Silber made no secret that he disliked football. Among his earliest proposals, he floated an idea that aimed to fix what he saw as a growing problem in college athletics, a problem that, incidentally, never went away, that grew larger over time and now seems to have no end in sight.  College football coaches held too much power, Silber thought.  So in 1972, he proposed that none of them be allowed to coach on game day.  Imagine that. Imagine Lane Kiffin in the stands at Southern California, feet reclined, his work done, adult beverage in hand. Imagine the sidelines freed of all those grown men screaming into headsets, call sheets covering their mouths, clad in khaki pants. Imagine telecasts absent coaches, those makers of millions, monarchs, more powerful than college presidents or university boards.  “I have recommended that we adopt a rule in our conference prohibiting coaches from engaging in contact with their teams during the playing of the game,” Silber was quoted as saying. “It would be highly desirable, in my opinion, to restore the position of quarterback to its former dignity and turn the game over to the students.”  Less likely than unlikely? Sure. Logistically impossible? Yes. But Silber’s theory also identified an issue in college athletics that would only become more pertinent, more obvious, in the four decades that followed. Silber knew not of Joe Paterno or Bobby Petrino or Rick Pitino. He knew not of Jim Tressel or George O’Leary or Bob Knight.  All surfaced, at one point or another, on the growing list of coaches who behaved badly, for a variety of reasons, from lack of oversight to extramarital affairs to doctored résumés. The thread that linked them, other than their job titles, was the immense power they accumulated.  Still, to float a similar theory in 2012 would probably cost a college president a job. One such president, E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State, who received much criticism for once saying he hoped Tressel would not fire him, a joke both funny and sad for the truth inherent in it, declined to comment on Silber’s idea, which Gee described in an e-mail as “an interesting proposition.”  Nor did the coach of the country’s most dominant team, the defending national champion Alabama Crimson Tide, dismiss Silber’s no-coaches-on-game-day whim as without merit.  Instead, that coach, Nick Saban, said he learned something that Silber would have appreciated from Bill Belichick. In Saban’s early years, under Belichick, Saban said he tried to coach too much during games. Too many instructions. Too many adjustments.  “Let the players play,” Saban said Belichick told him. “You can’t do it for them in the game.”  Of Silber’s theory, Saban added: “There is a part of what he’s saying that is very true. And you almost have to condition the players for that.”  In newspaper accounts of Silber’s proposition, he is quoted as advocating that coaches remain involved during weekly preparation. Come game time, the players would decide on plays, call and execute them, and receive instructions only from teammates.  The closest comparison to that is what happened this season in New Orleans, when the N.F.L. suspended Coach Sean Payton for his role in the Saints’ bounty scandal. Other coaches stepped in, but the Saints’ 0-4 start has only underscored his value, particularly on the sidelines.  “When you hear that proposal, you have to say, what are we really talking about?” said Ed Cunningham, the ESPN analyst who played at Washington in college. “What do we really want to change? Do we really want to take billions of dollars off the table and make football a club sport? Where coaches sleep in on Saturdays? Where they play games on the quad?  “You can’t do that. That’s not the answer.”  Cunningham could, however, appreciate the sentiment. He agreed with Silber, with most of the college sports world, that coaches have become too powerful, that university priorities have become too skewed toward major sports.
John R. Silber, Boston Universityâs longtime president, who died last week, had a theory that was ahead of its time: college football coaches hold too much power.