Chip Kelly: Top 6 College Football Coaching Jobs He Could Take

Chip Kelly has taken an analyst role at ESPN… is another college job in his future?

Former Oregon, Eagles, and 49ers coach Chip Kelly has signed on with ESPN to be a College Football and NFL analyst for the upcoming season.

To me, that means he’s going to take another college job.  I think he’s pretty much done in the NFL for now, although he could work his way back to it.  Remember, he wasn’t awful with the Eagles.  He went 20-12 in his first two years in Philly, before going 6-9 and being fired before the final game of his 3rd season.  In San Francisco this past season, he went 2-14 in a no-win situation with Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert at QB, along with very little talent around them.   He turned Sam Bradford and Nick Foles into decent quarterbacks in Philly, and produced numbers which neither has replicated with any other team.

He’s had his most success in College Football though, taking Oregon to their first ever national title appearance in 2010, and leaving the foundation for their 2nd national title (and first playoff appearance) under head coach Mark Helfrich (who was his offensive coordinator).

The best way to stir up attention, and get back to the NFL, is to be successful in college again.  It worked for Pete Carroll, and Pete was put in a better situation with Seattle than he was before in New England.

Kelly has stated, numerous times, how he did not really like recruiting (like in this 2013 article):

My schedule, the day the season was over, was a lot worse than my schedule here because you’re planes, trains and automobiles recruiting from Sunday night until Friday afternoon and hustling back and practicing, getting a practice in Friday afternoon, practice Saturday, practice Sunday, get back on a plane and fly around the country chasing down recruits,” he said, via Sheil Kapadia of PhillyMag.com. “Maybe a misconception is when you’re a college coach and the last game is done and then the bowl game comes, you don’t have a month off. I would argue my schedule was more hectic from a recruiting standpoint than it was here.

“So I’m looking forward to being in the office every day and watching tape. That is the fun part of our job.”

No, he may not enjoy being a college coach as much as an NFL coach… but let’s be honest here.  Kelly will turn 54 years old this November, so he’s still got plenty of years left in coaching, and if a major university offers him $6M a year to coach their football program, I don’t believe there’s any way that he turns that down, even with the $19M he’s still owed from the 49ers and the Eagles, and the money he’ll be earning from ESPN.  He loves coaching, and I would imagine he’ll be back on the sidelines by next year.  We know it won’t be for a small school to work his way back into things… he’s going major Power 5 right off the bat.  His 46-7 record dwarfs his recently expired NCAA show cause.

So who is going to be the team that wins the Chip Lottery?  Here are the Top 5 teams I believe will make a run at the former Ducks coach:

Texas A&M

On the Paul Finebaum show on Tuesday, May 30th, Texas A&M AD Scott Woodward stated this:

Yeah, no pressure at all, Coach Sumlin.  So what is the magic number of games that Kevin Sumlin has to win?  And it’s not like Sumlin has been awful… he’s gotten his team ranked in the Top 10 every year he’s coached there.  But they were ranked that high early, and always seem to fall flat in November.  Along with that, the defense has been pretty bad, even with #1 NFL Draft pick DE Myles Garrett and NFL talent around him.  Even bringing in John Chavis, mastermind defensive coordinator from LSU and formerly Tennessee, couldn’t solve that side of the ball.  Sumlin still has not beaten LSU, and has lost to Alabama every year since the Johnny Football Heisman campaign in 2012, and has lost 3 in a row to Ole Miss.  Sumlin is 44-21 overall at Texas A&M, but he’s gone from 11-2 his first season, to 9-4, and now 8-5 the last 3 years, and only has a record of 15-17 in the SEC the past 4 seasons, including last year, when they started 4-0 in conference, but lost to Alabama, Mississippi St, Ole Miss, and LSU to end the season.

Oh, and Sumlin’s buyout may be huge… but we’re talking oil money here.  Not to mention, Texas A&M recently reported the highest athletic revenue in the country… and that doesn’t include what the boosters could offer.  Another tie to this: Chip Kelly’s NCAA show cause was based on recruiting violations happening in the state of Texas, so we know he’s connected to recruits in that area.

The biggest thing here is that Nick Saban could be getting closer to retirement.  If he wanted to make an immediate impact, the rest of the coaching in the SEC is ho-hum right now… and while Saban just signed an 8 year deal, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that he could ride off into the sunset in 4 or 5 seasons if he gets another National Championship or two.

