It's already been quite a week for college football, or as Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde puts it, "the wildest week in the history" of the game. Wilder still is that this has nothing to do with anything that happened on the field. Instead, it involves two blockbuster coaching changes that Forde and other sportswriters say signal a shift in the sport, and not necessarily for the better.
- Move No. 1: On Sunday, USC poached Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley. Just how big of a deal was this? "Nothing like this hire has ever happened in the history of college football," is how Alex Kirshner put it at Slate. "By which I mean: No head coach has ever left a job like Riley’s at Oklahoma to be in charge of another college program." The 38-year-old is leaving "one of the most elite, consistent winners in the sport, where he enjoyed a big paycheck and as much job security as anyone in his position could hope to have" for an ever bigger paycheck.