The lifestyle of a College Football coach is truly exhausting and one that ends up giving you very little time to do anything else. In the Fall, you are preparing for games each week while also recruiting, in the Winter you're now recruiting transfers, High Schoolers, and your own players back for another season. The Spring brings practices and another transfer portal window and before you know it, it's the Fall once again restarting that cycle.
The arrival of NIL and the Transfer Portal have made the job far more demanding for the coaches as they're working around the clock to keep their roster in place. As coaches have become fed up with the system it's led to some interesting career moves by College Coaches.
On Monday it was revealed that former Memphis and Virginia Tech Head Coach Justin Fuente was no longer pursuing Head Coaching gigs as he'll now serve as a color analyst for the TCU Horned Frogs radio broadcast. In an interview with Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Justin Fuente laid out why he's deciding to step away from coaching to work as a radio broadcaster for TCU.
"The current state of things I am not super interested (to coach) in, it’s just such a big commitment with the players, and the basis of the relationship now is purely transactional."Justin Fuente
This current model of College Football has driven plenty of coaches out of the sport and until there are some regulations that make the job less taxing on those involved, it will continue to drive away good coaches. Nick Saban has been the most vocal about the issues with the current model while Jeff Hafley left Boston College to become an NFL DC, and in basketball, coaches like Jim Larranaga and Tony Bennett all cited this model as the reason they stepped away.
While the Transfer Portal and NIL will never leave the sport, there are some easy changes that the NCAA could make to make the job less demanding on its coaches. Moving to one transfer portal window would lessen the workload on the coaches allowing them to focus on the players staying with the program. Adding more recruiting dead periods into the calendar would also be a massive fix as coaches are often juggling the current team and the future team in season.
Justin Fuente isn't the first coach to leave behind College Football because of the changes and he certainly won't be the last until there are more changes made.