Estimated read time: 7-8 minutes
A few summers ago in Hollywood at Pac-12 Football Media Day, I was set up on radio row. My schedule included 37 interviews over seven hours. At the end of the day, I was booked for a 1-on-1 talk with Arizona's first-year head football coach, Jedd Fisch.
I almost canceled it.
Arizona was picked to finish last in the South Division and my radio show was already off-air for a couple of hours by the time Fisch was supposed to slide into the booth. It wasn't personal. I was weary and wondered if my audience wanted to hear from Fisch.
Beyond a few Arizona-based radio stations, there was concern among Pac-12 staffers that Fisch wouldn't have anyone to talk with. Some other media outlets packed up and headed out in the late afternoon. A Pac-12 representative stopped by and persuaded me to keep the interview. And I was glad I did.
Fisch was great.
He talked about working for Bill Belichick and Sean McVay in the NFL. He spoke about coaching Cam Newton, and getting to a Super Bowl. His favorite game show is Family Feud, he said. And Fisch told me, that while growing up, his mother worked as a school psychologist and dated a high school football coach. That's how an 8-year-old Fisch was introduced to the sport that became his profession.
His favorite movie?
"I'm not a movie guy," Fisch said.
But who would play him if they made a movie about his team?
"Brad Pitt, right?" he quipped.
I enjoyed the interview. It was taped and aired the following day on my show. And I went back and listened to it for a second time this week after Fisch, who won 10 games last season at Arizona, was introduced as the new Washington Huskies football coach.
Loyalty?
Decide for yourself what it means these days in college football. Fisch took a higher profile job for more money — $54.3 million over seven years. He would have made $3.4 million next season had he stayed in Tucson. Still, Arizona fans felt burned by Fisch. They were riding high. Losing the coach was a jarring development in their world.
Arizona pivoted in the next 72 hours and hired Brent Brennan. He built a winner at one of the most difficult places to find football success, San Jose State. Brennan landed in a private jet and was introduced to his new team in Tucson on Wednesday.
It was just nine nights ago that Washington played Michigan for the national title in Houston. Nick Saban was still Alabama's coach. All was calm. In the days since the Wolverines' victory, three college football coaches were hired, Jim Harbaugh interviewed with two NFL teams, Pete Carroll got fired, Bill Belichick parted ways with the Patriots, and the football coaching carousel is just warming up.
Brennan is an interesting figure amid the chaos. He walked into the room filled with Arizona players on Wednesday and bonded instantly, pointing out his deep ties with the school. His wife graduated from UA. His brother played there. Brennan represents a reconnection with the Dick Tomey era.
"I don't know if I've ever felt more responsibility in my life than I feel today," Brennan said.
It was a brilliant entry.
But I couldn't help but wonder how those words might be weaponized should Brennan leave for a better job someday. Ambition isn't a bad thing. Except maybe when it derails your football program's momentum and fans sober up to the reality of the new world. Players are more transient. Coaches are bigger flight risks. The only certainty is that fans will be challenged to dig deeper with their loyalty and continue to invest their time, emotions, and disposable income.
Fisch preached family and commitment, all the way up to his departure for Washington. He's now being vilified for it. UA fans are ticked that he spent less than four minutes saying goodbye to his Wildcat players in his final team meeting.
A restaurant in Tucson — Gentle Ben's Brewing — has installed photos of Fisch's face in the urinals, per a social media post. They'll help with aim, I guess, and working out the lingering bad feelings, too.
On Tuesday, as Fisch was introduced as the new Huskies coach, he was mindful of his words. He's no dummy. He refused to call Washington his 'forever' job. When asked about commitment to a school, he tiptoed around the subject, talking about the resources needed to compete at the highest levels of college football.
"The idea of staying is why you come," Fisch said. "The idea of being here is to win championships and that's all I can promise. We're going to be here every single day trying to win a championship."
Basically: "You totally have me … until you don't."
Do you blame coaches? For chasing more money, better security, and bigger platforms? Is their undying loyalty supposed to be to a fan base and recruits? The athletic director who risked their job to hire them? Or to their own families, themselves, and their careers?
Discuss.
It's a debate worth having. Because on one hand, fans are caught in the gears of a mechanism that has been infused with piles of television money. We want coaches to be ambitious. It's what gets us out of bed in the morning. But it's that same driving force that fuels career trajectories and bank accounts. It feels hypocritical for a fan base to blame a head football coach for leaving them, knowing that the school's next hire is about to be poached from somewhere else. It's a never-ending cycle of broken promises.
Kalen DeBoer will win at Alabama. But he'll never live up to the legend of Saban. It's an impossible act to follow. Fisch has far richer resources at UW than he had at Arizona. But Michael Penix Jr. is going to the NFL. It's going to be a tricky transition to the Big Ten for the Huskies, and Fisch has a very small sample size of college success. I'm curious how it will go. And Brennan was a sneaky good hire. I won't be surprised if we look back a decade from now and see it as the wisest move of the trio.
I do worry about fans.
A lot of them are turned off by the transfer portal, NIL, and the maniacal offseason movement of head coaches. It's been a turbulent 12 months. There's less than ever for college football fans to hang on to. But I'm not sure I can blame players and coaches for bouncing around.
Remember that 2021 Pac-12 Football Media Day I began this piece with? I did an appraisal of the interviews I conducted that day. Three football seasons have passed, and nine of the conference's 12 head coaches are no longer at their respective universities.
Cal's Justin Wilcox is the lone "North Division" coach left at his original school. Kyle Whittingham (Utah) and Chip Kelly (UCLA) are still employed in what was the "South Division." Of the nine coaches who departed, five were fired and four left on their own.
David Shaw threw in the keys at Stanford. Mario Cristobal (Oregon), Jonathan Smith (Oregon State), and Fisch (Arizona) left for other jobs. Washington's Jimmy Lake, Nick Rolovich (Washington State), Karl Dorrell (Colorado), Clay Helton (USC) and Herm Edwards (ASU) were all fired.
That's wild turnover, isn't it?
We're at an inflection point with fan emotion. Fans are going to have to decide for themselves whether attaching undying allegiance to a player or coach is safe. The industry is more mercurial than ever. There are lots of mercenaries out there. Fans love their schools to their bones. They often struggle to see why everyone else doesn't, too. So if you love to announce on game day "That's my guy! I ride or die with him!" that's fine. Just know that they may not be saying it back.
Read more of columnist John Canzano exclusively at JohnCanzano.com.
