Catching up: Coaches are goin' places (or not)

* USC gets shot down: Mike Riley is no longer a candidate at USC after withdrawing his name from consideration and signing a three-year extension with Oregon State. I'm a little surprised -- I thought he'd at least listen to an offer, because it's not like Oregon State is a better job in any way, shape or form than USC. But I guess he's happy where he is, and there's nothing at all wrong with that.

Where does USC turn now? I figured Steve Sarkisian would be high on the list, but he said Sunday that USC hadn't called and that he wouldn't be interested anyway. Jeff Fisher also said he has no interest, specifically citing the pending NCAA investigation. I also don't think Jim Harbaugh's leaving Stanford for a rival he's made no secret of hating. There's been no word yet on Jaguars coach Jack del Rio (another USC alum), but if he decides to stay in the NFL, the choices would be limited.

I think Paul Hackett's looking for another head coaching job ... seriously though, it'll be really interesting to see if USC goes after somebody like Mike Leach, Gary Patterson or Chris Petersen.

* What's going on at USF? Jim Leavitt has hired a team of lawyers in an effort to force USF to reinstate him as head coach. He maintains that he did not hit Joel Miller in the face and that he should not have been fired, and his lawyers threw in this little nugget:

The attorneys released a statement Friday of behalf of the coach, saying the dismissal "is contrary to the terms of his contract" and violates Leavitt's constitutional rights.

I'm not sure which amendment says you can't be fired; if there is one, I'm sure a lot of people would like to know about it.

This is probably a financial move, as Leavitt is owed only a week's pay ($66,667) if fired with cause, but there was a rumor earlier today from ESPN's Bruce Feldman that USF was actually considering giving Leavitt his job back (!!!). It's also been reported that Michigan offensive coordinator Calvin Magee will interview (or already has) for the job, while East Carolina's Skip Holtz, former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney and both Terry and Tommy Bowden have been mentioned as candidates.

There's nobody on that list better than Leavitt, but it would be bizarre and shocking to see him get his job back after the school's investigative report pretty much called him a lying bastard.

* They are ND: Notre Dame's coaching staff is just about complete. Brian Kelly has been assembling his staff over the past week and now has all the key pieces in place, including offensive coordinator Charley Molnar and defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, both of whom came over from Cincinnati.

Molnar served as QBs coach but apparently will add the role of OC -- which is mostly just a title since Kelly calls the plays -- while Diaco will remain D-coordinator. For all the criticism Cincinnati's defense took this year, Diaco did a pretty good job taking a unit that lost 10 of 11 starters from 2008 and getting it to respectability (66th in total defense and 44th in scoring defense). Before coming to Cincinnati, he served as a linebackers coach under Al Groh, meaning he loves him some 3-4.

The interesting name on the staff: Chuck Martin, the former Grand Valley State head coach who I mentioned as a possible D-coordinator candidate when Kelly was named Notre Dame's coach. Martin has a ridiculous resume, going 74-7 with two national titles in six years at Grand Valley, and Kelly offered him the DC job at both Central Michigan and Cincinnati. At Notre Dame, though, he'll actually be coaching defensive backs, which was his role as an assistant before becoming D-coordinator at Grand Valley. He'll also likely be an assistant head coach.

The rest of the staff is mostly Cincinnati guys. The lone Notre Dame holdover is running backs coach Tony Alford, a veteran who's been at ND for two years after spending time at Louisville, Iowa State, Washington, etc. He's been around and has coached some pretty good players, including Victor Anderson at Louisville and Troy Davis at Iowa State. Notre Dame was pretty terrible at running the ball this year (84th in the country), but that had more to do with the crappy offensive line than the running backs.

Outside of losing offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn to Buffalo, Kelly has to be pretty happy. Keeping most of his staff intact and adding Chuck Martin isn't a bad way to start his Notre Dame career.

Tuberville to Texas Tech

It didn't take Texas Tech very long to find a replacement for Mike Leach:

Former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville has been named the next football coach at Texas Tech, the school announced Saturday. His deal is for five years and in the range of $2 million a year.

