I'll be honest, I hate it. To me, college sports is (or at least should be) so much more than a business. You're talking about players laying their heart and soul on the line for THEIR school. Students and alumni rallying around them in hopes of that one great moment.
College sports is all about loyalty. Your school is YOUR school, win or lose. It's not like a professional team where you "pick" who you root for. College is part of your identity.
It used to be that coaches were a loyal bunch. In many ways, schools were identified by their coaches. Now, especially at our level (but even in the "big time"), coaches rarely last more than a few seasons. Win and move up, or lose and disappear into the night. It's a sad, sad way of doing business...if you ask me.
Here I thought I was the only guy with these old school thoughts. I do yearn for the days of coaches like Bill Hess and Jim Snyder who stayed true to their school and spurned offers of more cash at another place to stay and coach the Bobcats. And there were others in that day and time that did likewise. Now, it seems there are very, very few like that. At the very least, there ought to be a way to prevent coaches from moving to a new job while their teams are still playing games. In the name of all that's sacred in the academy (which ain't much anymore) wait till the darn season is over before you go after the greener gra$$ in the next valley.
The problem is that money has so corrupted college sports that the old rules about loyalty no longer apply. Salaries have so outstripped any sense of reason in this regard. Anyway, the old days are long gone and pining about what used to be won't change it. All the recent conference insanity may be the final straw. The only thing left is a break off of the top 60 +/- schools forming their own semi-pro or pro league.
That loss of loyalty is a two way street: schools commonly fire coaches midseason and do not allow them to finish out the year, or a situation like FIU/Cristobal, being fired off a down year after two pretty good seasons. Not to sound crass, but if you're a coach, and you know you're one bad season from being fired, you've got to at least think long and hard if someone calls up and offers you big $$. I'm not talking about the difference between $2.3 million/year at Louisville and $4+ million/year at tennessee, I'm talking about the difference between a couple hundred thousand dollars/year and millions of dollars/year (Cristobal)