paying positions with tons of people who "love the game" trying to get in and move up the ladder. For someone to be at BYU and then remain employed as a P5 position coach for a number of years now is an accomplishment in itself.

Its also tough for these guys when they are scrambling as you mentioned. If they don't find a job at the D1 level and have to go down to D2, FCS, or JC or even high school, the dropoff in pay to what they had in the past will be large. And if they don't get hired somewhere else, although I am sure they are capable of many things their skill set is more abstract. Compared to a computer programmer who is developing skills that can be taken a lot of different places. There is a limit on how many football teams there are in the country that pay their coaches well.

Its a brutal industry. Some of the positions are high paying but with not a lot of job security. Some are successful and win the golden ticket to move up to extremely high paying positions for some years.