Tennessee

Butch Jones is 30-21 at Tennessee, but that’s improved from 5-7 his first year to 7-6 his second year, to identical 9-4 seasons the past two years, including beating Florida for the first time in 10 years in 2016.  However, the problem here is that Butch and the Vols were expected to win the SEC East last year and compete for the college football playoff.  They lost at Texas A&M by a touchdown in overtime, and to Alabama, which is not horrible (although it was pretty bad to get beat 49-10 in your own stadium), but then lost at South Carolina and at Vanderbilt, two teams that went 6-6 last season, and two games he was favored to win.  That put them at 4-4 in the SEC, putting Butch’s SEC record for the last 4 years at 14-18, and 12-12 over the last 3 years.

Not only that, but Tennessee returns only 14 starters, 7 on each side of the ball, and they lose dominant DE Derek Barnett (the leader of the defense) and QB Josh Dobbs (the leader of the offense).  Put that together with a completely rebuilt coaching staff, which brought in an inexperienced offensive coordinator, former TE coach Larry Scott, although he has never been an OC and has never called plays, a brand new QB coach in Mike Canales from Utah State, his alma mater. The 55-year-old assistant was the associate head coach and running backs coach at Utah St for just the 2016 season after spending five seasons as the OC/QBs coach at North Texas.  On top of that, they brought in Brady Hoke to coach the defensive line, and Hoke’s one year at Oregon was atrocious: the Ducks ranked #116 (of 127) in total defense, and gave up 485 ypg, along with 6.02 ypp and 37.5 ppg (good for 115th in the country).

The biggest factor, though, may be the new boss in Knoxville.  Tennessee just hired former Kansas St athletic director John Currie, which means Butch no longer has Dave Hart in his corner.  Nobody knows what the relationship between Jones and Currie is, or will be, like, but new ADs don’t feel the same sense of wanting THEIR hire to work out if it was not their hire from the start.  ADs want their own guy in there, especially if the current coach is not living up to expectations.

Oh, and the schedule isn’t easy.  The Vols open with Georgia Tech in a neutral site game in Atlanta (not very neutral when it’s played a few minutes from the other team’s campus), then play at Florida and host Georgia all in the first month of the season.  On top of that, they play at Alabama, and host LSU as their rotating divisional opponent.  Lose all 5 of those, and you’re in a whole mess of trouble… lose games at Kentucky, at Missouri, or against Vandy or South Carolina (two teams they lost to last year), and Jones could easily be on the chopping block.

Notre Dame

Brian Kelly is wearing out his welcome in South Bend, and last year’s 4-8 record did not help matters.  Kelly is now 59-31 over his 7 years at the school, and has only broken 10 wins twice (once in 2015, and in 2012, where his Irish were beaten 42-14 by Alabama in the BCS National Championship game).  The worst part about last year’s record is that they only played two ranked teams – a 45-27 loss at #12 USC at the end of the year (that wasn’t even that close), and a 36-28 loss at home to (at the time) #12 Michigan St, who ended the season 3-9.

The 2016 season also marked Brian Kelly’s 2nd loss to Navy.  Notre Dame has had 31 coaches in their history – here’s the list of coaches that lost twice to Navy in their career in South Bend: Brian Kelly, Charlie Weis, Joe Kuharich, Terry Brennan, Elmer Layden.  That’s it.  Heard of any of em, besides Weis?  Yeah, me either.  That’s because it was in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  Notre Dame leads the series 76-13-1.  It doesn’t bode well for coaches when they lose more than once to Navy, and no coach has lost more than twice.  They’re usually fired before that happens.

Also, after the 2016 season, Kelly did a complete staff overhaul.  Here’s the list of 7 new coaches (there are only 9 on-field assistants… so a 78% turnover rate):

He hired Mike Elko to run the defense. He tabbed Chip Long as offensive coordinator and play caller. He put Matt Balis in charge of strength and conditioning. He brought back Brian Polian as special teams coordinator. Tommy Rees, Kelly’s former quarterback, will now coach his quarterbacks. Clark Lea is the new linebackers coach. DelVaughn Alexander will be in charge of receivers.

The on-field stuff is the biggest factor here, but on top of that, Kelly has off-field issues as well, such as Kelly being ultimately responsible for the death of one of his own employees, when he insisted a student video staffer film practice from the top of a cherry lift. There were winds up to and over 50 mph; manufacturers have stated anything over 25 mph is extremely dangerous and should not be operated.  Along with that, his verbal assaults on players on the sideline are legendary.  In 2016, the NCAA issued a ruling that Notre Dame must vacate its 9 wins from the 2013 season for academic misconduct, so that doesn’t help matters, and in 2015, he was filmed shoving an assistant coach (David Grimes) and yelling at him, which turned into another PR hit on Kelly.

And then, after this season was over, Kelly made it incredibly public that he did not believe his starting QB, Deshone Kizer, was ready for the NFL, even after he had already declared for the draft.  Not backing your players can be tricky when it comes to college football recruiting, and Kizer fell to the 2nd round after initially being considered a 1st round talent.

