Fire the carousel back up! I'm sure it's being discussed at length in the UH football thread, but news broke Saturday evening that Major Applewhite is going to be out after all, and that Dana Holgerson is a leading candidate at this point. That would create an opening at WVU, obviously, which could then poach a lower G5 coach and, in turn, create yet another opening.
I don’t see Dana taking a pay cut and giving up the chance to make the playoffs. Plus if they try to get him to sign a high buyout contract that they have with major.
Well now, suddenly, the carousel is spinning out of control. With Manny Diaz going to Miami, that re-opens the Temple job. Richt retiring was a surprise in the moment, obviously, but based on some of the reporting after he left Georgia, perhaps we should have seen this coming. I remember a handful of the most well-sourced members of the college football media speculating that Richt would just retire after he left UGA because he's always been the type of guy with interests outside of football and that would likely enjoy his post-football life in a way that many head coaches don't. It just kinda seems like Richt realized that he was going to have to clean house (including firing his son as QB coach) and that he was going to have to completely rebuild things and knew that he just didn't have that in him. I'm sure his departure was hastened by AD Blake James very publicly not being enamored with the performance of the team, but I really believe that this was a true retirement and not a situation where he was pushed into retirement.
I think I'm with you on this. I get that Dana seems to be pulling off a high-wire act where he alternates between maybe kinda sorta being on the hot seat to coaching his way off of it, and that it hasn't always seemed like the best fit in Morgantown. And on top of that, he'll have to do some major rebuilding for the 2019 season, but ultimately, with the college football landscape being what it is, I would be incredibly surprised if a coach moved from any P5 job (particularly a good one like WVU) to a G5 job (even a really good one like UH).
Thought the carousel was a bit lackluster this year. Good to see it pick back up. Wonder if Temple will make another run at Elko.
Funniest thing about this is Miami has to pay Temple $4M to get back their coach after 2 weeks. I'm sure a lot of people in Coral Gables are not pleased with Mark Richt right about now.
It gets better for Temple: Georgia Tech is paying them 2.5M to hire their coach away. 6.5 million dollars for doing nothing. That can endow a whole lot of scholarships.
And as a program that has served as a good springboard to P5 jobs (Al Golden to Miami, Steve Addazio to BC, Matt Rhule to Baylor, Geoff Collins to GT), they're still probably going to end up with a quality head coach.
Can't say I understand the hype for Dana Holgorsen. Averaged 7.5 wins in 8 seasons with only 2 seasons of more than 8 wins. The increased budget for staff is nice though. I guess all that matters is perception anyway. UH averaged 32k fans in a 40k stadium in 2017 and probably less in 2018. This should help drum up support and revenue.
I think his system will be good for D'Eriq King. Add in that he's familiar with recruiting in Texas and will have better assistants, and I think the program can generate some momentum. This year's team gave up on Major and plays in the AAC, so it's not like it can get that much worse. I don't see why UH can't regularly compete for an AAC title.
The expectations are rightfully being amped up. They have drastically improved facilities, they have a P-5 assistant coaching budget, a P-5 paid head coach, a very fertile recruiting base and are in a non P-5 conference. They have a large advantage over the other teams in their conference so they should win a whole lot of games.