How the Coaching Carousel Is Creating Awkward Distractions During Championship Week

The American Conference features programs entering title games which are led by coaches already hired elsewhere, creating unprecedented, high-stakes tension.

Jon Sumrall has already been announced as the next Florida coach, but will still lead Tulane in the American Conference championship game this week. / Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Conference championship weekend has arrived in college football and with it has come the one thing every coach preaches against on a near daily basis: distractions. 

More media appearances, more attention around town, more external focus on the team when more is on the line, more travel and more of, well, everything. That’s the nature of this unique week on the calendar when trophies and legacies are on the line but one which has been heightened in 2025 by the presence of something else.

There’s frankly a bit of awkwardness across many of the conference title games on Friday and Saturday this year. Across the country, coaches are clocking into one job and game-planning for their current school, before saving a few minutes here and there to clock into their new job for another program. 

“I’m not surprised by this. In fact, I had my eyes open coming in and expected this,” said American commissioner Tim Pernetti this week. “You know it certainly begs a bigger issue about the calendar and what is the right timing for all this stuff to take place in order to make sure that we preserve and protect the integrity of the postseason, the integrity of the sport. I’m sure that’s something that’s going to continue to be discussed amongst commissioners.”

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As much as they want to debate the topic, the college football calendar has always had to tango with impatient athletic directors looking to not only end their coaching searches earlier and earlier, but to salvage what they can of a program’s roster in an era where every player is essentially a free agent. While there has been some recent relief with tweaks to the transfer portal, Wednesday still marked the start of the early signing period and was an impetus for some schools to get part of their staff in place beforehand. That was to provide clarity to both those signing along with the handful of general managers tasked with balancing out a roster that typically needs some overhaul of some sort. 

The American is ground zero for such a clumsy revolving door this season which has led to some coaches having multiple changes of clothes a day depending on, quite literally, what hat they’re wearing at the time. No. 20 Tulane coach Jon Sumrall is hosting the conference title game despite taking the Florida job on Sunday. Opposite number Eric Morris is juggling being No. 24 North Texas’s head coach while trying to build his future team at Oklahoma State.

“Not a ton of people really know what we’re going through and how hard some of this stuff is and how hard the decisions are. Ultimately, I think it’s really cool that we’re kind of in the same position right now and that we’re both still able to lead these teams,” Morris said. “It’s been a little bit tougher to sleep just with everything going through my head. But, I haven’t missed a beat in preparing this team. I still call the plays on offense game plan-wise. We’ve still got our meetings. I think consistency is key right now for our players and our coaches to give them a great chance to go in and win this football game.”

Eric Morris, who will coach North Texas opposite of Sumrall on Friday, will become the coach at Oklahoma State next season. / Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

Winning is not just about the satisfaction of being crowned atop a conference after a long season for some, however. This year, on Friday alone, there are three head coaches who are aiming to cement a playoff bid to extend such awkwardness another few weeks despite being hired away by power-conference schools.

In addition to Morris and Sumrall in the American, James Madison’s Bob Chesney has the Dukes sitting at No. 25 in the selection committee’s latest rankings and are hosting the Sun Belt championship as a heavy favorite against Troy. Though it has not been officially announced, he is set to move across the country as UCLA’s next head coach but has agreed with both schools that he will remain in Harrisonburg, Va., if the team wins the league and earns a berth to the College Football Playoff (something that remains possible with five-loss Duke alive to win the ACC). 

“There are life-changing situations that could show up for you. Those are things that you just have to weigh and figure out as you go through it,” Chesney said. “Ultimately, what matters to me is that we’re focused on this game. Next year will have time to talk about next year. Right now we should be talking about this championship game.”

As much focus as they would love for it to be on the game itself, that’s simply not reality in the social media era with players on their phone nearly all the time when they are not on the practice field. Though some coaches dance around any speculation, most tend to address it directly with their programs in hopes of deflating any sort of tension there might be with a big game coming up just as rumors continue to circulate. 

“I’ve asked our team to be focused on what we can control, and what we’re doing as a team, and not worry about all the distractions,” BYU’s Kalani Sitake said on Monday amid interest from Penn State prior to agreeing to a new deal to remain in Provo, Utah. “This is a great distraction to have. Let’s be honest. But right now we need to be focused on making sure that we’re giving our best shot in this game against Texas Tech.”

Kalani Sitake rejected interest from Penn State to remain at BYU, which has a chance to earn a playoff bid in Saturday’s Big 12 championship game. / Rob Gray-Imagn Images

“I’ve always wanted to be transparent. That’s the reason we didn’t do this deal [with Oklahoma State] and put it in a drawer and wait weeks and then and then let it go. It wouldn’t have felt right,” Morris said. “I would have felt like a hypocrite in team meetings in front of these guys. And I think after you get over the shock of all of it, I think our kids have handled it quite nicely.”

The ultimate proof in that will come in the results this weekend, which still has a score of assistant coaches looking at their next move in addition to other head coaches who may still be involved in searches for any of the seven open jobs. 

For many involved in the games, that’s simply what this time of year has become though, as the future gets juggled with the present in an industry that is anything but static. Success tends to beget interest, which leads to moving up the coaching ladder no matter what kind of tension that might end up leading to in tenures that can suddenly be measured in days and hours instead of years.

“You do have maybe some duties that can distract at times. You have to make sure you’re focused,” Sumrall said. “I’m very fortunate to have an unbelievable staff. I don’t call the offense or the defense or the kicking game, so that’s allowed me to be a little bit more freed up.”

The American is interestingly the first conference championship game between departing coaches since the 2012 MAC championship, which featured Northern Illinois’s Dave Doeren (before he went to NC State) and Kent State–turned–Purdue coach Darrell Hazell.

Doeren left the Huskies after the victory to head to Raleigh, N.C. and skipped the team’s BCS bowl game. Hazell, rather uniquely, coached the Golden Flashes in their postseason appearance—which came the following month and several weeks after the school had hired his replacement. 

This season might have at least one coach following that same path, albeit with the added weight of a subsequent game coming in the playoff itself instead of an exhibition game that doesn’t carry quite the same weight. 

“[Tulane] affording me the opportunity to finish this with our guys is really important to me. And I’m very grateful for the opportunity,” Sumrall said. “It’s about our players. You know, everything we do in our program is player-driven. It’s not about me, never has been, ever will be. Tulane football is bigger than a head coach.”

That’s a good sentiment to have but isn’t quite the case during this weekend where the coaches in several conference championships will be front and center—not because of the road they took to get there with their teams, but because of the path that they’re following out of town. 

It’s awkward for sure, but figures to be par for the course in early December across a sport that doesn’t seem to mind embracing it all at the same time.

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