There's an ongoing conversation in college football about limiting staff sizes, and that conversation renewed Monday when CBS Sports revealed an NCAA survey of staff sizes throughout FBS. The release of that survey was also incidentally timed with the surfacing of quotes of Bill Belichick arguing in favor of smaller staff sizes in the NFL.
This brought the obvious rebuttal of, "Well, yeah, he doesn't have to recruit." A fair point, so we decided to do an apples-to-apples comparison across FBS and the NFL. Or, as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible. NFL teams don't have to recruit players, but they do have to scout them. Colleges have no limits on the number of support staff hires they can make, and the NFL has no limits -- period. Using the categories the official NCAA survey used, we slotted NFL staffs into equivalent positions to get as close as we can to an even comparison of how many people each group employs with the sole focus of acquiring, developing and deploying the best possible collection of players on game day.
College teams were chosen from the top of the heap of the NCAA survey (plus Alabama) while NFL teams were chosen at random.
Let's pick another one.
And one more.
As you can see, the highest level of FBS programs produce an even comparison with randomly selected NFL teams. And now consider NFL teams carry 53 players and dress 45 on game day. FBS programs put 85 on scholarship, with the number climbing above 100 when counting walk-ons.
None of the concerned parties have outlined exactly how they would limit staff sizes in college football, but it would have to involve putting a cap on future hires, or a firing of current hires, or both. And that would be done to... worship at the Altar of Fairness? Alabama and Troy aren't going to suddenly become equals if limited to the same number of hires.
With all that in mind, why are we concerned staff sizes are getting too big again?