Coach 2: “The season is longer at the pro level. In the season, in college, it’s four hours a day no matter what, including lifting and practicing, so that aspect is not as much of a grind. Whereas a season in the NFL is long. It’s a workday for everybody.”

Coach 3: “We’re all grinding, and I think in the NFL, there’s more schematics and there’s more X’s and O’s for a myriad of reasons. But there’s more of that on a daily basis because we don’t have any of our day filled with recruiting. So there’s more of that. So it fills your day and it fills up a whole day. But you have a day off during summer or preseason camp. You have days off when you have a bye week or you have a Thursday night game, and you have that mini-bye. The days that the coach gives you off, it’s totally off. You’re not worrying about an unofficial visit. You’re not worrying about anything else.

Coach 4: “I’d say the biggest difference is the fact you get time off throughout the year. This past year was the first year the NFL instituted a three-day mandatory player break for players between the end of preseason and the beginning of the season. A lot of coaching staffs got time off because the preseason was put to bed, player cuts were behind you, game planning for Week 1 was already done. A lot of the staff got two-to-three days off. When you have a bye week in the NFL, coaches are typically off four-to-five days. At the college level when you have a bye, coaches are on the road recruiting. At the college level, if you’re lucky, you get one day off on a bye week. For a Thursday night game in the NFL, coaches get one-to-three days off on the weekend. At the college level if you play on Thursday you get the next day off, but aside from that, coaches get no days off in-season. From my perspective, the NFL season is longer when you look at games, but that’s just game planning. Most staffs will get between seven and 10 days off during that time period, where at the college level you’re lucky if you get one or two days off.

"It can be a positive if you want a little variety in your work; coaches are able to go identify players, practice and develop younger guys with developmental practices, but coaches also want to coach ball and not do all the extra stuff.”

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