Coaching Carousel Rumblings: How good of a job is Charlotte? Next Power 5 coach fired?
After a week with no news on the 2022 coaching cycle, Charlotte made a change at head coach Sunday to become the first Group of 5 opening this fall.
Will Healy, the former head coach at Austin Peay, was fired in his fourth season with the 49ers, who are 1-7 and were blown out by FIU last weekend.
Healy was well-liked at Charlotte, both by the administration and local community, and his job status was originally thought to be evaluated at season’s end, but the lesson here is you can’t lose at home 34-15 to a horrible FIU team that was a two-touchdown underdog.
Healy finished 15-24 at Charlotte, and with a contract that ran through 2026, is owed roughly $1.5 million as part of his buyout.
In 2019, Healy got off to a fast start with the 49ers, taking a relatively new program — one that’s just 10 years old — to its first bowl game in Year 1 after upsetting Duke and winning five straight to end the season. A “culture coach,” Healy, just 33 when he was hired, had an enthusiasm and energy that resonated with young players, creating ‘Club Lit’ as the program’s signature locker room celebration.
But the club was rarely open the last three seasons. The hype fizzled fast.
The 49ers have lost 12 of their last 14 games, with their lone victory this year a one-point win in overtime against a winless Georgia State. Their defense continued to regress each year during Healy’s tenure, ranking No. 114th in scoring in 2021 and dead-last nationally (No. 131) this year.
Getting housed at home by the Panthers was the final straw.
“It felt and looked — and not just felt and looked, but you could see in the data — that we were trending in the wrong direction competitively. And that was alarming. “In sports, we all know we have highs and lows,” Charlotte AD Mike Hill said to the Charlotte Observer.
“But moving forward, we really have to assess, ‘What’s the trajectory of the program?’ And the reality is that 14 games in a row here, we’ve either hung on to win two of them or have been blown out in the last 12. And that’s not acceptable.”
The move comes at a critical juncture for Charlotte’s program, which is set to make the jump from C-USA to the AAC in 2023. The fear, from Hill and others, is that the 49ers were in danger of lagging too far behind before they make the conference switch and suddenly must exist in a nicer neighborhood.
“I don’t know if I would want to single it out as ‘biggest in history,’ but it’s a critical decision for sure, for all the reasons we’ve described,” Hill said.
“We’ve been a dominant program in Conference USA overall the last couple of years, and we’re going to bring that excellence to this new league. But we’ve gotta step it up, for sure, and that’s the intention here. I think it’s a critical decision for our football team.”
So how good of a job is Charlotte?
Obviously, it’s a state school in a metropolitan city that produces lots of D-1 football players. It has a nice on-campus stadium and an engaged alumni base.
But the 49ers aren’t exactly flush with funds, particularly for staffing and facility upgrades. Part of Healy’s problem was so many of his assistants, especially from that first season, moved on for money elsewhere. In May, Charlotte announced a $101 million “EverGreen athletics” plan — one that would include expansion for the stadium and an indoor practice field.
But that’s “12-15” years down the road, and Charlotte will be up against the likes of SMU, East Carolina, Tulane next season. Healy, whose contract paid him under $900,000 annually, was just the seventh (of 10) highest-paid coach in the C-USA in 2022, per The Athletic.
So the gig presents some real challenges. Charlotte is going to experience real growing pains in the AAC the next few seasons. But there’s potential in the position, too — especially long-term. Hill made sure the 49ers are out in front of the carousel as the first G5 opening, looking to get an early head start with candidates.
Depending on how the market unfolds in the coming weeks — I noted Group of 5 hot seats like North Texas, South Florida, Tulsa and Texas State in this space just last week — Charlotte’s positioning in the coaching pecking order could change dramatically.
“The reality is we’re competing now,” Hill said.
“We’re competing for the best head coaching candidates in the country. There were already some programs who’ve made super early decisions in September, even, to make a move, and there will be a flood of others in the coming weeks. And so, there’s a lot of work to be done, and we need to get moving.”
