The football coaching carousel has local ties and/or interests.

Lincoln Riley, the former East Carolina coach, left Oklahoma for Southern Cal, and the money involved is astronomical. USC President Carol Folt had to approve the school’s board of directors paying Riley’s buyout of $4.5 million and a salary that must be close to $10 million. With an endowment of $6 billion, that is chump change for the Trojans.

The big raise is obviously due to the cost of living between Norman and Los Angeles, and the private school has been known to give head football coaches homes and cars and country club memberships to supplement their packages to try to restore USC’s huge tradition in football.

Riley might have been scared of Oklahoma eventually joining the SEC, where several of the best teams in the country will probably be shut out of an expanded College Football Playoff. And he is taking about a dozen players and recruits with him from OU.

Next shocker was Brian Kelly, who is from New England, going to LSU in Baton Rouge, where the biggest “don’t tell me what you did yesterday” attitude resides in football. Kelly may have been frustrated with Notre Dame’s independent status hurting it making the CFP. But in the SEC West, Kelly must face Alabama and Nick Saban annually.

In the ACC, the only change so far is David Cutcliffe’s long-anticipated departure from Duke, where he rebuilt a loser into a bowl contender before letting it slip the last two years to the Coastal cellar.

Duke head coach David Cutcliffe looks on during the first half of an NCAA college football game against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021. On Sunday, Duke and Cutcliffe announced they are parting ways after 14 seasons. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Rumors began with Billy Napier from Louisiana-Lafayette, who was soon hired by Florida. And now Duke is looking at a list of high-profile coordinators from Power 5 schools, all of whom have to be considered questionable fits for a job more like the Ivy League.

This will be the first major hire for new Athletic Director Nina King. If she called me for advice, which is a laughable impossibility, I would tell her to make Cutcliffe her chief advisor on the selection.

After all, who knows more about Duke football than the highly-respected coach? It is clearly a unique job, requiring the support of boosters and alumni who all fawn over Blue Devils basketball.

In one interview, Cutcliffe could give King the thumbs down on any of the candidates. So she would be left with only good choices.

 

Photo via AP Photo/Ashley Landis.

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