recruiting and going out and doing visits on weekends. We’d have Junior Days. Recruiting is never-ending. If I recall correctly, the portal was starting during my last year (in college). It wasn’t what it is now. In talking to some friends, they’re comparing it to free agency, and it really is. I didn’t realize you could go in there and be eligible to play right away. I guess they go in and don’t have to talk to their coach for a release. It sounds insane. NIL was not around when I was in college, either, so I thankfully missed that.”

Coach 6: “We recruited nationally, so we didn’t have as many prospects coming through all the time. We had our Junior Days set weeks in advance. It wasn’t like some other schools where if a recruit says he’s coming up this weekend, you get his times and know this is the only weekend he could come.”

Is it that much different in-season?

Coach 2: “The season is longer at the pro level. In the season, in college, it’s four hours a day no matter what, including lifting and practicing, so that aspect is not as much of a grind. Whereas a season in the NFL is long. It’s a workday for everybody.”

Coach 3: “We’re all grinding, and I think in the NFL, there’s more schematics and there’s more X’s and O’s for a myriad of reasons. But there’s more of that on a daily basis because we don’t have any of our day filled with recruiting. So there’s more of that. So it fills your day and it fills up a whole day. But you have a day off during summer or preseason camp. You have days off when you have a bye week or you have a Thursday night game, and you have that mini-bye. The days that the coach gives you off, it’s totally off. You’re not worrying about an unofficial visit. You’re not worrying about anything else. So yeah, I think you find those little times or those hours that were spent on a Saturday. Because if you play on a Saturday, if you had a night game at (my previous college), you were in the office at 8 o’clock or 7 o’clock, at breakfast with the recruits that were in, and then you meet with your own players, walkthrough, and then you have recruits that are in and all that type stuff, right? Your days really fill up. But if there’s a night game in the NFL, you may have a walkthrough or whatever at 9 o’clock and then you just have to be at the stadium at whatever time you need to be there. But there’s nothing else filling your day up. So you get a couple of those extra hours back and those hours become days and all that type of stuff. So there’s a little bit more time here and there, but it is long. I’ll say that. Like the season, even adding the 17th game, it’s a long season. I’m always used to Thanksgiving being the end of the college season, going out recruiting and your body’s just a little bit used to a different schedule, right? But Thanksgiving is just 10 or 12 weeks into our season. You’ve got another four regular-season games and then, shoot, hopefully four playoff games. So yeah, I think the length of the season is something that you’ve got to get adjusted to.”

Coach 4: “I’d say the biggest difference is the fact you get time off throughout the year. This past year was the first year the NFL instituted a three-day mandatory player break for players between the end of preseason and the beginning of the season. A lot of coaching staffs got time off because the preseason was put to bed, player cuts were behind you, game planning for Week 1 was already done. A lot of the staff got two-to-three days off. When you have a bye week in the NFL, coaches are typically off four-to-five days. At the college level when you have a bye, coaches are on the road recruiting. At the college level, if you’re lucky, you get one day off on a bye week. For a Thursday night game in the NFL, coaches get one-to-three days off on the weekend. At the college level if you play on Thursday you get the next day off, but aside from that, coaches get no days off in-season. From my perspective, the NFL season is longer when you look at games, but that’s just game planning. Most staffs will get between seven and 10 days off during that time period, where at the college level you’re lucky if you get one or two days off. Everybody talks about how at the NFL level it’s an 18-week season, at the college level if you play a regular season, a bowl and a conference championship game, there’s four less weeks there, but from the end of the conference championships till the bowl game, you have bowl-planning, recruiting, bowl prep, practices. I say that because everybody can say the NFL season is four weeks longer, where the reality is colleges are still going for that entire time period. Instead of game planning week-to-week, they’re focused on all those different tasks. It can be a positive if you want a little variety in your work; coaches are able to go identify players, practice and develop younger guys with developmental practices, but coaches also want to coach ball and not do all the extra stuff.”

Your experiences and thoughts on recruiting?

Coach 1: “My wife got mad at me because I was always on my phone messaging kids or trying to get kids to a game. She got mad because she felt I was not present. But at the same time, I was trying to do my job in terms of making sure the guys that we wanted to get to a game or on campus, we were meeting those needs and getting them there, so I just wanted to do my best job I could. I’m not going to say it hurt our relationship because her and I were so close, but there were times we were maybe too distant because I was so into my job and trying to prove that I could be a recruiter and prove to my coaches, the staff and other guys across the country that, hey, someone is doing something to get these kids here; who is it? And I was trying to be that guy. So yeah, it gets frustrating because you are constantly on your phone and calling kids, always messaging someone, and it gets frustrating for sure. But at the same time, you’re doing your job and also have to find that balance.

“Every Thursday I took her on date night and made sure we were going out to dinner. That was the time when I actually would put my phone away and not message. On Fridays after practice, if we had a home game, we had the afternoon off, and I would take her out to lunch and spend some time with her because you do have those days in the week you don’t see them and that gets a little tough. But I felt like I did a really good job balancing myself, herself and the relationship with recruits.”

