College football’s mad coaching scramble is only just beginning
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Version 0 of 1. On Nov. 1, Frank Beamer did Virginia Tech one last, very important favor when he announced that this would be his last season as the school’s football coach. In doing so, Beamer avoided the specter of being dragged from the stage, kicking and screaming in the same embarrassing way Bobby Bowden was kicked to the curb by Florida State six years ago. Like Bowden, Beamer was an icon whose record had slipped toward the end of his career. After winning at least 10 games for eight straight seasons between 2004 and 2011, the Hokies are 28-23 the last four falls, barely sneaking into a bowl game with a 6-6 record the past two years. Beamer just turned 69 and could hear the drumbeats from alumni and boosters who had come to expect 10-win seasons and major bowl games. So he turned November into an emotional, but joyful, victory lap. At least as important, Beamer made it possible for Athletic Director Whit Babcock to successfully pursue Memphis Coach Justin Fuente, who is arguably the hottest young coach in the business right now. Fuente is only 39 and he turned a woeful Memphis program around, going 19-6 the past two seasons after starting out 7-17 his first two years. What’s more, Fuente runs the kind of up-tempo, spread offense that recruits want to be a part of and fans want to watch. [Justin Fuente may be just the right man for Virginia Tech.] By landing Fuente, Virginia Tech also avoided the mad scramble that will happen during the next few weeks brought on by an unprecedented spate of firings, resignations and retirements that have taken place in college football the last three months. Once upon a time, college coaches being fired midseason was unheard of, if only because schools wanted to feed the myth that winning wasn’t everything. Nowadays, to quote Vince Lombardi, it isn’t everything, it is the only thing. That’s why it was no shock when Maryland bounced Randy Edsall in October, deciding to begin its coaching search right away rather than delaying the inevitable until season’s end. Virginia took the opposite tack, allowing Mike London to finish the season, meaning Athletic Director Craig Littlepage couldn’t begin to openly search for a new coach until London resigned on Sunday. One of the reasons coaches are getting fired midseason is to give athletic directors a chance to begin looking for a new coach sooner rather than later. This year’s firings actually began before the season started, when Illinois fired Coach Tim Beckham a few days before the Illini’s opener. That was only the beginning of the coaching carnage. USC’s Steve Sarkisian; Hawaii’s Norm Chow; North Texas’s Dan McCarney; Miami’s Al Golden; Louisiana-Monroe’s Todd Berry and Edsall were all asked to depart with games left to play. There weren’t just firings: Steve Spurrier woke up one morning in October and decided, at age 70, he was done at South Carolina. “I’m not retiring,” he said. “I’m resigning.” George O’Leary, who just two seasons ago led UCF to a 12-1 record and a Fiesta Bowl win, did retire with the school en route to an 0-12 season. Minnesota’s Jerry Kill had to retire for health reasons and Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, who is fighting cancer, announced he’d retire at the conclusion of the season. It all makes your head spin. [The college football playoff picture in a nutshell] Of course, the end of the regular season brought firings that had been expected: Paul Rhoads at Iowa State; Curtis Johnson at Tulane; Scott Shafer at Syracuse — who was fired just before coaching his final game; Kyle Flood at Rutgers — whose AD, Julie Hermann, failed to pull the trigger on him after he was caught apparently trying to get a professor to change a grade to keep a player eligible. For her inaction, Hermann was also shown the door. The most stunning firing — or resignation, depending on whether you believe in euphemisms — came at Georgia, where Mark Richt lost his job after averaging just under 10 wins a year for 15 seasons. Richt won 145 games, went to bowl games every year and won the SEC title twice, but was shown the door after the Bulldogs went 9-3. Reportedly, Georgia wanted Richt gone so it could hire Kirby Smart, Alabama’s defensive coordinator. By Monday though, speculation centered on Houston Coach Tom Herman, who has an 11-1 record as a head coach. Smart and Herman — who are 39 and 40, respectively — are hot names right now. Richt, a proven winner without a national championship, became yesterday’s news quickly in Athens. Even more remarkably, LSU’s Les Miles would probably have been out of a job if Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher had been willing to leave Tallahassee. Miles, who has won a national championship (2007), has a record of 111-32 in 11 seasons at LSU. But the Tigers haven’t played in the national title game since the 2011 season and — like Georgia — are only 9-3 this season. Athletic Director Joe Alleva let it leak that a buyout was being negotiated with Miles last week, only to be forced to back off when a deal with Fisher fell through, leaving Alleva to clumsily say, “Les Miles is still our football coach,” after Saturday’s win over Texas A&M — refusing, of course, to elaborate on what had almost happened. The musical chairs will move swiftly now. It will be fascinating to see if Maryland, which has apparently been in touch with a slew of potential coaching candidates, ends up with a better hire than Virginia, which is getting a late start because it allowed London to go out with some dignity. As everyone knows, dignity is not often a valued commodity in college athletics. Winning is valued. Making money is valued. That’s why the carnage of the last few months is no longer surprising. It is the way of the world among the members of college football’s billionaire boys club. |