Bear Digest

The dead end route Bears coaching search appears ready to explore

Matt Campbell has made a fine college coach and might even be a top-50 NCAA guy but the nature of the Bears job usually means failure if they jump to the NFL.

Gene Chamberlain

Matt Campbell motions for Iowa State to go for two. Campbell is the only college coach among reported Bears coach candidates.
Matt Campbell motions for Iowa State to go for two. Campbell is the only college coach among reported Bears coach candidates. / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
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The Bears will interview Iowa State coach Matt Campbell according to a report by Brad Biggs of the Tribune, and of all their 16 reported interviews this one seem the least likely to go anywhere.

At least if they hired him, they could maintain their rich tradition of having a Ryan and a Matt as GM and head coach.

It's nothing against Campbell, who has elevated a program from the dumpster, but they had a good chance to hire a college coach last year and didn't do it when it was a lock it could work.

That would be one Jim Harbaugh.

Really, Harbaugh can hardly be considered a college coach coming to the NFL because he had already done this once before when he became the 49ers coach.

Admittedly, nothing says a coach must come from the NFL. The Bears got a head coach from the CFL in 2013, and in Canada they don't even play on the same field size or with the same rules, although Marc Trestman had been an NFL assistant.

It sometimes did seem Trestman was still coaching at something other than NFL football when he was with the Bears.

Historical But No First

Hiring a college coach has been done before by the Bears, but it's been a while.

In 1918 Millikin football coach Robert E. Brannan took over the Decatur Staleys football team before George Halas took over the team. The Staleys later became the Bears. Brannan coached them before they were in what later became the NFL.

Ralph Jones was close to stepping right from college to the Bears. He actually stepped from high school ball to the Bears. In 1930, Halas stepped down after the depression hit and asked a former college coach who was actually coaching a high school academy in Illinois to coach the team. That was Jones, who coached football at Lake Forest Academy from 1920-29 and had coached basketball at Illinois but it was during the previous decade.

About the closest the Bears came to a college coach taking over for the first time since 1919 was when they hired Jack Pardee in 1975 right out of the World Bowl, coaching the Florida Blazers to a loss in the World Football League championship game.


It was a team that didn't get paid for three months of that WFL season, so in a sense they were more amateur than many college programs. But it wasn't actual college football.

History's Real Importance

This is a tried-but-untrue method for finding an NFL coach. It's the main reason to doubt Campbell could step in and take over as head coach after going 35-15 in the MAC with Toledo and helping Iowa State go 64-51 in nine seasons, including 11-3 last season.

In this century, there have been 12 coaches go from college straight to the NFL sidelines for the first time. Nine had losing records during their pro careers. Note, too, this did not include Pete Carroll, who had been in the NFL during the 1990s and was 33-31 for two teams, then went back to college and returned this century to the NFL.

Only Bill O'Brien (52-48) with the Texans, Chip Kelly (26-21) with the Eagles and Harbaugh (44-19-1) with the 49ers, had winning records of the 12 making their pro debuts after coaching college in this century.

Matt Rhule (5-11, Panthers), Kliff Kingsbury (28-37-1, Cardinals), Doug Marrone (15-17 Bills), Greg Schiano (Buccaneers, 11-21), Bobby Petrino (3-10, Falcons), Butch Davis (24-35, Browns), Steve Spurrier (Redskins, 12-20), Nick Saban (15-17, Dolphins) and Urban Meyer (Jaguars, 2-11) experienced much more losing in the NFL than they were used to and had losing NFL records.

Just Another Guy

There are lots of college coaches with winning records and have been more impressive than Campbell.

Heading into 2024, ESPN did ranking of the top 10 coaches in college ranks and Campbell did not make the list.

The Sporting News ranked all the college coaches in advance of this past season and Campbell came up No. 43.

If you're going to bring in a college coach to interview, wouldn't the best be the top option?

Why They Fail

Speculation about why college coaches fail centers around the very nature of being a "leader of men," compared to being a "leader of boys."

In writing an article on this topic, NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks painted a picture that made college sound like the Army and the NFL a corporation or a democracy.

"Strong communication with players—and more specifically, full buy-in from your best players—is essential to succeeding at the NFL level," Brooks wrote. "Some college coaches struggle with that dynamic after spending most of their formative coaching years working with 18-to-22-year-olds who are expected to do what they are told without challenging authority.

"In the NFL, the team is more collaborative, with coaches and players expected to build a mutually beneficial partnership that leads to success on the field and more money in each other's bank accounts down the road. NFL coaches must demonstrate to their players why certain schemes and techniques will help their chances of playing well and securing the bag."

No Thanks

This is a search cutting a very wide swath but they could have done themselves a favor and shortened it by keeping one interview off the list.

Is it possible the Bears saw Campbell's last name and thought if you can't beat them, join them? They wanted their own Campbell after Dan's success?

It's worth wondering because the pervasive lack of success by people trying to do it makes this route seem like an obvious dead end.

Perhaps in the future after more college players have built up fortunes through NIL money this route for NFL coaches will be more feasible because the players will be more and more like pros as this happens.

However, it hasn't been long enough since this development to think it can have an impact.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.