A family called me earlier this week with the question I get every spring. Their son's likely coordinator at one of the schools on his short list had just left for a head coaching job somewhere else. Was the visit still worth taking? Was the offer still real? What was the right next move?
The honest answer is the one most families do not hear. It depends almost entirely on who the position coach is, and whether he is staying.
The headline is the coordinator. The relationship is the position coach.
Earlier this year, Brian Hartline left Ohio State to become the head coach at USF. The headlines focused on the offensive coordinator hire that followed in Columbus. What changed for the recruits, though, was something quieter. Hartline had been the Buckeyes' wide receivers coach for years before he ran the offense. Chris Henry Jr., a five-star Ohio State commit since the summer of 2023, started reassessing his commitment the moment Hartline left, even though Henry had never wavered in the two years before.
That story is the rule, not the exception. When a position coach leaves, the recruits at that position feel it first. The recruits at other positions barely feel it at all.
Coordinators design what the offense or defense looks like on paper. Position coaches recruit, evaluate, develop, and call the parents on Sunday night to check in. The relationship that pulls a recruit toward a program almost always runs through the position coach. The coordinator is the system. The position coach is the person.
What this means for families this season
CBS Sports has tracked 63 new offensive and defensive coordinator hires across the Power Four for the 2026 season. The headlines feel overwhelming, and they should. But for any one family, the right question to ask each time a coordinator move gets reported is more specific.
Is the position coach who has been recruiting your son also moving, staying, or being replaced?
Three patterns are worth watching.
When the position coach stays and the coordinator changes, the recruit's situation is usually more stable than the headline suggests. The new coordinator may install a new scheme, but the person on the phone with your family is still the same person.
When the position coach moves with the coordinator, the disruption is real and almost never gets covered. The recruits at that position feel it within 72 hours. Coaches who follow each other from job to job often try to bring the recruits they built relationships with along to the new staff. That outreach starts immediately.
When the position coach gets promoted into the coordinator slot, the news is usually positive for the recruit. The person who built the relationship now has more authority over the room.
Most carousel coverage stops at the coordinator level. The position coach move is often a quiet line item that shows up on a team site a week later, with no press release attached. Families who are not paying attention can miss the part of the story that actually applies to their son.
Where this changes a family's homework
For 2027 families who are deep into evaluations this June, the practical move is to look one level past the headline at every program your son has real interest in. Not the head coach. Not the coordinator. The position coach.
A few honest questions worth asking:
- Who is the position coach in your son's room at each school on the list, and when was he hired into that role?
- Has he moved with this head coach before, or was he hired off the street into this staff?
- How long has the head coach signed him for, based on what is publicly available?
A position coach who has followed his head coach through two or three stops is more likely to stay than a first-year position coach with no prior tie to the staff. That tenure pattern is publicly visible. Most families never check it.
When a family knows their son's actual recruiter, the carousel becomes less scary. Coordinator moves become noise. Head coach moves become the rare events they actually are. And the position coach, the person who has been texting on Sunday nights and watching film on Tuesdays, becomes what he always was. The relationship the entire recruitment is built on.
That is where I would put my attention this June.
When a coordinator move shows up in your son's recruitment, do you know whether his position coach is part of it?