We’re watching this evolution play out in real time, a path that was inconceivable a few short years ago.
A path that has finally reached the top of the mountain, where everything should be gold and bold and clear to see. Only it’s not.
The coach/player dynamic is rapidly changing, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Not even the most powerful coach in college football.
“They’re offended when you coach them,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said during a media availability following practice March 18.
This revelation, everyone, is staggering.
Not that today’s player has become difficult to coach. But that Smart, who comes from coaching tree of Nick Saban – the Death Star himself – admitted as much.
There is no coach in college football with more coaching capital. No coach in college sports with more weight and more gravitas – and here’s the key – and more of a chance to ignore the tsunami of player empowerment than Smart.
And while he hasn’t given in, the fact that he’s declaring this obstacle is significant. The evolution, everyone, is quickly becoming a revolution.
This isn’t so much about calling out players to accept coaching as it is a loss of control. There’s slippage in the player/coach dynamic, and it’s growing.
Georgia has 24 freshmen who enrolled early, and Smart said last week not one is in shape. Not one freshman is, “sustaining his reps and just flourishing.”
That led to his assessment of the rest of the team, and how the events of the past four years since the inception of NIL and free player movement have become a defining polar shift.
“They’re not where they need to be,” Smart said. “They have to be able to receive coaching. It’s like, ‘You’re coaching me hard? Like you’re telling me I gotta play with effort?’”
For more than 100 years coaches have held the upper hand in the one-sided process of we know what’s best for you. From Junction Boys with The Bear, to Bo and Woody, to Competition Tuesdays with Pete Carroll, there was little doubt who dictated this dance.
Players for decades were void of any power, caught in a box of the NCAA owning their name, image and likeness, and penalizing them a year of precious eligibility if they dared to transfer. On top of that, there has been — and always will be — one way to get to the NFL.
Think about this new incredible reality: it was only nine years ago, in the 2015-16 school year, that the NCAA relented and allowed $5,000 stipends above the “cost of scholarship.”
Beginning this season, some players will make more than their coaches in revenue sharing and personal NIL deals. Like coaches, they’re free to transfer and move from school to school with each passing season.
If one school doesn’t fit, the next one might. If one coach doesn’t work, if he pushes too hard and coaches with too many demands and expectations, maybe the next one won’t.
Meanwhile, the best coach in college football – with the best roster in college football, with a program that could begin every season ranked No.1 in the country – is hesitant to coach players hard and prepare them for the difficult grind ahead.
If the coach with the overflowing budget and opulent facilities and every possible advantage can’t coach hard, who can? If the coach with the proven track record of winning championships and developing players for the NFL can’t ask more from a player, where does that leave the rest of the coaches in the sport?
Years ago I sat in Herm Edwards’ office at Arizona State, and he was trying to explain the process of not only becoming among the less than two percent of college players who make the NFL — but staying there. He spoke about elite athletes, and the rare size and strength and physical growth at nearly every position.
“But that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t get it up here,” Edwards said, pointing at each of his temples. “If you don’t understand what it takes, and you don’t want to give everything to that preparation and get better every time you step on that field? You’re out of the league in four years or less.’
So after the seismic change of the past four years, after a spike in player empowerment has changed every possible metric in the player/coach relationship, we’ve come all the way back to home base.
All the way back to the only card left for coaches to use, one they’ve wielded over the years with great success: without me, you can’t get to the NFL. Yet even that card has been minimized somewhat with the explosion of NIL deals.
Some college players are making more than the end of NFL rosters, where the minimum annual salary for players is $840,000 for rookies, and $960,000 for players with one year of service.
For the elite of college football, that’s chump change. For the elite of high school football now entering college football – including a few Georgia players – that’s less than their annual salary.
“Kids that wanna be coached don’t care what (money) they make,” Smart said. “The guys in the NFL make more than these guys, and they still wanna be coached.”
The evolution has quickly become the revolution, everyone.
Not even the most powerful coach in college football can do anything about it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.