Scott has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter (this email) year-round and a column during football season that's published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.
Scott Davis: Is There a Fix for College Football?
The day after my alma mater's football program finished up a dreadful 4-8 campaign with another listless loss to its in-state rival, I found myself sneaking peeks at my phone while my wife and I embarked on our annual tradition of putting up our Christmas tree.
I was riveted.
I needed information about what just happened – more, more, more. I couldn't look away from the slow-motion trainwreck that was unfolding. And so, I kept scrolling On3 sites for any news and nuggets and information that I could find.
But I wasn't focused on learning about anything that had to do with South Carolina's football program – the one that I follow, root for, and live and die with each fall. Nope. I was seeking the latest on the endless, fascinating, bizarre Lane Kiffin Saga.
You've heard of Lane Kiffin, right?
If you're currently alive, you have.
Hours after leading his Ole Miss Rebels to an 11-1 record and a tie for first in the SEC standings, and presumably a few weeks before he would be taking that same team into the College Football Playoff to compete for a national championship, Kiffin was weighing an offer to leave and coach LSU – a border rival, annual opponent and SEC foe of the team he was currently coaching.
Surely this wasn't happening, was it?
Ole Miss had already made it clear that he couldn't continue coaching the Rebels during a championship run if he took the job in Baton Rouge. He could stay and try to win a title now, or leave and hope to have another chance someday down the road. No one who was already making millions and was likely to make millions more with an extension would actually pass up the chance to win a national title and leave his players to go somewhere else, would they?
As it turns out, Lane Kiffin would.
In the days that followed, Kiffin was savaged by just about everyone associated with the sport (except, curiously, the talking heads on ESPN's College GameDay, many of whom share the same agent as him). And as the week wore on, it was tempting for some of us to conclude that this was just another among the many strange and off-putting moves that Kiffin has made in two decades of coaching football.
But this is more than a Lane Kiffin problem.
This is a college football problem.
And right now, I'm not sure there's a fix.
The Carousel Roars On
This is a powerfully important moment for Shane Beamer's South Carolina football program. It is, in fact, the most important moment Beamer has faced in Columbia. If his tenure is to last into 2027, much of what is happening right now could make the difference.
Unsurprisingly, there's quite a bit of head-spinning news regarding the Gamecocks at present: There's a search for a new offensive coordinator, as well as for two vacancies on the offensive staff. High school recruiting wrapped up this week, with the transfer portal window looming just behind it.
And yet, I'm finding it hard to focus on what's happening at my own university, because so much of what's happening across the sport seems utterly out of whack. I'm pondering a question that many of you are weighing right now: If the sport itself is broken, how much emotion can I invest in my own team? Does any of it matter?
Early in the season, Penn State fired a proven winner in coach James Franklin in an effort to get a jump on attracting the best candidates to replace him. That kick-started a wave of in-season firings across the sport, including (among others) at LSU, Auburn, Florida, and Arkansas. Kentucky fired the winningest coach in its history – Mark Stoops – as soon as the season ended.
Weeks later, Penn State still hasn't filled its vacancy, and is apparently considering making the interim coach its permanent head coach after the program was spurned by what seemed like a couple of dozen candidates. Was this outcome better than just keeping Franklin (who moved on to Virginia Tech, which fired its own coach during the season)?
Auburn, Florida, Arkansas, and Kentucky, as well as the newly spurned Ole Miss, all made quick hires just as the season ended, presumably to keep high school and transfer recruiting afloat. And yet none of those schools landed a surefire SEC winner who has set their respective fan bases ablaze with excitement. In many ways, it seems like they've merely traded one body wearing a headset for another body wearing a headset.
So why did they change coaches in the first place?
The answer, as it always seems to be in today's college football, is money.
Cash is King
What else is there to say at this point?
Much has already been made of the monumental impact that the transfer portal and NIL deals have made since essentially landing atop college football a few years ago. And I'm certainly not the person who can untangle all of the intertwining strands that have transformed this once rather simple autumn pleasure into arguably the most complicated major sport in America.
And it's true that donors and boosters have always held sway in this game, and that money has always mattered, and that the schools with the most resources have largely always been the ones who ruled.
But now that we're paying players, now that the competition for top transfers is so fierce, and now that schools like Vanderbilt have paved the way towards winning by poaching players from other programs, the pressure to win immediately is more intense than ever.
When I was in school at South Carolina, coaches often spoke of needing five years to build a winner somewhere. Five years is a luxury that absolutely no one is afforded today. Increasingly, five weeks seems like all you have to make things work.
With donors now essentially bankrolling the roster, the biggest boosters understandably want to see a quick return on their investment. That's why schools are now so desperate to make major moves. They need to provide the appearance that they're doing something – anything – to build a winner.
But this is what "making moves just to do something" looks like: It looks like replacing James Franklin – who led his team into the College Football Playoff just last year – with the guy on his staff who took over from him as an interim coach.
It looks like Auburn and Arkansas and Florida spending a ton of money on buyouts to hire coaches who don't at least immediately appear to be major upgrades from the ones they already had.
And it looks like a coach walking away from a potential national title to go elsewhere, simply because he believes that he'll have more resources and money to spend on players long-term at his new place.
The only reason – the only reason – anyone ever becomes a head coach is to win a championship.
Lane Kiffin, who has never won a championship, just walked away from a chance to win one right now to go rebuild someone else.
The reason is money.
The only reason is money.
Tell me how you're feeling about college football's chaos by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com. (Please do not reply to this email.)
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