Most college football players will be forced to change head coaches at least once in their career

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December 6, 2017 5:08 PM

The idea of college players playing their entire career under one coach is not nearly as common most of these high-school kids realize.

We are still a month away from the end of the college football season and the coaching carousel is already in full swing with some of the biggest programs making leadership changes, including Florida State, Texas A&M, UCLA, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, and Tennessee. Well, Tennessee is still trying.

All of these moves are more reminders that schools can fire coaches at will and coaches are free to pack up and bolt whenever a bigger paycheck comes along. Meanwhile, the relatively unpaid players can't switch schools without consequences and are more often forced to eventually play for a coach who is different than the one who recruited them to the school in the first place.

Of the 130 current FBS programs, 89 (68%) have, or will have, a head coach in 2018 who has been at their current school fewer than five years. That means, at least 68% of fifth-year seniors next season will not be playing for the coach they chose during the recruiting process. That number will also go up as some of the currently vacant jobs are filled by coaches from other FBS schools.

So when a coach promises a recruit that he will be there all five years, there is a good chance that won't be true.

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