Being a football coach is not easy. They work long hours under tremendous pressure. They have to have an incredible knowledge of strategy and tactics, as well as skill in motivating players, communicating with the media, and pleasing their bosses.

The Chiefs’ Herman Edwards

For this knowledge and stress, football coaches are well paid. The average salary for NCAA Division I coaches recently topped $1 million a year, and NFL coaches make even more. Successful coaches are a worthwhile investment. They fill stadiums, generate revenue from television, and bring pride to a city or university. In 2006, the LSU football program generated 63% of the schools athletic income, and made a $32 million profit. Paying a talented coach $3 million a year is a bargain if he hauls in 10 times that.

Of course, that only applies if you hire a winning coach. Teams that hire bad coaches are usually stuck with years of misery, especially in college football, where a drop-off in recruiting can have an impact for two or three years into the future.

Sometimes teams hire coaches who have had success, either as coordinators or coaches at lower levels, and those coaches don’t work out. In 1997, the University of Kansas hired Terry Allen, who had been successful at Northern Iowa. Sadly, Allen went 20-33 in five years at KU despite his previous success. Many coaches have strong resumes and winning histories and still fail.

And bad coaches still get paid.

The process of hiring a football coach is a difficult one, and teams in both college and the pros make the same mistakes over and over in their quest to find a decent coach. Here are the big three.

1. A coach has success one time, and gets jobs for the next 10 or 15 years

There are many examples of coaches who have proven they cannot win, and yet continue to get hired. Often these coaches were coordinators for great teams, and have ridden that success to millions of dollars and decades of losing.

Dave Wannstedt was the Defensive Coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys when they won the Super Bowl in 1992. He was hired as Head Coach of the Chicago Bears, where he went 41-57 in 7 years and 4-12 his last two years. He was fired, and returned to being a Defensive Coordinator, this time in Miami. Having demonstrated his inability to be a Head Coach, he had to wait a full year before being hired as Head Coach for the Miami Dolphins, where he went 42-30, and 1-7 in his final year. Having now been a Head Coach twice without great success, he was forced to look for another job . . . as a Head Coach, this time at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has gone 16-19 in three years (although he is 9-3 this year, but that’s probably an accident). He makes $1.2 million a year.

Greg Robinson ran a solid defense in Denver when they won two Super Bowls in 1997 and ‘98. He ran a porous defense in Kansas City from 2000-03, spent a year coaching defense at the University of Texas (who should probably have played for the Big 12 title) and was finally rewarded for his defensive mediocrity by becoming Head Coach of Syracuse, where he won 10 games in 4 years. He made $1.1 million a year.

Herman Edwards took the New York Jets from 10-6 to 4-12 his last two years, and he was punished by being hired in Kansas City, where he is 14-31, including 2-14 in 2008. He makes $2 million a year.

All of these coaches had some measure of success before they became Head Coaches. Three of them were part of Super Bowl winning teams. All of them proved unable to win after their initial successes, and all of them were hired again anyway. Wannstedt and Turner have been hired as Head Coaches multiple times, and haven’t won at any of them. It is one thing to hire a coach with a good resume who fails. It is quite another to hire a coach with a record of losing, pay him millions of dollars a year, and then wonder why your team sucks.

There are many more examples, and fans of every team can point to a time their team hired a miserable coach (Charlie Weis, Al Groh, Ty Willingham, the list goes on).

2. Even if the coach is terrible, the team has to pay to fire him

CEO’s have their golden parachutes worth millions, but football coaches manage to cover their retirements as well. In college football, if a coach is fired before the end of his contract, the school often has to ‘buy out’ the remaining years of the contract by paying the coach the salary for the years left in the deal (if the coach chooses to leave for another school, often the new school has to pay a buyout fee to the old school).

In 2007, the University of Nebraska gave Bill Callahan (who also qualifies for section 1) a contract extension. That season, he went 5-7 and was dismissed. Nebraska had to pay him $3.1 million in order to fire him.

Other recent buyouts include $6 million to fire Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee, $5.1 million for Tommy Tuberville to ‘resign’ at Auburn, $3.5 million to sack Tommy Bowden at Clemson, $1 million to dump Ty Willingham at Washington, and $1.2 million to get rid of Ron Prince at Kansas State. Bowden, Prince and Fulmer were all in the first year of new contracts.

