I have cyclical anxieties that pop up at regular intervals to mess with my brain.
For instance, there is a specific point when Ohio Winter officially and decidedly transforms into Ohio Spring, and my sinuses explode for 24 straight hours as I'm convinced that this is the year my allergies finally kill me.
Usually sometime in the height of summer I read an article about a brain eating amoeba that inhabits poorly maintained ponds and pools, and am convinced that every time I get wet there's at least a 30% chance I'll collapse into a steaming pile of goo like the Wicked Witch of the West.
And now, at this, the height of the offseason, I start to wonder if there's a chance that the Very Cool And Good Ohio State Head Football Coach might bust ranks for the NFL, lured by the prospect of gold and rubies beyond his wildest imagination. I'll admit that this is a relatively new concern; it's only during the last few years of Urban Meyer's tenure that I began to think of it as a real threat. "Would Urban head to the Browns?" people would ask themselves, knowing that Meyer would only shrug, grin, and refuse to answer the question directly if asked.
More pressingly, would Ryan Day take an NFL job, following in the footsteps of his mentor Chip Kelly? And... maybe! I can't really know, especially at this point in Day's career.
But what I do have is some poorly constructed mathematical data!
That's right, yours truly, a person with zero background in statistical analysis and no real expertise in math, has devised a needlessly convoluted formula for figuring out just how many millions of dollars it would take for an NFL team to entice Ryan Day to enter their lonely cottage in the woods made of gingerbread and candy.
I'm helped by two news items: first, initial reports that Urban Meyer was seeking 12 million dollars per year to coach the Jacksonville Jaguars. The details of his contract weren't made public (and it's very likely that he didn't actually get 12 million dollars), but the point is that's at least what he was rumored to have believed he was worth as an NFL head coach.
The second is that Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell was reportedly offered and hilariously turned down an eight-year, 68.5 million dollar contract by the Detroit Lions. I mean, it's the Lions. In your mind's eye you might imagine Campbell as some kind of coaching Andy Dufresne, crawling through the muck and the mire that is helming that team for a full NFL season, only to be washed clean by giant piles of money. But in reality that kind of stink doesn't just wash off, even if you're one of the hottest coaching commodities in college football right now.
So, by using every single brain cell available to me not currently occupied with watching X-Files reruns, this is what I came up with:
For example, in Urban Meyer's 17 years of experience as a head coach in collegiate football, he averaged exactly 11 wins per season. Take that, plus his hoped-for salary of 12 million, put them both into the equation, and we find that Meyer may very well have believed that for every win he averaged as a college coach, he expected to be paid 1.1 million dollars in the NFL.
If Matt Campbell truly was offered the aforementioned contract by the Lions, that means he'd have been making about 8.5 million per year with the organization. Campbell has been a college head coach for nine full seasons and averaged 7.6 wins per season, telling us that he might value his professional services in the league at approximately 1.12 million dollars per win as a head coach.
With Ryan Day we of course have less data to go on. He's only had one full season as Ohio State's head coach, but in that season he won 13 games. Given that he's super kickass and guided his team to the national championship game last season, we can reasonably expect him to average at least that for the next 15-20 years. So, knowing that and using the rules of inflation that I just made up, let's say that Ryan Day might expect 1.2 million dollars per average yearly win.
That means that he could command an NFL contract of no less than 15.6 million dollars per year and any team in the league would be stupid to ask for any less.
And hey, if some NFL team decides to back up the Brinks truck and dump 15.6 million dollars on Ryan Day's front lawn tomorrow, fair play to them. I very much doubt anyone would be that crazy, but if they are they'll have earned the right to call him coach. Because what really matters in the offseason is that I've created a convoluted way to sleep better at night.
