Coaching Silly-Season Updates
12 FBS Schools have decided to make coaching changes so far this year. I find some of the behind closed doors actions of school administrators and coaches double talk (lies) disgusting, but it seems to be acceptable. However, some day I hope the NCAA comes up with some way to limit or end the hiring of other schools coaches between say December 1 and the end of the National Championship Game.
Lets start with the schools who have already made their hire.
Memphis Memphis has hired Larry Porter to be their new coach. He is coming from being an assistant coach at LSU and is considered to be a good recruiter. Porter was one of two major candidates for Memphis along with Redskins assistant Jerry Gray. Early rumors had Gray getting the job due to his ties to FedEx founder and major Memphis booster Fred Smith, whose son is also a QB on the Memphis team. I personally think Porter was the correct hire between the two.
Western Kentucky WKU moved pretty quickly in the coaching search as well and hired Willie Taggart, an assistant coach from Stanford. Taggart has interviewed for a few other head coaching jobs in the past and I am glad to see him finally get a shot as a head coach. He also is a former WKU player and coach, so I don't think their were any other serious candidates.
Virginia Virginia just announced their new hire yesterday of Richmond's Mike London. London was previously an assistant at Virginia and the hire was made less than 24 hours after Richmond was eliminated from the FCS playoffs (in the last ever game at University of Richmond Stadium) by Appalachian State. I do not know of any other major canidates for this job and it seems some behind-the-scenes contact may have occured even before Groh was officially fired. I think this is the best of the completed hires so far.
Florida State I still don't like what happened here, but I guess that doesn't matter. FSU decided to replace Bowden with Jimbo Fisher and left Bowden to fall on the sword (retire) to try and make it look good. The problem is both the school President and the AD walked out of the press conference and left injured QB Christian Ponder to handle the tough questions. As of Tuesday, December 8th, they still refuse to talk and Bowden's only media contact has been the Gator Bowl teleconference. Just an odd situation IMO and I don't think it is going to work out too well for them. I also doubt that Bowden will stay on as a fund-raiser for FSU. In fact, I believe he is going to be very tempted to take a job for the 2011 season at a smaller FBS school.
Ok, on to the schools who are still looking.
Akron Under the old site format, of which I accidentally deleted the old history, I posted that I had some good info that J.D. Brookhart would be fired by Akron the day after their season ended. I The official press release was available by 11 AM! This is a job where not much info has been coming out publically, but here and here are some lists of potential replacements.
Kansas Kansas worked out a buy-out with Mark Mangino after abuse alligations and their coaching search includes Buffalo's Turner Gill. Houston Nutt took a while, but finally announced that he is happy at Arkansas and will stay there. I think this job is being over-valued by the Kansas AD and I think the school will be lucky to just maintain their recent success level of being a fringe top 25 team with a chance to win the Big XII North every few years.
Louisiana-Monroe Charlie Weatherbie was released a few weeks ago now and I have not seen a single report where it mentions who the potential replacements are. His overall record at UL-Monroe is not great (31-51) but it is UL-Monroe, so how many games a year do they expect to win? @ESPN_Others also thought it was a weird firing as well in a tweet when it first happened. Louisiana-Monroe has hired Carr Sports Associates to help find a new coach.
Louisville Steve Krapthorpe was not a good hire and Louisville ended their relationship after just a few seasons. Joe Schad from ESPN was reporting today that Florida Defensive Coordinator Charlie Strong will be announced tomorrow as the new head coach for Louisville after the hire is approved at a Board of Trustees meeting at 3:30 PM tomorrow. I think this is a good hire.
Marshall Marshall coach Mark Snyder resigned for "the best interests of the program" (he really was fired). FSU offensive line coach Rick Trickett is rumored to be the leading candidate for the job. I have not seen any lists with other names on them.
San Jose State Dick Tomey announced his retirement toward the end of the season. Tomey had a great career as a head coach including leading SJSU to a great 9-4 season in 2006 but had dropped off in recent years. I have no word on who they are interviewing for the job.
UNLV Mike Sanford was fired with a few weeks remaining in the season by UNLV. Rumor has it that former nomad coach Dennis Franchione contacted the school to see if they would be interested in talking to him. This was in mid-November and nothing has really come out about this opening after that.
Notre Dame I think a new "report" about this situation comes out about every 6 seconds. Yesterday it was that Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh and Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly were going to interview with ND in New York today. Todays news included a tweet from Coach Kelly saying that he would not interview with ND today. Then a tweet from his friend saying that his account was hacked, then a retraction of the hacked story.
Here is my understanding of the real news:
Harbaugh is not a candidate. He is close/already verbally agreed to a contract extension with Stanford. The Stanford AD keeps talking to the ND AD, Jack Swarbrick, because they are friends and he is helping Swarbrick through the process.
Brian Kelly will most likely be announced as the new head coach Friday.
Notre Dame has talked to Kirk Ferentz, who decided he wasn't interested after some discussion. Other candidates who have turned down Notre Dame include Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops (who did a lot of background work to see if he wanted to the job despite what he has said publicly), and Pat Fitzgerald.
Interested people include UConn's Randy Edsall and former Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer.
Hopefully that covers all of the coaching changes until current coaches like Kelly leave their current schools, creating the dreaded domino effect.
Posted By: JGuiher