Tuberville isn't a bad hire. He left Auburn (or was fired, depending on who you believe) with an 85-40 record and eight consecutive bowl appearances, and his defenses were consistently among the best in the SEC. He's 55 now, which isn't young, but Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden have shown that a guy with the right demeanor can coach well into his 200s.

The downside is that his offenses were never particularly exciting or innovating outside of 2004, when Al Borges fashioned a devastating running game out of Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown that led Auburn to a 13-0 season. Once those guys left, it was back to business as usual (mediocre offenses rescued by excellent defenses).

Does that mean there will be a complete style overhaul at Texas Tech? Apparently not:

Last week, Tech athletic director Gerald Myers told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that Tuberville told him he would keep the Red Raiders' aerial offense in place and wanted to maintain continuity in the program, which hasn't had a losing season since 1992. Tuberville told the newspaper he would change some things defensively, drawing on success he had at Auburn.

This had to be a relief for Myers and was probably one of the primary reasons Tuberville was given the job over defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill, who did a commendable job as interim coach in the Alamo Bowl shootout against Michigan State. Getting continuity AND head coaching experience is a win-win for Texas Tech.

If Tuberville can figure out how to let the offense keep its identity while bringing the defense up to respectability, Tech might not suffer much of a drop-off. He probably won't have the recruiting success Leach did -- he doesn't really excite people or have that oddball personality that made Leach so intriguing, and Lubbock is a desert wasteland -- but if he can win eight games and get to a respectable bowl game every year like he did at Auburn, that's good enough.

USC, meet crossroads

It's all but official: Pete Carroll is the coach of the Seattle Seahawks (I never thought I'd be typing those words).

Pete Carroll did not officially inform USC he was leaving as of Friday afternoon, but sources within the university said he accepted a job with the Seattle Seahawks and only needed to agree to final contract details.

Once the financial terms are agreed upon and a minority candidate is given a token interview, an announcement will be made and USC will be without one of the most successful head coaches in the history of the sport.

His timing seems a little suspicious -- the NCAA is in the midst of the Joe McKnight investigation and is supposedly wrapping up the Reggie Bush probe -- but we'll probably never know his true reasons for leaving. Maybe he feared the allegations ... or maybe he simply grew tired of them. Maybe he was bored with dominating the Pac-10 and wanted to prove to all his critics that he can be successful in the NFL, that he doesn't need five-star talent to win, that his rah-rah style isn't prohibitive to winning in professional football. Maybe he just couldn't pass up a chance to stay on the West Coast and make $7 million a year. It doesn't really matter; the important thing is that he's now in the NFL, which means there's now a gaping hole at USC.

It feels like hyperbole to spell out all of Carroll's accomplishments, but I'll do it anyway. He took over a USC program that had been steadily in decline for about a decade and had gone 19-18 in three years under Paul Hackett. After going 6-6 in his first year (2001) and losing in the Las Vegas Bowl ... well, you know the rest:

2002: 11-2 (won Pac-10, won Orange Bowl)
2003: 12-1 (won Pac-10, won Rose Bowl)
2004: 13-0 (won Pac-10, won Orange Bowl)
2005: 12-1 (won Pac-10, lost Rose Bowl)
2006: 11-2 (won Pac-10, won Rose Bowl)
2007: 11-2 (won Pac-10, won Rose Bowl)
2008: 12-1 (won Pac-10, won Rose Bowl)
2009: 9-4 (won Emerald Bowl)

Carroll was 9-8 after 17 games; in his final 100 games, he was 89-11. He led USC to seven straight 11-win seasons, seven straight top-four finishes in the AP poll, seven Pac-10 titles, six BCS games and two national titles in nine years, and he was one spectacular Vince Young play away from another one. He coached three Heisman winners, had 14 players drafted in the first round and had seven straight top-10 recruiting classes (included three ranked No. 1 by Rivals). Am I forgetting anything? I think that pretty well covers it.

The only negative from his time at USC is that there will continue to be a cloud over the program until the NCAA finally does whatever it's going to do. I brought up the issue just a few weeks ago and said this:

... when we're talking about a pattern of several similar incidents with players living well above their means, it makes it a lot harder to believe that those incidents are just a string of random events that evaded detection. Did Pete Carroll know? Your guess is as good as mine. But it seems increasingly likely that he just ignored everything going on around him because he didn't WANT to know.

