Focus of coaching carousel lands on American Athletic Conference
ATLANTA — The college football world moves from New York to Atlanta this week for Thursday’s College Football Awards show, which means so does speculation about coaching vacancies.
With Oregon hiring Willie Taggart on Wednesday, all of the Power Five jobs are filled, meaning the carousel will be relatively calm this year barring a surprise departure. The focus now shifts to the American Athletic Conference, where there are suddenly vacancies at Cincinnati, Houston, Temple and South Florida.
The AAC has become college football’s prime launching pad league and a magnet for some of the top young coaching talent in the game. All four of those jobs are highly attractive opportunities, as coaches now see that winning in the AAC will lead to automatic interest from Power Five schools.
Houston
The longer the Houston search goes, the perception is that it’s more likely the Cougars stay in house, with defensive coordinator Todd Orlando becoming the favorite. Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and former LSU coach Les Miles have already spoken with the school. Oklahoma offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley pulled his name from consideration on Wednesday, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Don’t underestimate this factor: Athletics director Hunter Yurachek was an internal candidate himself who got the Houston job after Mack Rhoades’ departure for Missouri. And everyone in the Houston program has respect for Orlando, whose unit played at a high level and has a good relationship with freshman defensive lineman Ed Oliver, by far the most important player in the program in the near-term.
There was buzz earlier in the week that Riley had suddenly become the favorite for the job, but that went away quickly. Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield, who announced last Saturday that he’s coming back for his senior year, said he felt good about Riley coming back though they had not spoken specifically about the Houston situation.
“I think it was kind of a mutual understanding that I was going to come back, we were going to make one more run at it together since I only had one more year left,” Mayfield said. “You always worry about it because he’s such a great coach and he’s going to make a great head coach. I want him to stay, there’s no doubt about it. But it’s not my decision to make.
I think it was a mutual understanding (between us). It’s not like we shook on it or anything, but stuff here and there.”
Cincinnati
The Bearcats are waiting to see what Charlie Strong does before moving onto their next group of candidates, a person with knowledge of the situation told Paste BN Sports on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. Cincinnati will have competition from within its own conference, as South Florida is going to make him a top priority as well. But another person with insight into Strong’s thinking thinks he is more likely to stay away from either job at this point and try to re-enter the job market next year.
Texas running back D’Onta Foreman, who is up for the Doak Walker Award here, said
“I want to see him coach some team and get them as high as he can, to a national championship,” Foreman said. “He’s a great guy, the stuff he came in and instilled in us, I really feel like it worked. We just didn’t win some of those games we should have won, but I feel like what he instilled in us as far as being a man and changing the program around, he really did a good job of that. Unfortunately we were just young and we weren’t able to close out some of the close games we had. I’m looking forward to see what he does.”
Strong would make sense for Cincinnati, but if he’s out of the mix the favorite may be Ohio State defensive coordinator Luke Fickell, who was the Buckeyes’ interim coach in 2011 following Jim Tressel’s firing. Fickell believes it’s time for him to be a head coach again, and this could be a prime opportunity in a geographic area he knows well.
Temple
Names are emerging in the still-early Temple search, and the most intriguing might be Old Dominion’s Bobby Wilder, who shepherded the program from its creation in 2009 to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2014. Wilder is 66-30 as a head coach, and this was his breakthrough season with the Monarchs, who went 9-3 overall and 7-1 in Conference USA.
Another name with early traction at Temple is Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead, who was reportedly the runner-up for the Purdue job that went to Jeff Brohm. Moorhead went 38-13 as Fordham’s head coach and has done a terrific job this season for the Nittany Lions. Others who could be in the mix at Temple are Alabama offensive line coach Mario Cristobal and Ohio State co-offensive coordinator Ed Warinner. Another name to watch is Atlanta Falcons special teams coordinator and Temple alum Keith Armstrong.
South Florida
This will be a highly attractive job, one that Kiffin will try hard to get, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, given his ties to the Tampa area. Athletics director Mark Harlan, however, worked for UCLA’s athletic department while Kiffin was at Southern Cal, which might not leave the most positive impression.
USF would like to get in the ballgame with Strong, who has an impressive history of recruiting in the state. But again, whether he wants to jump back in at a non-Power Five school is uncertain at this point.
Talk of former Rutgers and Tampa Bay coach Greg Schiano is far-fetched at this point. Schiano is content in Columbus on Urban Meyer’s staff and has twin sons entering their senior year of high school, which could delay his head coaching ambitions for another year barring an unusually attractive opportunity. South Florida probably doesn’t fit that bill.
Other names that have come up include Florida State co-offensive coordinator Lawrence Dawsey, Florida defensive coordinator Geoff Collins and Tennessee tight ends coach/special teams coordinator Larry Scott, a USF alum and former Taggart assistant who served as Miami’s interim coach in 2015 after Al Golden was fired.
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