Former Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin’s move to Louisiana has totally shaken up the college football world and has everyone scratching their heads about how crazy this coaching market has gotten with all the money floating around. Bouncing just before their first ever playoff appearance even pushed a Texas congressman to join Nick Saban in calling out the current state of college football.

College football’s hiring timeline has become a major problem, especially for players more than coaches. Because the early signing period is in December, schools feel pressured to fire and hire coaches right in the middle of the most important stretch of the season. Last week, Nick Saban went off on it and called the process unfair, saying, “Everybody should be thinking about the players… should be able to play for his coach for the entire season.”

College football should act more like the NFL when it comes to coaching changes. In the NFL, coaches can’t interview or leave until their season is over, which keeps teams intact. However, in college ball, a coach can leave the program for bigger checks/ better opportunities just days before a bowl game or before the playoff is finalized. According to Saban, this is a structural problem in college football, not a Lane Kiffin problem.

On November 1, Texas congressman Chip Roy shares the same frustration and has been even more direct. “I mean, why in the hell are we allowing coaches to walk out and be paid not to coach for years? It’s insane,” Roy said on Monday. “I mean, what we just saw unfold with Lane Kiffin is just an absolute abomination. People say, ‘Well, this is the market working, Chip. This is the market forces at play.’ This is not supposed to be a market, not in that classic sense.”

For him, the Lane Kiffin situation is just one of many examples of how the sport has become messy, rushed, and overly focused on making greens. Roy points fingers coaching sagas and chaotic hiring cycles as signs that college football has lost its traditional identity. Instead of focusing on rivalries, stability, and student-athletes, he believes the sport is becoming NFL lite. He called out making money in the name of conference realignment.

Congressman exposes conference realignment

A major part of the problem, in Roy’s eyes, is how conferences have changed. Over the last few years, traditional conferences have ballooned to massive sizes, sometimes with 16–19 teams spread across the entire country. Historic Pac-12 teams have ended up in the Big Ten or ACC simply because of TV money.

Roy criticizes this trend, asking why “Stanford and Berkeley on the West Coast [are] in the Atlantic Coast Conference… all because of money.” The old geographic boundaries that used to shape conferences are basically gone now.

In the end, Saban and Roy are both saying that college football is kind of a mess right now. The sport keeps growing and making more money, but the rules haven’t changed to match it. Coaches leave at bad times, players are stuck dealing with the problems, and conferences are being changed mostly for TV money. If the leaders don’t fix the rules soon, things will just stay confusing and chaotic.