Fox Sports insider Bruce Feldman listed Florida State offensive coordinator Alex Atkins, who was Healy’s OC at Charlotte in 2019, as an early name to watch, which makes sense.
Other names mentioned by Feldman included both coordinators at North Carolina (former Auburn head coach Gene Chizik and Phil Longo), South Carolina DC Clayton White, a rising star who will garner head coaching interest from several potential openings this cycle, and NC State DC Tony Gibson.
Interestingly, former East Carolina head coach Skip Holtz, who just won the USFL title with the Birmingham Stallions, and longtime UAB head coach Bill Clark, who stepped down this summer due to chronic back pain, are two names mentioned by multiple outlets as wild card candidates should Hill opt for a veteran head coach to guide the program through this transition.
WHAT POWER 5 JOB IS LIKELIEST TO OPEN NEXT?
It’s rather remarkable that Bryan Harsin looks to survive past Halloween, but it’s true.
Auburn’s head coach will be on the sidelines Saturday when the Tigers host Arkansas.
As outlined recently, Auburn’s administration is currently focused on finding a permeant athletics director, plus there was some speculation that the program wanted to avoid a mass exodus to the transfer portal following a midseason change.
Perhaps that thinking will be short-lived, though, as multiple Auburn players announced their decisions to transfer this week.
Harsin found himself in more hot water when a report surfaced that he was denying redshirts to Tigers players who wanted to preserve their eligibility.
After tight end Landon King announced on Twitter his intention transfer, Harsin was asked about the controversial “play, or you go” report from Auburn Daily, and the head coach said, “I don’t know what report you’re talking about.”
He later provided more details on his redshirting policy and process, but Harsin’s latest flap does a guy already sitting on a simmering seat little favors.
Auburn may not open up Sunday or in two weeks, but Harsin’s hourglass is running out.
Elsewhere, we’re still monitoring what’s going on at Louisville, where Scott Satterfield has won two straight but still needs a strong finish (i.e. at least bowl eligibility), and West Virginia, where Neal Brown won a big game two weeks ago only to get blasted by Texas Tech on Saturday. Brown doesn’t have the Jimbo Fisher buyout parachute, but his $20 million handcuff may make a move for the Mountaineers too difficult to pull off.
THE LATEST AT ARIZONA STATE
In a real surprise, Arizona State will not make a change at AD this fall.
The Sun Devils are “committed” to embattled AD Ray Anderson, per ESPN, ending weeks of speculation that the program would completely clean house after firing head coach Herm Edwards earlier this season.
“Ray is our VP for University Athletics,” school president Michael Crow told ESPN.. “We are in the thick of making things work here and Ray is moving things forward.”
Yowza. Good luck with that.
Anderson, ASU’s AD since 2014, is responsible for the failed hirings of Edwards and men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley, who has made the NCAA Tournament just twice in eight seasons with the Sun Devils.
The former longtime agent hired his former friend and client in Edwards as ASU’s football coach, and now the athletics department is riddled by apathy and investigation.
The football program is facing potentially crippling NCAA sanctions, stemming from allegations that Edwards’ staff blatantly ignored recruiting restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic season. There’s alleged evidence that Edwards was personally involved in some of the impropriety, too, yet Crow publicly exonerated Edwards in February.
Entrusting Anderson to once again lead ASU’s search for its next football coach seems like a decision destined to fail.
The Sun Devils lost to Stanford 15-14 on Saturday — despite not allowing a single touchdown. Interim head coach Shaun Aguano, a former championship high school coach in Arizona, has the support of the Arizona Football Coaches Association, but that alone won’t be enough for him to get the interim tag removed.
Since Anderson is staying on as AD, the Sun Devils’ search could have a real NFL flavor to it, which means a guy like Matt Rhule might become a real interesting candidate should he want to jump back into college coaching immediately in 2023.
Another candidate who deserves a long look at ASU — Oregon OC Kenny Dillingham, the 32-year-old assistant who was born in Phoenix, started his career as a high school coach in the state, as worked his way up the ranks (Memphis, Auburn, Florida State and now Oregon) and has turned Bo Nix into a Heisman Trophy darkhorse contender.