The coaching carousel never really ends. Bob Stoops retired last June. The NFL hiring season commences in January, which could potentially impact college programs. You never know when a health issue or off-field scandal might force someone to step down.

But for the most part, the college coaching cycle of 2017 is over. As of Tuesday morning, only two FBS programs — Kent State and Louisiana-Lafayette — were still looking for a head coach.

Though the big story lines were Chip Kelly coming back to the college game and the SEC getting six new head coaches, here are 10 takeaways from a wild reshuffling of the deck in the coaching ranks.

1. It wasn’t as crazy as it could have been

Whenever a big job opens up, there’s a potential chain reaction that could theoretically impact three or four schools. Multiply that by the number of big jobs that opened this year, and the 2017 coaching cycle could have been complete chaos. What happened, though, wasn’t nearly that dramatic. A surprising number of Power Five schools hired assistants or coaches who were out of work — UCLA getting Kelly, Arizona State hiring Herm Edwards, for instance — thus slowing the amount of upheaval.

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The most impactful move was Jimbo Fisher going to Texas A&M, which pulled Willie Taggart from Oregon to Florida State. In theory, the Ducks could have hired a sitting head coach like Bryan Harsin, which would have opened up the Boise State job. Instead, they simply promoted co-offensive coordinator Mario Cristobal, basically bringing the carousel to a close.

2. Things pretty much went according to form

As much as we like to prognosticate about who’s going where all year long, the actual hires typically don’t work out the way you expect. This year was different, with a lot of schools hiring obvious candidates. Fisher to Texas A&M? Besides being rumored for months, there was a perfect storm of his displeasure with the Florida State administration and his longtime relationship with athletics director Scott Woodward, who put together a monster $10-year, $75 million offer. Dan Mullen to Florida? That made complete sense, given his history as an offensive coordinator there and the fact he worked with athletics director Scott Stricklin at Mississippi State.

Scott Frost to Nebraska, his alma mater? Of course. Taggart to Florida State? People in the industry were calling that one weeks ago in the event Fisher actually left, being a native of the Tampa area and his track record recruiting the I-4 corridor. Chip Kelly and UCLA? A match made in heaven. We’ll see how all these hires work out — history says a number of them won’t — but a lot of the big ones at least make sense on paper.

3. The SEC got stronger

Apologies in advance to those of you who love to hate the SEC, but it sure looks like the league purged itself of some shaky coaches and found some much better fits this cycle. While it’s true the SEC has two teams in the Playoff this season, that’s not a testament to its top-to-bottom strength. The league, in fact, has rarely been this average in the middle and this bad at the bottom, largely due to the cumulative effect of several mediocre hires. That trend probably got reversed this year.

There’s no doubt Texas A&M upgraded, bringing in a national championship-level coach. There’s no doubt Florida upgraded, with Mullen getting the opportunity to build the same type of program he did at Mississippi State only with much better recruiting resources. Arkansas also upgraded, as Chad Morris will bring an offensive identity more suited to being competitive at that particular program and make the Razorbacks a factor in Texas recruiting. Though evaluating Morris requires looking past his overall college head coaching record (14-22), anyone who paid attention to his career has tremendous respect for how he turned around a really bad situation at SMU and injected life into a Clemson program as offensive coordinator that helped set its current trajectory.

As far as the other SEC hires? We’ll see. Joe Moorhead at Mississippi State is a fun idea, bringing his creative offensive from Pennn State. And he’s off to a good start hiring staff members with ties to the Southeast. Jeremy Pruitt at Tennessee has potential, but it’s not like big-time schools were knocking down the door to hire him off Alabama’s staff. Matt Luke at Ole Miss feels like a school making the most convenient hire possible amidst NCAA sanctions, but he did a solid job keeping the team together this past season as an interim. Overall, it sure feels like the SEC is in a better place than it was a few weeks ago.

DATABASE: College football coaches salaries

4. The money remains insane

It’s not just the ridiculous Fisher contract. Gus Malzahn, who was pretty much on the hot seat when November began, joined the $7 million club to stay at Auburn after Arkansas offered him a big-money deal. Mullen is going to make $6 million at Florida. Or how about Scott Frost, who got $35 million over seven years from Nebraska? Keep in mind, Frost has been a head coach for all of two seasons. And while his work at UCF was impeccable, including this year’s incredible 12-0 run to a New Year’s Six bowl game, that’s still a massive financial bet on someone who is unproven over the long haul.

Even at the Group of Five level, some of the contracts are eye-opening. For instance, Mike Norvell’s contract extension at Memphis averages out to $2.6 million per year. Just five years ago, only 20 coaches in the country made that much. UCF hired Josh Heupel for a contract averaging $1.7 million annually. That’s just slightly below what Fisher made in 2010.

5. The Tennessee search will reverberate for a long time

Coaching searches are far more art than science, and there are always unique dynamics at each individual school that can complicate matters. But the Tennessee search will be remembered in this industry for years, and not in a good way. Whether Tennessee fans agreed or disagreed with the choice of Greg Schiano after Dan Mullen chose Florida, the idea that a social media fan uprising could essentially spook the school into reneging on a signed agreement is still mind-blowing. Former athletics director John Currie did his due diligence on the search. He knew who was available and who wouldn’t take the job. Right or wrong, he made the determination that Schiano was the best coach he could reasonably hire. And as imperfect as it might have been in the eyes of some fans, he was prepared to make a tough decision and sink or swim with the results on the field. That’s the way it’s supposed to work when you hire people to leadership positions and let them lead.

At Tennessee, though, the response was different. And for whatever reason, the people who were supposed to have Currie’s back instead decided to sweep him aside and let former coach Phillip Fulmer run the athletics department and complete the coaching search. Maybe the end result may work out for Tennessee — we’ll see — but the process to get to Pruitt was messy. Within college athletics circles, the school’s brand was far more damaged over the last two weeks than Currie’s. He’ll certainly resurface somewhere soon. Whether this fiasco helps make Tennessee a contender again is far more uncertain.

