Coaching Carousel

The last couple days have seen a lot of action among the coaching ranks. Kansas has made their choice, tapping Buffalo's Turner Gill. Kansas, who fired Mark Mangino earlier this month, brings in Gill who was 20-30 at Buffalo and took Bulls to the 2008 MAC Championship and the school's first Bowl game. Gill has been a hot candidate the last few years, being in the running for the Nebraska and Auburn jobs.

The biggest coaching news involves the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame has selected Brian Kelly to be their next coach. Kelly has been the front-runner for the job for the past month and the hiring became official last week. Brian Kelly is a perfect fit for Notre Dame - he's been a winner every where he's gone (2 D-II National Champions at Grand Valley St., 2006 MAC Championship at Central Michigan, Back-to-Back Big East Championships at Cincinnati); he has strong ties to the Midwest, which Notre Dame needs desperately; he runs an offense that I could succeed in (remember, Cincinnati played four different quarterbacks in 2008 on their way to the Orange Bowl); and he's an Irish-Catholic. For the first time since Lou Holtz led the Golden Domers, it seems that Notre Dame has the right guy.

The situation gets more interesting for Cincinnati, when Houston's coach Kevin Sumlin declined to interview with the Bearcats. Cincinnati has named Offensive Coordinator Jeff Quinn as the interm coach for the Sugar Bowl, but it remains to be seen if Quinn will be a candidate for the full-time gig. Other potential candidates for the Cincinnati job include Central Michigan's Butch Jones and East Carolina's Skip Holtz. As a Cincinnati fan, I was pulling for Sumlin to get the job since he runs an offense in Houston that is similar to the high-powered offense the Bearcats have been known for under Brian Kelly. Out of the potential remaining candidates, I would like to see Skip Holtz get the job. He has is a proven coach and has won the last two Conference USA Championships with East Carolina. This may not seem like a great accomplishment, but this year they were considerable underdogs to Sumlin's Houston team.

Anyway, here is the latest list of coaching changes so far:

School	Former Coach	New Coach	Previous Job
Akron	J.D. Brookhart	Rob Ianello	Notre Dame Assistant Coach
Buffalo	Turner Gill	TBA	N/A
Cincinnati	Brian Kelly	TBA	N/A
Florida St.	Bobby Bowden	Jimbo Fisher	Florida St. Offensive Coordinator
Kansas	Mark Mangino	Turner Gill	Buffalo Head Coach
Louisiana-Monroe	Charlie Weatherbie	TBA	N/A
Louisville	Steve Kragthorpe	Charlie Strong	Florida Defensive Coordinator
Marshall	Mark Snyder	TBA	N/A
Memphis	Tommy West	Larry Porter	LSU Running Backs Coach
Notre Dame	Charlie Weis	Brian Kelly	Cincinnati Head Coach
San Jose St.	Dick Tomey	TBA	N/A
UNLV	Mike Sanford	TBA	N/A
Virginia	Al Groh	Mike London	Richmond Head coach
Western KY	David Elson	Willie Taggart	Standford Running Backs Coach