FUENTE AMONG GRADE-A HIRES
Campbell, Richt also good choices; Illinois flubs
This did not turn into the wild year of college football coaching changes many predicted. Though a number of attractive jobs were open, there was surprisingly little domino effect as Southern California stayed in-house, Miami (Fla.) hired an out-of-work coach and Georgia hired an assistant.
For now, Brigham Young’s hiring of Oregon State defensive coordinator Kalani Sitake and Georgia Southern taking Colorado State defensive coordinator Tyson Summers bring the coaching carousel largely to a halt. Barring a surprise post-bowl-game firing or an NFL team hiring from the college ranks, no more big jobs will open this cycle.
How we ranked the hires in the top six leagues, including the American Athletic Conference, where the pay scale has risen to near Power Five levels.
A+
VIRGINIA TECH: JUSTIN FUENTE From the fit to the way athletics director Whit Babcock conducted the search, this was arguably the smoothest coaching transaction of the year.
Not only did Babcock move quickly and authoritatively to secure his guy before other coaching dominoes could fall, but he also brokered a meeting between Fuente and longtime defensive coordinator Bud Foster before the deal got done to gauge whether they could work together. The possibility of Fuente’s offense producing the way it did at Memphis, which won 19 games over the last two seasons, combined with Foster’s defense is a scary thought for the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
A
MIAMI: MARK RICHT If there are any reservations about this marriage, it’s whether Richt’s calming persona and spiritual nature will mesh with the culture Miami fans and its former players want to foster.
But Richt is an alum, which counts for something, and you get the sense he will be re-energized by a change of scenery and the challenge of proving Georgia shouldn’t have fired him. Bottom line: He is the best combination of coach and recruiter Miami has had in a long time, perhaps since Jimmy Johnson.
IOWA STATE: MATT CAMPBELL Maybe Campbell could have gotten what many would view as a better job than Iowa State after his success at Toledo. And Campbell, 36, is definitely taking a risk by jumping to a job where it’s historically difficult to win.
But Ames is the kind of place where Campbell’s personality and approach, rooted in Midwestern values, might work. Athletics director Jamie Pollard did an excellent job of establishing a personal connection with Campbell and recruiting him to take the job before other schools could get involved.
B+
VIRGINIA: BRONCO MENDENHALL Whether it was the lack of a conference affiliation or the recruiting restrictions at BYU, you could sense the last couple of years that Mendenhall might be willing to jump for the right situation. After 11 mostly successful seasons in Provo, Utah, Mendenhall knew it was time for a change.
Kudos to athletics director Craig Littlepage for picking up on that vibe and landing Mendenhall, who has a 99-43 career record, in a very under-the-radar search. It will be interesting to see Bronco 2.0 in a new environment without the roadblocks of BYU’s very particular culture. Mendenhall has been willing to evolve in his offensive approach over the years, and his defense has always been hard-nosed and physical.
SYRACUSE: DINO BABERS This is about as well as Syracuse could have done. The Baylor offensive system, which Babers learned as an assistant from 2008 to 2011 under Art Briles, is starting to put up big numbers in lots of places and conferences and now comes to the Atlantic Coast Conference after an 18-9 run at Bowling Green over the last two seasons.
Babers, 54, waited a long time to get his shot as a head coach in 2012 at Eastern Illinois. It has been a quick rise since then to a Power Five-level job, but this feels like a very good move for a football program that really lacked an identity. It has one now.
TULANE: WILLIE FRITZ This was a savvy hire by new athletics director Troy Dannen, who got the job a little more than a week earlier.
Fritz will give Tulane a chance in the American Athletic Conference because he is an offensive innovator and, at 55, has been around the block a bit. He went 40-15 at Sam Houston State and 17-7 at Georgia Southern, which was making the transition from Football Championship Subdivision to Football Bowl Subdivision.
MEMPHIS: MIKE NORVELL The former Arizona State offensive coordinator checks every box for continuing Memphis’ run of success under Fuente.
Norvell, 34, has been a hot name in recent years but wasn’t brought up as much in this cycle because Arizona State had a disappointing season at 6-6. Still, his up-tempo offense has been highly productive, he’s a terrific recruiter and he has ties to the region from which Memphis recruits.
B
MISSOURI: BARRY ODOM The situation at Missouri is unique at the moment. The football team going on strike in a protest tied to the bubbling racial tensions on campus had reverberations in this search. Combined with the idea of replacing Gary Pinkel, who raised the bar at Missouri to unrealistic heights, a number of coaches didn’t want to touch Missouri at the moment.
Given those factors, it was smart to settle on Odom, 39, who played at the school and did a terrific job as defensive coordinator last season.