Coach 2: “Twitter has taken over. The social media aspect, even just in 2009 we were texting and everything, but it’s so much more now — the texts and talking to parents and talking to players constantly. And then you had the Zoom aspect, which was awesome, and the FaceTime, and that’s important, and these kids are making a lifetime decision, so you have to put a lot of effort into it and have to keep on being creative in how to capture people’s attention. Being on campus and being around players, (recruiting’s) a full-time gig. I’ve been at (Power 5 programs) where we had a full recruiting staff. At (Group of 5 programs), you’re looking at us (the assistant coaches). It was good to develop relationships with people and much easier, but also time-consuming. No complaints, but that’s reality.”

Coach 3: “I just wonder when it’s going to be a little bit more balanced with these college coaches. It’s not there. Adding the transfer portal — which is free agency, but there’s no time limit on the free agency. It’s 365 days a year. Whereas our free agency, there’s a start and there’s a finish. I just don’t think it’s fair to the coaches. I don’t think that NIL deal (helps) — that adds stress and all that stuff to their jobs. And then just obviously everything else that comes in football. You can’t help some of the recruiting stuff, but some of the other stuff is just ridiculous. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

Coach 6: “Being off the phone is nice. Not having to check my phone all the time is nice. When you’re home, you’re home. I’m coaching pros. I’m coaching the best possible guys who want to win and want to make money. I like the maturity aspect of it the most. When you’re home, you’re home. Not having to get on a plane is a lifesaver.”

Do you miss college?

Coach 2: “I don’t want to come off as anti-college, because I want to be a play caller and would come back to college for that, but college is not only like the recruiting but the constantly building of relationships with players — recruiting, Twitter, phone calls. Obviously, relationships are important in the NFL, but it’s way different. Players don’t come till April. Right now none are in the building. We were around our players lifting at workouts and leading that stuff at college. It’s a big plus, but you’re there at 6 a.m. with different lift groups and grinding. There’s nothing negative about it, but that’s obviously different from here.”

Coach 3: “No, I don’t. I don’t miss it. But I would say that, spending 15 years in college, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it at that time of my life. I was supposed to be a college coach from 23 until 36 or whenever. I think that was my path. So I don’t regret it. I don’t really wish I was in the league any sooner, to be honest., because maybe I wouldn’t be as prepared. But no, am I like, pining to go back to college right now? No, not at (my age) with a young daughter whom I can go see at her gymnastics meet. I can see my wife and all that type of stuff and I’m not out on the road the whole month of December and then January and then April and May. So at this time of my life, I’m definitely happy to be in the NFL. But I don’t regret being in college when I was.”

Coach 4: “I miss the relationships with people on staff, but that’s about it. I don’t want that to come off the wrong way; I think there are a lot of fantastic things about working at the college level. I really do believe the college sports experience is phenomenal. It’s just really difficult to work at that pace for a prolonged period of time because at a certain point you’re going to burn out. I think that’s why you see tenured coaches move to different opportunities, because they want opportunities to hit reset or start anew and have natural rejuvenation, or reset their clock.”

“I look at Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley, guys who were tenured at their institutions who left. Yeah, you build up equity there, but there are also frustrations. It’s probably the same in the NFL, too, but at the college level, you have a university provost and president and athletic director. There are more parties involved at the college level. There are more voices. In the NFL, there are pretty clear reporting lines: ownership, GM, occasionally a president and that’s it.”

Coach 6: “Don’t get me twisted. I wouldn’t have left college for any job. I left for a good opportunity. I visited (my current employer) during OTAs once and I could feel the positive energy, just being a visitor.”

Would you ever go back to college?

Coach 2: “I’m not trying to get myself a job or anything, but yes. Yes, because I do like the relationships and talking to people. I like people, so yeah.”

Coach 4: “I don’t envision myself ever going back to the college level. I know that’s different from a lot of people. People enjoy the college level and different aspects of it, but I don’t see a world where I decide to go back.”

Coach 5: “If I had the choice, no. I think when you’re off in the NFL, you’re off. In the summer I can go play golf every day, and I’m not going to hear from anybody unless we’re going to set up a tee time for the next day. All your stuff, in theory, is done before you break in June. You’re normally done by Father’s Day weekend with the players, and then you send training camp stuff off to get printed and published, then once that’s done you show up at the end of July and it’s there in the boxes ready to go. And the players come in for three days and you work with them. It’s not, ‘Hey, come to campus and show this person around.’ The season is long and the hours are worse as opposed to college because there are no time limits, but the offseason is so much better. I don’t have any children, but the guys I work with that do are coaching youth sports with their kids, and you’re not doing that in the college game.”

Coach 6: “I would like to be an NFL lifer, but if the right opportunity presented itself … “

(Top photo of Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, who coached at Texas Tech before jumping to the NFL: Chris Coduto / Getty Images)