Earlier today we reported new Missouri head coach Barry Odom had relieved Pat Ivey and his esteemed strength staff of its duties. In following up on the story, St. Louis Post-Dispatch beat writer Dave Matter tweeted this interesting tidbit:
This sparked an discussion on our staff: when should a strength coach's contract expire? None of us had a definitive answer -- but we all agreed Aug. 31 felt odd.
After all, the strength coach and his staff have had the team to themselves for the entire summer before quote-unquote handing them off to the coaching staff when fall camp starts around Aug. 1. Still, it isn't as if the strength coach becomes a wallflower once the season starts. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The majority of football coaches' contracts end somewhere between the end of December and the end of March, but the better ones run out until the end of the academic fiscal year on June 30. This provides coaches, in the event of a termination, a number of months of "severance" and an extra half-year for coaches' families to stay on school's insurance programs.
Strength coaches have no seasons. They have a crucial role to play as long as players are in pads, but when the regular season and spring practice aren't in session, strength coaches become even more important.
But, still, every contract has to have an end date, and to the FootballScoop staff it seems to make the most sense for head football coaches to make decisions about potentially changing strength coaches in December. Thus, perhaps strength coaches' contracts should end sometime in the first quarter of the year.
Have a better suggestion or perspective on this? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter (and we'll update this article).