The NCAA’s Board of Directors is expected to approve a proposal that will allow college football programs to add a 10th assistant to the coaching staff. The proposal has received the support of the Division 1 Council in this week’s NCAA meetings, which was to be expected. There appears to be nothing else to stand in the way of passing the proposal and expanding the coaching staff at football programs across the country.
There appears to be a widespread show of support for the addition of a coach to the staff from head coaches, which makes sense. With many programs adding on special assistants as analysts, some programs would benefit from being able to promote an analyst to a coaching role and get them more involved in the program. Just within the last week, Alabama hired Mike Locksley to a full-time coaching role after he had been helping the program out as an analyst. Alabama also picked up Steve Sarkisian as an analyst and promoted him to offensive coordinator following the awkwardly timed decision to push Lane Kiffin on his way out the door to take the FAU head coaching job.
The concern is this would lead to a greater divide between the haves and the have-nots in college football, as the addition of an extra coach will increase the payroll. This is hardly a concern for programs like Alabama and Ohio State, but perhaps more of a concern for a program like UMass or UAB (yes, UAB is back this year), for example.
Regardless, Donald Trump will happily take credit for the creation of potentially 128 new jobs in college football.
The Division 1 Council did scrap the idea of having an early signing period in the summer but there does still appear to be momentum for an early signing period in December. Another proposal receiving support from the council include the option for high school seniors to make official visits starting April 1 until the end of June (official visits currently cannot take place until September 1). The Council has also discussed organizing a 14-week season to play 12 games, thus providing two bye weeks for each team and push the start of the season into August.