In March, Clemson hired longtime Grayson High coach Mickey Conn to take a position on coach Dabo Swinney’s staff as a senior defensive assistant. Swinney also hired a high-school coach who had developed a powerful team in South Carolina to be the Tigers’ senior offensive assistant.
The hires did not escape the notice of Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson and others, who have seen some schools’ staffs swell in size while others have remained comparatively static.
“It’s turning into basketball because what happens is you go and you hire the high school coaches, and then that helps you in recruiting,” Johnson said.
That particular recruiting tactic aside, the increase and disparity in the size of football staffs has gained the attention of coaches, administrators and chief decision makers. By NCAA rules, FBS teams may have 10 full-time coaches and four graduate assistants. While the size of a team’s strength-and-conditioning staff is limited to five, there are no limits on other positions, such as quality control, operations and recruiting.
The gap is evident even within the seemingly level playing fields of the ACC. Beyond its coaching staff, Clemson has 25 staffers in various positions dedicated to football. Boston College has nine. According to data provided by the schools or surveyed from their online staff directories, Boston College’s staff is smallest, followed by Virginia at 10. Tech is next with 11 — four recruiting staff members, three strength and conditioning coaches, two operations staffers, a video director and a quality-control assistant.
Most are between 12 and 15, although apples-to-apples comparisons for staff are difficult.
Said Johnson, “I think you just want to be competitive with everybody else.”
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who is the chairman of the NCAA’s football oversight committee tasked with overseeing competitive issues in the game, said the possibility of a cap is on the table with the committee.
He noted what he termed a growing trend of personnel who aren’t technically coaches but are involved in preparing for games, such as Conn.
“And so I would say that there are some universities where it’s gotten out of control, and I think there’s probably some appetite for some limitations,” Bowlsby said. “But then, the other side of it, we aren’t all created equal and we never have been created all equally. You don’t want to go too far down the path of trying to legislate competitive equity, because it’s largely a mirage.”
Johnson has company. North Carolina’s Larry Fedora, who has one of the larger staffs in the conference (16 in operations/administration, video, quality control, recruiting), Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi and Boston College’s Steve Addazio are among those who endorse a cap.
“There shouldn’t be any reason why one Power Five (conference) team or staff has more staff,” Addazio said. “I mean, they regulate how many (graduate assistants), they regulate how many full-time coaches you can have, they should be regulating all this other nonsense, all the quality controls, interns and whatever else they call this.”
On the other side of the fence? Maybe the coach who has eight quality-control coaches. After the 10-man coaching staff, other assistants are not permitted to take part in hands-on coaching in practice or games, but can work with coaches in reviewing game video or game planning.
“I think the more, the merrier,” said Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher, whose staff is 20, not counting video staff. “You develop young coaches, you get guys in the business, and it makes your players and coaches better.”
ACC athletic directors have discussed the matter “any number of times,” Tech AD Mike Bobinski said. He said the group collectively agrees that there needs to be a limit in place.
“I think sometimes we tend to speak from both sides of our mouth,” he said. “We talk about how concerned we are with doing things in a way that fits a collegiate model as opposed to a pro model of doing things, and then we have staffs that start to look like a pro staff. You need to take that into account at some point.”
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