The insane talent USC managed to accumulate always raised eyebrows, and the various allegations of improper benefits didn't exactly help. To a lot of people, Carroll's USC had become the modern-day version of Jimmy Johnson's Miami. But I will say this: With Bush, McKnight and Carroll (and probably most/all of his staff) out of the picture, it'd be pointless to punish USC for their actions. That's called closing the barn door after the horse has left. If Bush is found to have been ineligible and some wins are vacated, that's fine; just don't impose scholarship or recruiting restrictions on the new coach, who will have had no involvement in any improprieties.

Speaking of the new coach, the guy who seems to be at the top of the list (at least according to the Los Angeles Daily News) is Oregon State coach Mike Riley, a former USC assistant who the school actually pursued before hiring Carroll in 2001. Riley doesn't jump off the page as an elite candidate, but keep in mind that he's coaching in a black hole called Corvallis with no recruiting pull. Before his arrival in 1998, Oregon State hadn't won more than five games in a season since 1971 (!!!). In the past seven years, they've won an average of eight games a season, they've gone 5-1 in bowls and they've beaten USC twice. Riley's a very good coach.

Other names mentioned include Jack del Rio (current coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars), Jeff Fisher (current coach of the Tennessee Titans) and Jim Harbaugh, and I still believe that if Riley isn't interested, a call will go out to Steve Sarkisian and possibly Lane Kiffin. Harbaugh's candidacy will probably be short-lived -- he hasn't exactly been diplomatic with USC since taking over at Stanford -- but everyone else on that list either played or coached at Southern Cal.

The depressing thing for USC is that no matter who's hired, there will be an inevitable drop-off. The recruiting classes have still been good the past few years, but they haven't been dominant like they were in the mid-2000s, and the new coach will be in a tough spot trying to reel in this year's high-end recruits with just a few weeks left before signing day. He'll also have to assemble a staff, and I'll eat my hat (I'm not actually wearing a hat) if the new group of coaches compares to the assistants Carroll lost during his tenure: Norm Chow, DeWayne Walker, Steve Sarkisian, Lane Kiffin and Nick Holt, among others. When you factor in Oregon's rise in the Pac-10 and Notre Dame's probable return to prominence under Brian Kelly, it seems unlikely that we'll be seeing any seven-year stretches like the one Carroll just completed in the foreseeable future.

That doesn't mean USC can't still be an elite program that consistently competes for national titles -- it really should be -- but that'll all depend on Carroll's replacement. Mike Garrett just needs to make sure he finds someone a lot closer to Pete Carroll than Paul Hackett.

About 24 hours ago, I ended my national championship game wrap-up with this comment:

In two years at Alabama, Saban has brought in a ridiculous 40 four- or five-star recruits, which is 10 more than either USC or Florida has signed in that time. The wave of talent has no end in sight. With the uncertainty of the Urban Meyer situation at Florida and the allegations swirling at USC, 'Bama might have just taken the torch as college football's next dynasty.

Consider the torch passed.

Must ... not ... laugh

This says it all about the state of Alabama:

The University of Alabama is going to display its new national championship football trophy at a place where most anyone can see it: Walmart.

The school says the Coaches' Trophy will be on display at a Walmart Supercenter in Tuscaloosa on Saturday and another Walmart store in Gardendale on Sunday.

If you decide to go, it'll be placed directly next to the Tide-themed hunting gear and Dale Earnhardt Jr. collectible tins.

Whaaaa???

The insanity is reaching new levels:

Seattle Seahawks coach Jim Mora has been fired, the first coach in team history to be let go after one season, and league sources say longtime USC coach Pete Carroll is being targeted as Mora's replacement.

A prominent USC source close to the athletic department said Friday that Carroll joining the Seahawks was "going down."

Said another source close to Carroll: "You're about to see a big headline that shakes up the major college football world," in reference to the Seahawks development.

Yeah, I'd say that would shake up the college football world. And didn't we just go through this?

If I'd have asked you yesterday to come up with the most shocking story possible in the world of college football, where would "Urban Meyer resigns" have ranked? First? Second? I can't think of anything else more shocking or with more potential ramifications, with the possible exception of Pete Carroll stepping down at USC.

