In today’s Fact or Fiction, I look at three big recent topics in college football and decide whether the statement is indeed FACT or if it’s FICTION.
1. Arizona loses musical chairs.
Farrell’s take: FACT
Kalen DeBoer leaves Washington to replace Nick Saban at Alabama. Jedd Fisch leaves Arizona to replace DeBoer at Washington. And Arizona gets — Brent Brennan from San Jose State. Brennan may be a fine coach but c’mon now. He’s 26-19 in his last four seasons and very few people know who he is. Arizona’s awful financial issues had them shopping in the bargain aisle, and they went from a coach who won 10 games for them last season and had them as the favorite in the Big 12 to a guy no one knows and a massive talent drain in the portal. Ouch.
2. Group of Five head coaches moving up as coordinators is puzzling.
Farrell’s take: FACT
This has become more and more common, and now South Alabama’s Kane Wommack and Buffalo’s Maurice Linguist are joining DeBoer at Alabama. What’s happening? Sean Lewis did it a season ago at Colorado and it’s becoming more and more clear that some Group of Five jobs are just terrible with zero chance of keeping your best players out of the portal. It’s better to take a chance as a coordinator at the Power Five, it seems, and hope you catch lightning in a bottle. This is purely a portal issue to me.
3. $500K for Phil Parker is a joke.
Farrell’s take: FACT
Parker, the defensive coordinator at Iowa, received a $500K raise and now makes $1.9 million a year. That’s nice, right? It’s not enough. Parker was essentially the head coach at Iowa last year as his defense clearly carried Iowa to all 10 wins, and he had to overcome the nepotism of Kirk Ferentz as his son Brian was the most embarrassing OC in ages. He should receive much more for overcoming the offensive joke that was Iowa football, thanks to Kirk’s favoritism.
