What do you think – should there be a salary cap on NCAA college coaching staffs?
I don't think it'll make any difference.
I think coaching salaries have ballooned because coaches know that in a competitive market they can get it, but the cost of the coach IMHO is not particularly relevant to the outcomes on the field.
Alabama is going to be Alabama regardless of Saban's salary. The same is true of OSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas, USC, etc. When those programs have downturns, it's not because they get cheap in their coaching hires, it's because they hire bad [or poor fit] coaches--and pay them a ton.
One area that is ripe for abuse these days is the growth in non-coaching "football analyst" positions. It's a way for these top programs to pull guys who might need a job and could easily take a mid-level P5 or even a top G5 head coaching job and keep them off the field. While the size of coaching staffs are limited, there is no limit on these analyst positions, so it is in some way a repeat of football prior to scholarship limits--big programs can stockpile coaches merely to keep them away from other schools.
But the issue in CFB is parity, and that parity problem extends WAY beyond coaching salaries. I'd rank coaching salaries way down the list as to ways to improve CFB parity. Fundamentally the issue is that players are selected through a recruiting process rather than a "fair" process like a draft--fair meaning in the interests of parity, which wouldn't be fair to the players who are supposed to be
student-athletes and should be able to select where they want to go to
school.
But even if you rigorously limited the opulence of the facilities, the amount of support staff associated with a football program, and every other benefit a school uses to increase its desirability over another, it'll still never change the fact that Ohio State and Michigan have "helmet" and Purdue and Minnesota don't. So as long as it's all about recruiting, it'll never be "fair" as it relates to enhancing parity in the sport.