Sean Payton Suspended 1 Year: A Hypothetical On College Football Factoring Into His Career

A shocking development from the National Football League announced Wednesday — and conveniently, simultaneously with Denver’s trading of Tim Tebow to the New York Jets — New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton is suspended for the entire 2012 season. Payton was not the epicenter of the Saints’ bounty firestorm; that would be Gregg Williams. But Payton was damn close to it.

Payton received a contract extension through 2015, but such a lengthy absence — particularly one under such unsavory circumstances — has to put that in jeopardy. Should Payton’s contract be terminated either on his end or the franchise’s, the prospect of the college game offering refuge is intriguing. Payton’s been an NFL coach for well over a decade, but has a college lineage.

Most famously, he was running backs coach at San Diego State in 1992 and 1993 when one Marshall Faulk was plying the trade at a Heisman-worthy pace.

Coaches either over the barrel or completely dropped in it have crossed levels before. Jerry Tarkanian’s first job after the hot tub scandal at UNLV was in the professional ranks with the San Antonio Spurs. Kelvin Sampson took on a position with the Milwaukee Bucks after the NCAA gave him a five-year show cause banishment for improperly contacting recruits while at Indiana, after doing so at Oklahoma.

Now, the NBA and NCAA seem to have a more tenuous relationship than the NFL does with college sports’ governing body. The NFL and NCAA showed solidarity when the pros extended Terrelle Pryor’s suspension at Ohio State to the Oakland Raiders. Pryor declared for the supplemental draft last summer amid an NCAA investigation into improper benefits Pryor received at OSU. Plenty of skeptics believed Pryor’s departure to be a ploy to avoid further NCAA criticism, and the NFL worked proactively to

It worked both ways on the coaching front. The same controversy that led to Pryor’s suspension forced out head coach Jim Tressel, and the six-game suspension Tressel was to carry out at OSU followed him to the Indianapolis Colts.

The billions of dollars the NFL produces lets it carry a heavy stick, and the NCAA would be wise to not incur the League’s wrath. Thus, a hypothetical foray back to the college game wouldn’t come in 2012. Aside from tempting the NFL-NCAA partnership, most coaching staffs have been filled out for the upcoming year. Abandoning the possibility of an NFL return to serve as a low level positions coach, even somewhere as prominent as Penn State, would be nonsensical.

However, if Payton’s damaged goods in the NFL’s collective eyes, a college tenure in 2013 might be the damage control his career now requires.