6. Lane Kiffin generated far less interest in coaching searches than he did on social media

We’re not saying it’s fair, but Kiffin wasn’t really a factor in the coaching carousel this cycle. If we’re being honest, he really hasn’t been since being let go by USC. While Kiffin is the default message board candidate these days, university administrations have been far more wary of bringing him in than fans who don’t have to live with the day-to-day drama. Houston gave him a good, long look last year (and probably would have been better off hiring him than Major Applewhite). Obviously, Florida Atlantic decided to get aboard the Lane Train — what did they have to lose? — and reaped the rewards with an immediate turnaround and Conference USA title. But other than that, he hasn’t been viewed as a real option for Power Five programs.

Yes, it’s the maturity factor. Yes, administrators watched his Twitter trolling and rolled their eyes. Yes, there’s a wariness about packing his Florida Atlantic roster with last-chance kids and hiring Kendal Briles to run his offense. All of it factors into the perception of Kiffin as still too big of a risk for a Power Five school to take. Kiffin doesn’t seem too interested in rebranding himself or moderating his act, so he’ll have to enhance his credentials the hard way: By winning enough at Florida Atlantic that the rest of it doesn’t matter. Maybe by this time next year, he’ll have pulled that off.

7. Oregon is the coaching carousel’s biggest loser

Nothing against Mario Cristobal, who is a fine coach and might very well do a great job in Eugene. But for the Ducks, it has to hurt that Willie Taggart made them look like a stepping-stone in bolting after one season while Kelly went to UCLA and Frost ended up at Nebraska. For Oregon, it was simply a matter of bad timing and rotten luck. Taggart probably wouldn’t have left for any job but Florida State, and had the dominoes fallen differently he could have enrolled a highly ranked recruiting class this season and stayed there for a decade. Had Kelly known Oregon was going to open, it’s certainly possible he would have held out to go back to the place where he made magic from 2009-12. And if it weren’t for Nebraska being open, you have to think Frost would have had his eyes on Oregon, where he was an assistant from 2009-15.

Instead, with the recruiting clock working against them, Oregon went for the stability move by promoting Cristobal. There are things to like about this hire. Cristobal’s 27-47 record at FIU with two bowl appearances was actually kind of remarkable considering what the program was when he got hired in 2007. Cristobal subsequently spent four seasons at Alabama and learned a lot about what a top-level program should look like, and he was a huge factor in some of Taggart’s early recruiting success at Oregon. With quarterback Justin Herbert coming back, he has a chance to win immediately and keep the momentum going. Still, Oregon considers itself an elite program, and it got a dose of reality about its place in the pecking order over the last few weeks.

8. UCLA and Iowa State were the biggest winners of the carousel

UCLA football instantly matters again with Kelly. That is the big takeaway after he spurned Florida among others to sign with the Bruins. It seems like a perfect fit and a terrific legacy hire for athletics director Dan Guerrero, whose department has won big in everything but football during his tenure. In order to get the deal done, the Bruins had to move quickly to fire Jim Mora and put together a package attractive enough to lure the best coaching free agent since Urban Meyer went to Ohio State. While Arizona State touts its NFL-style “New Leadership Model,” under Herm Edwards, the Bruins also put in a far more attractive new leadership model by hiring a better head coach who will make them relevant — and soon.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Cyclones were going to have to potentially fight off multiple suitors for Matt Campbell after a 7-5 season that included wins against Oklahoma and TCU. Instead, athletics director Jamie Pollard signed him to an extension that should keep him in Ames for a while. Though Iowa State already had a prohibitive buyout in place should another school pursue Campbell, he signed a new six-year deal worth $22.5 million with raises for his staff. The buyout next year will be $7 million, so while you can never say never, it will still be hard for another school to poach him following the 2018 season. At this point, Campbell seems pretty locked in. Don’t look for him to go anywhere until one of the true heavyweights in the Midwest like Ohio State, Michigan or Notre Dame comes calling.

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9. The early signing period’s impact on the coaching carousel needs to be evaluated

I spoke with a large number of administrators and some NCAA staff members last week at the Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum last week in New York, and everyone was in agreement that the new early signing period affected the coaching carousel in ways they didn’t anticipate. With recruits now being able to sign from Dec. 20-22 in addition to the traditional February period, it seemed like schools were under pressure to have a new coach in place as soon as possible to salvage something from the early signing period. That almost certainly sped up the hiring timeline for several schools and forced some rushed decisions.

Don’t be surprised if a number of athletics directors who used to be for an early signing period now backtrack and want it reconsidered or moved to a different spot on the calendar. That’s not to say an early signing period doesn’t have merit, but putting it in December — essentially six weeks before the traditional signing day and right after the coaching carousel — might have produced some unintended consequences.

10. Who’s up next year?

Here are the Power Five coaches who will go into next season potentially on shaky ground: Steve Addazio, Boston College; Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech; Larry Fedora, North Carolina; Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech; David Beaty, Kansas; Lovie Smith, Illinois; Mike MacIntyre, Colorado; Derek Mason, Vanderbilt.

Here are the Group of Five coaches who should emerge as top candidates in the next cycle: Charlie Strong, USF: Geoff Collins, Temple; Mike Norvell, Memphis; Willie Fritz, Tulane; Lane Kiffin, FAU; Seth Littrell, North Texas; Bill Clark, UAB; Frank Wilson, UTSA; Jason Candle, Toledo; Mike Bobo, Colorado State; Neal Brown, Troy; Scott Satterfield, Appalachian State; Blake Anderson, Arkansas State.