MARYLAND: D.J. DURKIN Pretty much everyone in the industry who has met Durkin, 37, is impressed. Maryland might have lucked into a really good hire.
But the coaching search was a scattershot mess, and surely Maryland fans didn’t envision firing Randy Edsall and ending up with Michigan’s defensive coordinator.
Maryland is a classic example of a school that didn’t have a realistic view of itself going into the process. No amount of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank’s money was going to persuade a high-profile coach to come to the division where Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh, Mark Dantonio and James Franklin reside.
CENTRAL FLORIDA: SCOTT FROST It will be interesting to see whether Frost can successfully import the Oregon system to Central Florida the way former Baylor assistants have done at Tulsa and Bowling Green.
Frost, 40, was blessed with Marcus Mariota in his first two years as offensive coordinator, and it’s a bit of a mystery how much of that success you can ascribe to him as a play-caller. But give UCF credit for knowing what it wanted and securing a coach a number of other schools wanted.
B-
GEORGIA: KIRBY SMART If being a former Nick Saban assistant was an automatic path to head coaching success, Derek Dooley would still be at Tennessee and Will Muschamp would still be at Florida.
Smart, who turns 40 this month, waited patiently for a head coaching gig and landed the chance of a lifetime at his alma mater. Maybe it will work out. But it’s a big roll of the dice for Geor- gia, especially when it fired a successful coach in Richt and didn’t conduct a legitimate search, honing in on Smart from the get-go.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: CLAY HELTON Nothing against Helton, who might do a good job, but USC’s search was a joke and continued the insular ways of the Trojans athletics department. Given that the last successful USC football coach had no previous ties to the school — that, of course, would be Pete Carroll — you’d think this time the USC brass would have done whatever it took to get a proven winner.
Helton is a good guy who did a competent job as interim coach this season and has no personal baggage, which might be enough to win at USC. But to win a national title? That seems like a stretch for a guy who just six years ago was the offensive coordinator on Tommy West’s Memphis staff that got fired.
RUTGERS: CHRIS ASH The former Ohio State defensive coordinator is accomplished, well-regarded and organized, but this is a tough job, especially for someone without significant ties to the region. If Ash and his staff can tap into New Jersey’s underrated recruiting base, he has a shot to win.
The other wild card is Rutgers’ famously inept administration. Julie Hermann is out, which should help, but new athletics director Patrick Hobbs, a former Seton Hall law school dean, has never worked in athletics in any capacity.
MINNESOTA: TRACY CLAEYS With no permanent athletics director in place, Minnesota took the easiest and probably most sensible path in promoting Claeys to replace Jerry Kill, who retired for health reasons. Claeys served as acting head coach several times over the years when Kill had to miss games because of his epilepsy, so Minnesota kind of knows what it’s getting.
This was a pure continuity hire, but there are no guarantees he will work out as well as Kill.
EAST CAROLINA: SCOTTIE MONTGOMERY This could turn out to be a very good hire because Montgomery is smart, well-regarded and has the right kind of background — having worked in the NFL and under Duke’s David Cutcliffe — to be a successful college head coach.
The question people have is why get rid of a proven winner in Ruffin McNeill, an ECU alum, to hire a 37-year-old who was only an offensive coordinator for two seasons.
C
SOUTH CAROLINA: WILL MUSCHAMP Athletics director Ray Tanner was in a difficult spot. At one point, he thought he had Houston’s Tom Herman locked up. Then he was going to hire Smart, but then the Georgia job opened up. Still, Tanner had a two-month head start on this search after Steve Spurrier’s retirement and ended up with a Southeastern Conference retread.
In a division trending toward defensive-minded hires, Tanner should have gone for an offensive guy such as Western Kentucky’s Jeff Brohm or Arkansas State’s Blake Anderson, but Muschamp’s reputation carries a lot of weight in SEC circles. We’ll see if he is any better the second time around.
BRIGHAM YOUNG: KALANI SITAKE The Cougars were working from a limited pool because of school requirements that the head coach be an active member of the Mormon faith. Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo would have been a home run, but once he turned BYU down, the options were much less attractive for athletics director Tom Holmoe.
Sitake, a BYU alum, did a great job as Utah’s defensive coordinator between 2008 to 2014 before going to Oregon State with Gary Andersen last season. Whether that translates into head coaching success, particularly at a highprofile job such as BYU, is unclear.
F
ILLINOIS: BILL CUBIT The Illini administration had an entire season to figure out what it wanted to do with its coaching search. Instead it punted, elevating Cubit from interim coach with a threeyear deal and leaving the big decisions to its next president and athletics director.
All this accomplished was kicking the can down the road and probably putting Illinois in an even deeper hole for the next guy to climb out of.