If Kelly has a rough year, which could happen even if the team is better (the schedule includes games with Temple, Georgia, at Michigan St, at North Carolina, USC, NC State, at Miami FL, Navy, and at Stanford), then look for Notre Dame to look to hire the biggest name they can get, and the other Kelly (Chip) would be that guy.

UCLA

Nobody has really mentioned UCLA in all of this.  The Bruins limped to a 4-8 record last year, and while most would blame that on QB Josh Rosen being sidelined, he was only hurt for half of the year, and they were only 3-3 when he went down, including losses to Texas A&M, Stanford, and Arizona St… none of which was very good last year.

Jim Mora is entering his 6th season at UCLA, where he opened up by going 9-4, then 10-3, then 10-3 before dropping to 8-4 and, ultimately, 4-8 this past season.  That’s an overall record of 41-24, and just 25-20 in Pac-12 play.

No UCLA head football coach in the post World War II era has survived to coach a third season after posting two straight losing seasons… and the schedule is tricky enough that they could open up 1-4 (Texas A&M, Hawaii, at Memphis, at Stanford, Colorado) before even getting to the heart of their schedule (at Arizona, Oregon, at Washington, at Utah, Arizona State, at USC, California).

But Mora could survive this because of his insane $10M+ buyout after this season.  It’s one of the hardest in the country to buyout.  I didn’t bring this up with SEC coaches because they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get their guy.  Boosters will fork over ridiculous money to put themselves in position to have a winning football program.  I don’t know how serious they are about it in the Pac-12, unless you’re at Oregon or USC.

Auburn

Gus Malzahn’s buyout at the end of last season was $8.95M… which isn’t a ton to begin with, and that goes down at the end of this season.  That’s chump change to Bobby Lowder, ol Yellawood, and the rest of the ‘barners.  Malzahn had a miraculous 12-2 first season in 2013 that ended with the SEC Championship and a loss in the final seconds of the National Championship game.  Since then, he’s gone 8-5, 7-6, and 8-5.  Overall record of 23-16 in the last 3 years, and 11-13 in conference during that time frame.

Malzahn’s Teagles opened up 8-2 last year before their QB was injured, and they lost to a 7-5 Georgia team before getting thumped by Alabama and losing to Oklahoma in an ugly fashion in the Sugar Bowl.  For some reason, a lot of people believe that this got Malzahn off of the hot seat… to the point that CoachesHotSeat.com no longer even has him in their top 30.

I think all of those people are crazy.  Everyone believes that their new QB, Jarred Stidham, is the 2nd coming, and that he is going to lead Auburn to big things this season.  And he may very well do that.  But if he doesn’t?  Look out.  Auburn can’t stand losing to Alabama too often.  Tuberville was let go after his first loss to Alabama in 7 years after the 2008 season, and Gene Chizik won a national championship in 2010 but was fired after the 2012 season.

If Auburn loses some of these toss-up games (at Clemson, at LSU, at Arkansas, at Texas A&M, Georgia) then Malzahn could be in trouble.  He needs to win 9 games in a bad way, or they’ll be restless on the Plains for a big name.

Dark Horse: LSU

Yes, I know.  They just hired Ed Orgeron at the end of November.  I get it.  But it happened super quick, and was obviously an emotional reaction to Tom Herman going to Texas instead of Baton Rouge.  The contract Coach O signed included a hefty buyout, but I could totally see a scenario where O tanks this year without a good QB and the brass down there overreact and try to get in on the Chip Kelly sweepstakes.  They are another bunch that’s not content with losing to Nick Saban.  If Alabama beats them again, and LSU stumbles to 6-6, a record that not even Les Miles ever touched down there (his record was never worse than 8-5, including going 9-3 the year before he was fired), look for LSU to be surprise player here.  Winning drives everything, and people will spend stupid money to do it.

Gary Segars

Gary began his first website in 1998 as a sophomore in high school, writing reviews of cds and live shows in the Memphis area. He became editor of his college newspaper, then moved towards a career in music.He started the infamous MemphisTider.com blog during the 2006 football season, and was lucky enough to get into blogging just before the coaching search that landed Nick Saban at Alabama. The month and a half long coaching search netted his site, which was known for tracking airplanes, over 1 million hits in less than 90 days. The website introduced Gary to tons of new friends, including Nico and Todd, who had just started the site RollBamaRoll.com.After diving into more than just Alabama news, Gary started up his first installment of WinningCuresEverything.com in 2012. After keeping the site quiet for a while, it was started back up in April 2016. Gary then joined forces with high school friend Chris Giannini and began a podcast during the 2016 football season that runs at least 2 times a week, focusing on college football, NFL football, and sports wagering, and diving into other sports and pop-culture topics.E-mail: gary@winningcureseverything.com Twitter: @GaryWCE