How silly of me to think that Urban Meyer's retirement would be the most shocking news of the offseason. Everyone will say that Carroll's trying to escape L.A. before USC gets hit with the NCAA hammer, but I'm not sure that's the only factor. Are penalties likely? Yes, at some point. But he's also done just about everything he can do at USC and has hit a little bit of a lull; I think it's entirely possible that he's just looking for a new challenge. He probably wouldn't mind making $7 million a year, either.

For the record, Carroll's time in the NFL wasn't nearly the disaster people often make it out to be. He was 6-10 in his one season with the Jets (1994) and then 10-6, 9-7 and 8-8 with New England from 1997-99. He led the Patriots to an AFC East title in '97 and was 1-2 in the playoffs. He was fired with a career record of 33-31. That's not spectacular by any means, but it's certainly not bad.

I'm not here to talk about his NFL prospects, though. What I care about is the effect his departure would have on USC and college football as a whole. If he takes the job, it could represent an extreme shift in power and have a domino effect on coaches throughout the country. I have to imagine that Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian would be on the short list of candidates; Mike Riley and Jim Harbaugh would probably get a look too. There might not be a better job in college football right now than USC, so it'd be a step up for just about anybody. There are also a ton of high-end recruits who could be left up in the air, which would be devastating for USC (and awesome for everybody else) with less than a month before national signing day.

I'm not gonna spend all night speculating -- it's still possible that the deal could fall through, making all of this moot -- but wow. Alabama's national title is already old news.

Leavitt done at South Florida

After 13 years as the only head coach in South Florida's brief college football history, Jim Leavitt has been fired:

South Florida fired football coach Jim Leavitt after a school investigation concluded he grabbed one of his players by the throat, slapped him in the face and then lied about it.

The incident was reported several weeks ago by AOL Fanhouse after sophomore Joel Miller said Leavitt hit him at halftime of a game against Louisville as punishment for a mistake on a special-teams play. The allegation was later rescinded, but the investigation found that several players* directly or indirectly confirmed the original account, and the school determined that the follow-up story from Miller and Leavitt wasn't accurate.

In his letter to Leavitt, Woolard said the athlete's statements after the probe began "are unpersuasive because they were contradicted by the same student athlete in his conversations with credible witnesses made close in time to when that conduct occurred."

With that, the coach who built USF from nothing into a Big East power is gone. After going 5-6 in his first year (1997), the Bulls had only one losing season while going from I-AA to a I-A independent to Conference USA to the Big East. In five years in the Big East, USF has gone to a bowl game every year and has an overall record of 41-24. I'm not sure there's ever been a program that's moved up in the college football world so quickly and so successfully, and Leavitt is the primary reason for that. He leaves with a record of 94-57, a phenomenal achievement considering that he started from scratch. Considering his defensive background, I'll be surprised if he doesn't find a good job as a D-coordinator relatively quickly

A lot of people will compare Leavitt's firing to the Mike Leach situation, but this is a much different scenario. Texas Tech was clearly looking for an excuse to fire Leach as far back as last offseason; Adam James just offered the school an escape. But Leavitt has never had (to my knowledge) any previous problems with players or the USF administration, and while has hasn't quite gotten USF over the hump to an elite bowl game or conference title, it's not like he's been struggling recently: In the past four seasons, the Bulls have gone 9-4, 9-4, 8-5 and 8-5 with a 3-1 bowl record.

Leavitt is an extremely fiery guy, though, and if you want a valid comparison for a good-but-sometimes-too-intense coach doing something stupid in the heat of the moment, here you go:



It's just unfortunate that the same intensity that made him such a great coach has now cost him his job.

* A note to USF: I'm not the most technically savvy person in the world, but I know that putting a black box over names in a PDF doesn't make the text go away. I won't print all the names here for obvious reasons; I'll just say that within 30 seconds of opening the investigative report, I had identified every anonymous player.

10 years of (mostly) awesome

This probably would have been more appropriate on New Year's Day, but whatever. I was busy watching football and engorging myself with delicious food of all varieties. Now that the season's in the books and a decade of college football has come to an end, I'll allow myself one sentimental look back (which I'm pretty much stealing directly from ESPN via YouTube).

Here are your college football moments of the decade: