Will this be a yearly ordeal or is it an oddity.
it seems there are more top tier openings than top tier candidates.
Some of these schools are going to regret their actions. There just aren't enough top flight coaches to fill all of these vacancies.
I don't think this is sustainable in the long run.
Similar to what NIL is doing on the player side, there are only so many good coaches to be distributed and at some point if this keeps up there will be schools that have $200 million in payables for buyouts and new coach contracts. Donors aren't going to keep giving millions.
I am changing my view on NIL a little bit. Look at the chaos in the "top 25" this year. For the first time in a long time there isn't a clear 5-6 teams that are so dominant they can only be beaten by members of that group. It used to be that there were say, 6-8 teams that were so absolutely stacked like Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, LSU in the early 20s etc. that there was just no way anyone else had a prayer. That's all changed and college football has been turned on it's head because Alabama and the like can't just stockpile the best players on rinse and repeat due to 1) free transferring, and 2) NIL deals coming from dark horse 2nd tier teams that are willing to pay.
Even OSU and Indiana I wouldn't consider clearly above the rest, neither of those teams has played anyone yet (Texas ain't all that and Oregon struggled like hell against Wisconsin for a half hour). Iowa was one missed FG and first down from Indiana being ranked #8 right now.
What's got all these donors in a frenzy of shooting cash cannons at these coaches at the first sign of 3 losses is the expanded playoffs. Now that there's 12 teams, these schools like LSU, Penn State, et al, think that once the playoffs are looking out of the picture you need to fire the coach as if it's going to help. Missing the playoffs makes the season a total failure in their eyes. It's a losing gamble way more often than not, but in their minds the only way to make the postseason is to go through coaches like underwear until you make it. When that guy who won your conference and took you to the semifinal or the natty game loses 3 games a couple years later, you pay him $50 million and find the next guy.
Basically NCAA has become NFL football with regards to coaching. You're here for a good time, not for a long time because if you're in the top half of the SEC or top 1/4th of the B1G and you lose 4 games a couple years in a row, you gone...
There are only 12 teams that make the playoffs and there are a lot more than 12 schools who are putting their coaches in front of firing squads. You do the math and see what the odds are of it working out. This isn't sustainable IMO.