We wouldn't expect players to be happy when a successful college coach leaves their program for another job. Then again, we wouldn't quite expect them to say the things that Cincinnati players said when Brian Kelly announced he was taking the Notre Dame job. For example:

"He went for the money," Cincy WR Mardy Gilyard told the AP last night. "I'm fairly disgusted with the situation that they let it go for that long."

AND ...

"The Tuesday before we played Pitt, he was telling us how much he loves it here, how he loves this team, how he loves coaching here and how much his family loves it here," quarterback Tony Pike said.

THEN THERE'S ...

"We don't really care what he has to say anymore," tight end Ben Guidugli said after a post-banquet team meeting. "He can go talk to his Notre Dame team. We're ready to move forward with whoever wants to move forward with us. He's not on the boat anymore, so we've got to continue on."

ALSO ...

"We want to make sure (people) still come out and support us," defensive lineman Alex Daniels said. "Because we were the ones out there playing every play, every snap. He was just the one calling the plays."

That's all fairly harsh -- though perhaps not unfairly so. We'll decline to get up on the angry soap box about how coaches can change jobs with few repercussions (even after paying Cincy a $1 million buyout, we have to imagine he comes out well ahead financially on this move) while players who want to transfer must sit out a year. But we do think it wouldn't be entirely wrong to push for a hiring moratorium until past the bowl season so we don't have situations like this, where a coach of an undefeated team turns over the reins to a coordinator in a BCS bowl game.