Feldman: 20 names for the college football coaching carousel
The number of openings may decline in the face of the pandemic, but programs across the FBS already are signaling they won't stand pat.
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Full disclosure: I work with the former Ohio State head coach at FOX on our “Big Noon Kickoff” show.
Meyer is the elephant in the room when it comes to potentially huge coaching openings, and there could be one coming open this winter at Texas. Tom Herman is near the end of his fourth season at Texas, and the Longhorns are nowhere close to being a top-10 team. And despite a strong second season when they finished No. 9, it’s been very underwhelming.
After last season, Herman fired most of his staff — many of whom he brought with him from Houston — but the results haven’t been much better. A loss last Friday at home to Iowa State dropped Herman to 7-7 in his last 14 games. The feeling is this program should be better than it is now, and recruiting is backsliding. It would take $15 million-plus to move on from Herman, not to mention the cost of parting with the coaching staff.
People with knowledge of the matter say the UT brass is prepared to move on from Herman, but where they’d go next is the really intriguing part. Herman’s old boss, Meyer, is the wish candidate. He won national titles at Florida and at Ohio State and wasted little time getting them there. The 56-year-old does have health concerns, and those were a real factor in him walking away from a plum job in Columbus. Does he still want badly to be on the sidelines?
Here’s my read on the situation: It’s really, really, really hard for coaches who walked away on top to stay away — especially someone as wildly competitive as Meyer is. In Texas, you have a big job in a conference that appears ripe for the taking. This certainly isn’t the meat grinder that is the SEC. There are some parallels to how watered down the Big Ten was back when Meyer first showed up in Columbus. Meyer also has a good window into what’s going on inside at Texas and the personnel there given his former defensive coordinator Chris Ash now runs the Longhorns defense. Texas has great resources and a hefty recruiting base that Meyer did well mining when he was at Ohio State.
All that said, Meyer has taken to TV really well. He is extremely engaged in our show and very passionate about it — maybe as much as any analyst that I’ve worked with in TV. He genuinely cares about the show and takes great pride in the presence he has as a commentator on the sport, so I could definitely see him staying committed to that. I’ve worked with some former coaches who moved into TV and they essentially went through the motions, coasting on their name and personalities. That is definitely not Meyer or how he’s transitioned to it here.
I don’t know this for certain, but I suspect there are moments when he’s tempted by the prospects of being back in it as a coach, striving toward building and running a powerhouse being wired for how all-consuming that is. And then there probably are other days when he’s very comfortable with his situation now."