Here is an interesting thought. Perhaps, maybe, as a suggestion, if you’re going to fire your coach, don’t sign him to a new contract!

3. Dumping a winning coach because you think you are an elite program

Some schools have tremendous history and tradition. Programs like Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama and Notre Dame have been dominant in college football for decades (there are more- don’t get mad because I left off your team). They have multiple national championships, Heisman winners, legendary coaches and years and years of success.

Other schools are just happy to have a winning record every couple of years. Going to a bowl game of any kind is considered a success for these schools.

The problem is that some schools become confused as to whether they belong among the elite teams, or should just be grateful to win a game now and then. These schools fired successful coaches because they weren’t winning enough games to suit the over-inflated expectations of the deluded fan base.

In 2003, Nebraska fired Frank Solich after he went 9-3. Granted, he had gone 7-7 the year before, and Nebraska was used to winning national titles with legendary Tom Osborne. Alas, they hired Bill Callahan, who, as mentioned above, lost a bunch of games and cost the school a lot of money to do it.

At least Nebraska has some excuse for their inflated expectations. After all, they were a dominant team for over 30 years, and rank among the elite programs in the country.

Iowa State, on the other hand, does not have a tradition of winning. Between 1995 and 2003, Dan McCarney managed to take the hapless Cyclones to 5 bowl games and post several winning records. In 2003 he went 4-8 and was dismissed. Instead, the Cyclones brought in Gene Chizik, who managed to win 2 whole games in 2008 before going to . . .

Auburn, who booted coach Tommy Tuberville despite his 85-40 record, an undefeated season in 2004, and 6 game winning streak over archrival Alabama (before they got crushed this year). Instead Auburn welcomes Chizik, who has not demonstrated the ability to win more than 3 games in a year as a head coach.

Kansas State has one of the most miserable histories of any team in college football. They did enjoy a decade of success under Bill Snyder (who has since returned), but many of the fan base came to believe that their new-found prosperity placed them among college football’s elite teams. So, when coach Ron Prince went 17-20 in three years, he was fired for not posting a more dominant record (and for losing to Kansas 3 straight years).

Arkansas is historically a solid program, but it doesn’t have the historical success or prestige of its fellow SEC schools like Alabama, Auburn, or LSU (or really Florida or Georgia or Tennessee either, but that’s just piling on). So when coach Houston Nutt went 10-4 in 2006, that was a great year. He followed up with an 8-4 record, including a victory over #1 LSU and two first round draft choices in Darren McFadden and Felix Jones. In 10 seasons, Nutt went 75-48, and was promptly fired.

All of these are examples of schools who had solid coaches, got greedy, and often ended up worse then they were before (it’s too early to tell with KSU and Arkansas). If you want an example from the pros, think 14-2 Marty Schottenheimer and currently 5-8 Norv Turner in San Diego. Of course, politics and fan pressure are always involved in coaching decisions. Still, if you are a historically mediocre team who manages to find a coach who wins 6 or 7 games a year and gets to a bowl now and again, keep him. You’re far more likely to hire someone worse than hire someone better.

Why is it so difficult to evaluate head coaches? As Barry Switzer famously said, “It’s not about the X’s and the O’s. It’s about the Jimmys and the Joes.” Players can be evaluated individually, but a coach is responsible for the whole team. A good coach will still lose with terrible players, and a bad coach can win because of tremendous talent. Of course, after three or four years, a college coach will have recruited most of the players on the team, so if the team is still bad, it’s his fault one way or the other. If a talented team wins fewer games than they should, the coach isn’t doing his job. If an untalented team manages a win or two, or a semi-talented team plays beyond their expectations, the coach is helping (Nick Saban, Houston Nutt). Finally, watch the team at the beginning and the end of the season. Good coaches have their team playing better at the end of the season than the beginning (Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech). Bad coaches do the opposite (Herman Edwards).

So the next time you find yourself Athletic Director of a major university or owner of an NFL franchise, don’t forget to follow these three simple steps when hiring a coach. First, if a coach has proven to be a bad coach, don’t hire him. Second, if you’re going to fire your coach, don’t give him a huge contract extension the year before. Finally, if you get a coach that’s doing a decent job, don’t fire him just because he doesn’t win the national title or go to the Super Bowl every year.

And by all means, if you’re going to pay someone millions of dollars a year to lose games, hire me. I’ll do it for half price.