...and his assistants developed loyalty and they turned into dinosaurs with tenure. There wasn't too much coaching turnover in the 90's and then when Crowton took over for Lavell, he had to keep on all of Lavell's old assistants as a reward of some sort. That first year with Crowton our defense was one of the worst ever at BYU yet when you go down the roster and look at who was on the 2 deep we had some unbelievable talent with as many as 8 guys on that defense who later went on to play in the NFL. Ken Schmidt was the DC at the end of Lavell's time and was the guy GC was forced to keep. He ran a terrible defense despite a lot of talent on the roster.

I think there's something to this. I think anyone can get a little long in the tooth when they hang around too long in one place. Moving around and working under different head coaches gives an assistant coach a really good education, teaches him a lot of different approaches, opens him up to recruiting contacts in a wide range of places. Also it makes it easier for players to respect you when you've been places and worked with some cool people and have some cool experiences to share.

If the only place you've really worked is with the same head coach and the same holds true for the other assistant on the staff, what do you bring to the staff that the other coaches don't already know? What new ideas? As a head coach you want hungry aggressive minded assistant coaches, eager to learn and share and make a name for themselves. Yes, it means you might have more turnover when they get bigger/better job offers but that makes your program better vs a bunch of assistants who only want to hang around and bring nothing new to the program.