Lane Kiffin - went to USC and flamed out. He was already HC at Tennessee, but only for a single year, so it wasn't like he was leaving some place he'd established. He took a chance, failed. And then 5 years later, he's a HC again making $5M/yr. He didn't lose anything by leaving his job and trying for something better, even if he did fail at USC.

Brady Hoke left San Diego St to take the Michigan job for triple the salary. He lasted only 4 years. And it set his career back. Instead of staying at San Diego St, he's now ... the HC at San Diego St. Just with extra salary made in the interim.

Charlie Strong failed at Texas. But he was paid a lot to do so, and then he immediately was able to get a G5 job afterwards, which was pretty similar to the one he'd left to try at Texas.

I hate this mentality of "Don't try hard things because you might fail". Especially when you consider that most of the coaches who fail still have fallbacks that are pretty similar to what they would have had by staying