One of the fun parlor games of college football is to have very strong opinions about where coaches should ply their trades. We all love to play matchmaker.
Outside of college football, this is a plainly bizarre thing to do; I’ve never once taken aside my mailman and said, “You know, you’d make more money and have a higher quality of life if you moved yourself and your entire family six states over.” But we all like to believe that the right coach, and the right job, at the right time, can fix everything.
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You just have to find the right fit.
The only way this works is if there is a clear linear progression. There are tiers of jobs for coaches to take, a ladder to climb, and plotting a course through those tiers is half the battle. I’m not sure I’d use “Do what Urban Meyer did” as a model for navigating one’s way through life, but he’s the canonical example of how to construct a (college) coaching career. He took over Bowling Green at 37, moved to Utah, got promoted to Florida and ended up at Ohio State. That’s how you’re supposed to do it: Keep taking one step up until you find yourself at the top. That’s what we try to do in our own careers.
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