Agreed on DC & HC being different.
That being said, I've thought about this quite a bit, when thinking of TFG's future job prospects. I'd have to go back and look again, but an interesting thing came up - IIRC, at most places he's been DC, he came into a situation where things were going fairly well - oftentimes when the DC had been hired away to "move up the ranks," and the fanbases were sad to see them go. And in those instances, he simply kept it competitive without it falling off a cliff. And at the same time, he wasn't there long enough for the previous DC's recruits to age out before leaving for the next gig. So in retrospect I got the sense that maybe he was "just good enough" to keep things running without the wheels falling off, but not to actually improve things.
Same thing we obviously saw with the HC roles, but accelerated - the gradual fall-off at Temple, and then the massive crash at Tech.
So I honestly don't know, but when we're talking a high 6-figures/low 7-figure jobs, I can understand being a little washy on that. The drastic failure that was his time at GT might lead lots of P5 programs to pass him over for even DC jobs. I don't support anyone getting blackballed, but there might be a lot of ego-checking involved in his next role. I do hope he can learn from his mistakes and find something that he can excel at - but as an executive, I certainly wouldn't be willing to pay him that sort of money without an unimpeachable track record. So I think either a move into the G5, or a lower-level role (below DC) at a P5 program might be in order.
Then again, what do I know? I personally wouldn't have signed a contract with no offset with any head coach, but such is what the people who are paid the big bucks wound up doing.
