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Gus Malzahn at UCF feels so good. It’s not just the best addition in the current college football coaching recruiting cycle, it’s the best recruiting of the Group of Five since we started calling it the Group of Five about 10 years ago.
And it’s not even close.
That’s because Championship Power Five coaches with a 0.670 winning percentage usually don’t come out of thin air for players like UCF. It’s been 20 years since FIU’s Butch Jones brought Miami back to relevance. Lane Kiffin (at FAU in 2017) comes to mind, but that’s a bit of a stretch. Kiffin went to FAU after needing the Alabama car wash and Nick Saban’s tutelage to become a head coach again.
Malzahn beat the master three times. He also won a national championship as an offensive coordinator and played for one as a head coach.
What not to like? At 55, he’s in the prime of his coaching career and looked like a rejuvenated coach during his introductory press conference on Monday.
The top coaches in the Group of Five do not have any experience as a Power Five head coach: Billy Napier, Luke Fickell (one year as an interim in Ohio State), Bill Clark, Bryan Harsin (who comes to replace Malzahn in Auburn). UCF has just inherited the only active coach to walk the dirt with this hat trick on Saban.
There is no shame from the SEC to AAC. Former UCF athletic director Danny White spent six years building UCF into a footballing powerhouse that won its own national championship and energized Orlando, Fla. We know what knights can be because we have witnessed it.
Gus could have taken a year or two to do television and count the money from his Auburn buyout. But there’s a reason he barely breathed after his dismissal. In his story, if Malzahn doesn’t call the ball games, he delegates to someone else to call the ball games before he quickly takes over the ball game.
If that works, Malzahn is probably gone in a few years, but everyone should know that by entering. All parties involved enter this relationship with their eyes wide open. New UCF DA Terry Mohajir is familiar with the situation after leading the program with Malzahn as a coach at Arkansas State in 2012. Malzahn stayed one season, his first as a college head coach, and Mohajir had to do a replacement. This replacement, Bryan Harsin, also lasted a season. There will be every reason to believe that Malzahn might be running out of time when the next SEC or ACC stuff job opens. Maybe as early as 2022.
It is very good. We are all adults here.
“I really believe we’ll be in the bottom four in a short period of time,” Malzahn said on Monday.
Note that Malzahn is not a losing coach. He just didn’t win sufficient for Auburn. The expectations are different, less exasperating than those of SEC West.
Then again, that could also just be who Malzahn is for the rest of his career: an energetic offensive mastermind still in his prime looking for New Years playoff spots and college football near Disney World. If the two entities remain in their current relationship, consider the cap for UCF: the PSC is likely to expand when the current contract expires in five years.
“I thought for a long time that eight would be a better number [for the playoff]”Malzahn said on Monday.” There are big ball games that get overlooked. … The best teams of the Group of Five are there. I gained experience playing UCF in a bowl game and getting beaten. I know there isn’t a lot of distance between the best teams in Power Five, especially this one. ”
Gus may or may not be there, but that’s not the point. He’s itchy, and he has a built-in quarterback to win right now in the accomplished Dillon Gabriel. (Hopefully Malzahn keeps defensive coordinator Randy Shannon, by the way.)
If the worst thing you can say about Malzahn is that he can’t develop a quarterback. Well, welcome to the era of the transfer portal. Malzahn goes from trying to beat Alabama, LSU, Texas A&M, Florida and Georgia to face… Memphis and Cincinnati. You have to like his chances.
UCF has been the best program in AAC since the conference launched in 2013. The American is the best conference in the Group of Five since the PSC started in 2014. The state of Florida continues to be bursting with talent. Former Knights coach Scott Frost once told me that his research showed that one in 99 Florida high school players signs a Division I scholarship. California and Texas are next with one in 400. .
This is also where Malzahn fits in perfectly. It will be a relief to wake up every day without having to read or hear what Alabama just did, 24/7/365. This is Harsin’s problem now. Quality: A +
Remember when COVID-19 was supposed to be a mulligan year for coaches under siege? Not exactly. While the pandemic has likely reduced the volume of departures – only 15 this offseason – it hasn’t stopped some large-scale programs from swallowing big cash. Texas, South Carolina and Auburn paid a total of $ 42 million to buy back the departed coaches.
The total amount of the repurchase of the nine licensed coaches on the list below is over $ 53 million. (Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason was a 10th fired coach, but buyout figures aren’t available because it’s a private institution.) That’s an average of $ 5.89 million. It is a consideration to bring about a change. The 15 changes now make 86 schools that have changed coaches at least once in the past four seasons (66%). Patience is not a virtue for sports directors.
Here’s how we’re rating the rest of the hires as we move into the 2021 college football season.
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