The Inside Zone

The Inside Zone

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The Inside Zone
The Inside Zone
Yes, college football has a problem keeping its coaches. But it’s not the NFL it needs to worry about.
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Yes, college football has a problem keeping its coaches. But it’s not the NFL it needs to worry about.

Small-school coaches continue to take jobs — any jobs, it seems — at the power conference level.

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Matt Fortuna
Mar 12, 2024
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The Inside Zone
The Inside Zone
Yes, college football has a problem keeping its coaches. But it’s not the NFL it needs to worry about.
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Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Ahead of the 2014 season, Chuck Martin bet on himself. He left his offensive coordinator job at Notre Dame to become the head coach at Miami-Ohio, taking the $200,000 annual paycut that came with the move.

It was bold. Many thought he was crazy. Martin had coached in the national championship game in 2012, and within a year’s time he was taking over a program that had not win a single game in 2013.

A decade later, Martin’s running backs coach at Miami, Jason Simmons, is leaving the school — his alma mater — after one year to take an off-field role at Purdue, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Inside Zone. (On3 first reported the news.)

The move is in some ways the antithesis of what Martin did when he initially took over the RedHawks. But it is the type of move that has become all-too-common in this age of college football haves vs. have-nots.

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Every time a college coach leaves for the NFL, a popular talking point ensues about about how no one wants to work in college football anymore. There is some truth in that sentiment, but the frustrations are misguided.

It’s not college football at-large that’s being abandoned.

It’s the schools outside the power conferences that are getting left further and further behind.

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