The NFL has Black Monday, the day after the regular season ends. For college football, the penultimate weekend of the full-length regular season (Army-Navy being on its own island, after the College Football Playoff and bowl announcements) marks the period of time when many coach firings occur.
You’ve seen Tulane, Rutgers, Virginia, and Georgia fire coaches since Thanksgiving Day. Various other coaches were fired a week earlier. The Carousel (not the wheel) is spinning, as Sterling Cooper and Partners goes to its human resources department in the latest episode of Mad Men College Football Employment.
As the Carousel spins, it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with the drill. When mid-tier vacancies emerge — such as Memphis — you might see the departing coach (Justin Fuente) quickly replaced by a candidate the school’s alert athletic director already had in mind (Missouri defensive coordinator Barry Odom). However, in a broader context, the first places to look on the Carousel are the schools at the top of the food chain.
In this year’s cycle, Georgia and USC head the list, with South Carolina and Miami not that far behind. LSU never did make the list, in a 180-degree turn from last Wednesday.
We’ll react to more hirings and firings as they come. We’ll assess how unfilled vacancies should be handled. We’ve even addressed situations such as the unique one at USC, where Clay Helton will coach at least one more regular-season game thanks to his Pac-12 South championship.
Yet, on the morning of Monday, November 30, 2015, one question currently towers over the others in the world of college football coaching, and all the dominoes that are about to fall:
Where will Tom Herman land?
Does he stay in Houston? He’ll have a loaded offense littered with returning starters in 2016. With Justin Fuente no longer coaching Memphis and Matt Rhule possibly on his way out of Temple (we’ll see), and with Keenan Reynolds no longer quarterbacking Navy, Houston would be the clear favorite in The American if Herman returns. He could make a New Year’s Six bowl and parlay that into the gig at Texas… IF, of course, Charlie Strong doesn’t turn things around in year three. That might be Herman’s long-term vision, and it would make a lot of sense.
However: USC and Georgia are plum jobs, also at the top of the ladder in college football. Being able to pursue one of those positions is an opportunity. Being able to pursue both, if one wishes to, is a gold mine. Herman would instantly make the Trojans or Dawgs a national threat.
The Georgia opening is particularly interesting — not just because the vacancy officially exists (USC has not made any statement about interim boss Clay Helton’s future status at the school), but because that vacancy coexists with a vacancy at neighboring South Carolina. Two familiar combatants in the SEC, fighting over a lot of the same recruiting turf in a division which seems wide-open, will dramatically reshape their futures in the coming days (maybe hours). If Herman goes to one school and not the other, or if he stays away from both, will have a lot to say about the next several years in Athens and Columbia.
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Had LSU fired Les Miles, it clearly wanted Jimbo Fisher to come aboard. Fisher, of course, is an established superstar head coach. Herman can’t be placed in that category, but of any head coach who has not yet conquered college football at the highest level — i.e., someone who has not yet had the chance to coach an upper-tier Power 5 program — Herman is the closest thing to a rock star on the Carousel.
Where he lands (which could be Houston) will affect many of the other vacancies in play.
Buckle up and grab that pole tightly. The Carousel is about to spin with great speed. Tom Herman will be the source of considerable acceleration.
