The NCAA recently approved a 10th full-time, on-field assistant coach for college football, and that new rule will go into effect in January. In an effort to gauge the size of coaching staffs across college football currently, the NCAA conducted a survey of every FBS school’s football coaching staff.
The results of the survey show that Notre Dame has the largest coaching staff in the country with 45 on-field coaches, strength coaches, graduate assistants and support staff. The largest staff in the SEC isn’t Alabama, however; Georgia has the largest staff in the SEC with 42 members. Auburn is a close second with 41. Alabama has just 31 listed in the survey.
And where is Tennessee on this list? At the very bottom of the conference.
The Vols only have a total of 18 on-field coaches, strength coaches, graduate assistants and support staff on record. That’s not only the lowest total in the SEC, but it’s the lowest total among all Power-5 schools. Georgia Tech (19) is the only other Power-5 school with less than 20 members on staff.
The NCAA did clarify to CBS Sports that their preliminary results with their survey should be taken with “six or seven grains of salt” according to Bob Bowlsby, the chairman of the NCAA Oversight Committee.
Bowlsby and the NCAA told CBS Sports that “the methodology to measure the staff sizes of 127 FBS schools in 2016 came from mere website research.” Which means the NCAA did not contact the schools directly nor did they investigate any of the schools in person.
Tennessee is listed as having 10 on-field coaches, five strength and conditioning coaches, two football operations members, and one off field/recruiting coach. The Vols have no graduate assistants listed in the survey.
As the NCAA themselves said, take the results of the survey with several grains of salt. But the preliminary results aren’t very flattering for Tennessee, and it shows that the Vols are well behind the rest of the SEC in terms of a supporting coaching staff beyond their on-field one.
