When Jim Harbaugh became the first national champion coach to walk off since Tom Osborne, there were takeaways.

It was a couple of weeks removed from Nick Saban, AKA the best coach we’ve ever seen in college football, calling it a career at 72.

And so some, like my guy Danny Kanell, connected dots like this:

Agree to disagree. College coaches bolting for the NFL isn’t what the concern should be. There’s a different concern.

I get what Kanell and others are saying. The year-round calendar that college football coaches endure is far different from when Saban took the Alabama job in 2007. So, too, are the salaries. Like, Saban was college football’s first $4 million coach when he was hired. When he retired, he did so after a season in which half of the SEC’s coaches made at least $4 million.

Wait. Did I say half the coaches made $4 million? Whoops. I meant to say that Saban retired after a season in which half of the SEC’s coaches made at least $9 million.

Yeah, there’s money in the NFL, too. Harbaugh is making plenty of that.

Do you know what there isn’t in the NFL? Vacancies. Those vacancies are typically filled by someone with an NFL background. You know, like Harbaugh.

Here’s the list of active NFL head coaches who came directly from a college job:

  • Jim Harbaugh, Chargers

Harbaugh joined a list that’s not nearly as deep as some realize:

Before Harbaugh and Meyer, those last 4 “college-to-NFL” jumpers are all now back in the college ranks.

Also, what those in agreement with Kanell are conveniently leaving out is that Harbaugh was a proven NFL coach who led his program to the ultimate goal (a title) and was escaping the ultimate headache (an NCAA punishment). It sounds like a 1-of-1 situation because it was.

The more pressing issue is college coaches getting burnt out and not coaching anywhere.

At a time when there’s life-changing money to be made from buyouts alone, I think about someone like Dan Mullen. Mullen’s flaw was that he wasn’t built for the modern era of recruiting. So naturally, he got a $12 million buyout when that came to a head — along with some natural disagreements in other areas of his job — and he has since hung out in the media world.

Mullen could be a college offensive coordinator or perhaps even a low-level Power 5 head coach if he wanted to. But what’s the incentive? Mullen is set for life, he still gets to be an active part of the sport and he doesn’t have to deal with recruiting/transfer portal/NIL anymore. That’s the part that bothered him. He’s always had an NFL intrigue, and while he could carve up defenses as a coordinator, not a ton of NFL teams hire fired head coaches who have been in the media. He’s also not exactly throwing his name into the ring for all of those jobs.

Weird ending at Florida aside, would college football be better with Mullen on the sidelines calling plays? Yes.

For coaches who are in the thick of it, the idea of stepping away might not appeal to them. We’re living in a time in which there are only 3 active college coaches with a ring. One of those is, of course, Kirby Smart.

Smart is wired differently. That much we know. You don’t recruit the way he does with a normal skill set, nor do you repeat as a national champ after losing 15 players to the NFL Draft.

But in this year-round era of college football, it’s fair to ask a question about his future — how long will he do it?

Can he do it until he’s 72 like Saban? My guess is no. I’ll take the under.

Doing that would mean 24 more years of dealing with the year-round calendar. It’s different from the one that Saban had for the vast majority of his historic career, and it’s not even worth comparing it to Bear Bryant’s, which allowed him to spend 6-8 weeks on the West Coast golfing with former USC coach John McKay every offseason.

If the counterpoint to that is “well, Mack Brown is still coaching at 72, why can’t Kirby?” I’d push back on that by saying in addition to spending the majority of his career in the pre-NIL/transfer portal/year-round recruiting calendar world, Brown went to the media side for the first 5 years of the Playoff era before getting back into it. Also, ask UNC fans about his future and they’ll tell you he looks like he’s nearing the end.

Smart is going to be the case study. Why? Unlike some other coaches at the top of the sport, it feels like Smart will get to call his next move. Dabo Swinney is probably in that category, as well, but if he were to step down at any time in the 2020s, it would feel like more of a byproduct that he never wanted to fully embrace this new era of college football like Smart has.

If Smart stopped coaching in his 50s, it could be the byproduct of what the sport has become. It could also be that he fell out of favor with a Georgia fan base that expected to be the team of the 2020s and instead got annual, non-championship disappointment.

We won’t know for a while if it’s the former. We also don’t know if the NCAA would be willing to step in and tweak things like the Early Signing Period, which could cause increased stress on Playoff teams as the field triples. We don’t know if the official visit schedule, which now extends into the summer. Electronic communication also bleeds into the dead period, which simply states that coaches cannot have in-person communication with recruits.

It sounds like a lot because it is. That’s well-documented.

Coaches are in a lose-lose spot over this stuff because if they complain, they’re either reminded that they’re compensated well and/or shamed for not working as hard. If they don’t complain, they could be shaving years off of their career.

I am beginning to wonder if the latter could be happening. I’m also beginning to wonder if it could take too long to do anything about that.

That’s far more concerning than a 1-of-1 coach in a 1-of-1 situation leaving for the NFL.