Rice lost to North Texas today, which brings their record to 1-11. It's seemed inevitable all season that Bailiff was going to be let go, and he seems resigned to it at this point. At the postgame press conference, he more or less said that he expects to be let go. I'd expect Rice to try to go young and catch a rising star on his way up, knowing that he might move on at the first extended signs of success. That's just the risk you take as a smaller program, but if you can put a couple of these types of hires together back-to-back, you become the type of job that promising assistants begin to seek out, kind of like what UH has been able to do.
Unfortunately for Rice, I think Orlando will have his sights set on a power 5 job when he does move on. He makes over a million dollars per year as the DC at Texas, and defense wasn't really the problem for UT this season. In fact, he probably looks even better BECAUSE the offense had their struggles this season.
Which is why he's leaving for a HC job, either to a low-tier P5 team or a G5 team like Rice, he won't even have to leave state.
There will be enough openings this offseason that he very well may leave. Certainly there will be interest in his services. The reality is just that Rice is one of the lower-tier jobs that is going to be open, and I think he probably has his sights set higher, and beyond that, I'm not sure staying in Texas would be that big of a draw. He's not from the state and he hadn't coached in the state until joining Herman at UH in 2015. The great thing about coaching stuff, though, is that time will tell. I could be wrong, and I'm sure Rice would be thrilled to have him.
I think Kliff would've been a good hire for Rice if he was let go by Tech. Maybe Sonny Combie from TCU or Kevin Sumlin could work.
Graham's firing is kind of unique. In most cases, the fanbase is on board with firing a coach long before the administration is ready to make the move. But this is the rare case where the fanbase seems to be pretty split. There are some who want him gone because they feel like the program stagnated after a couple of good seasons to begin his tenure (not unlike Mora at UCLA). Then, there are his supporters who tout the fact that he has finished first or second in the division four out of six years, they've only missed a bowl once in his tenure, and that the team actually overachieved this year rather than going off the rails which happens so often when a coach begins the year on the hot seat (see: Tennessee). The program is also the healthiest that it's been since the 1970s just in terms of wins and losses. There was a report out before the game yesterday that Graham expected to be fired regardless of the outcome of the game against Arizona, which means that ASU basically already had their mind made up. Assuming Kevin Sumlin is gone at A&M, I would expect him to be among the first calls ASU makes.
Billy Liucci of TexAgs just tweeted that Sumlin to ASU is all but done. If that's the case, then it's pretty clear that Graham was fired largely because ASU wanted to go out and get Kevin Sumlin. That might explain why the news broke yesterday that Graham expected to be fired. Once Sumlin was clearly out at A&M, ASU made up its mind on Graham.
Think Sumlin will do well at ASU and in the PAC. Not sure if Graham will only look for HC gigs but would love Herman to take a look at him for OC. Still don't think he'll bail on Beck that quickly but Graham's offenses with Orlando's D could make for a quick turnaround.
If he goes there, I don't think Sumlin will do any better at ASU than anywhere else. If he doesn't have an elite QB, his teams are mediocre at best regardless of the conference. It would be surprising if he did any better than Todd Graham.
It looks like the logjam is about to break. So many of these coaching moves seem to be hinging on others, and we now have movement. Looks like Tennessee is going to have to settle for Greg Schiano (who is actually probably a pretty decent hire, just not the splashy hire Vols fans wanted). It seems like they went that direction because Dan Mullen turned his focus to Florida, news that's more or less breaking right now. Mullen might have been UF's top choice, but it was certainly either him or Scott Frost, who supposedly decided not to pursue the UF job anymore, which seems to make his move to Nebraska much more likely.
Whew, if you want to read a good meltdown, check out the replies to Dan Wolken's tweet about Tennessee hiring Schiano - LINK The complaints fall into two basic categories. 1. Schiano just simply isn't a good enough hire for a program the stature of Tennessee. I know they wanted a splashier hire (cough, Gruden, cough), but I think this complaint is short-sided for a couple of reasons. For one, what Schiano accomplished at Rutgers was nothing short of a miracle. Go look at how bad they were before he got there and then what they did when he was head coach. Second, I know this is true all across college football, but I don't think the Tennessee job is nearly as good as most make it out to be. They did win a national title and that puts them in elite company in modern college football, but they've won the SEC five times since 1969, and if you look at their year-by-year results, even during the peak of Johnny Majors and Phil Fulmer, there are far more three, four, or five-loss seasons than you may have been led to believe. Very good? Sure. Great? Not so sure. 2. The more valid, and potentially much more damaging complaint from the university's perspective, is that Schiano was implicated in Mike McQueary's testimony during the Sandusky scandal. It's alleged that he was one of the assistant coaches who witnessed an act at some point, but didn't take action after the fact. That's bad enough, but his hiring comes off as particularly tone deaf when you consider that Tennessee just had to settle a Title IX lawsuit stemming from allegations that the university maintains a "hostile sexual environment."
Just saw that a state rep has weighed in on the issue on Twitter, so it's already gone beyond the athletics realm.
For the record, since Liucci tweeted this, several other writers have rushed to say that "there has been no official contact between ASU and Sumlin" or some such, which is probably technically true, but I think probably has more to do with the fact that Sumlin wants to get his buyout from A&M. If A&M could prove that he's had contact with ASU, they could probably argue against paying out at least some of the buyout on the grounds that he was seeking other employment while under contract, and obviously if Sumlin were to take the job right away, A&M wouldn't have to pay him anything. College football coaching: where timing and technicalities on who you talk to and at what time determines which direction millions of dollars will flow.
