20 for 2020 College Football Topics, No. 16: The five new head coaches who’ll rock right away this season.
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24 college football teams are starting the season with a new full-time head coach.
It’s an interesting group with 12 first time FBS head men, a few retreads getting another shot (Brady Hoke at San Diego State and Karl Dorrell at Colorado), and a few brand-name upgrades (Mike Leach at Mississippi State and Steve Addazio at Colorado State).
Which five might just turn around their respective programs right away?
Who doesn’t make this list? Coaches inheriting heaters (Shawn Clark at Appalachian State and Ryan Silverfield at Memphis) and coaches who aren’t likely to make the team better than it was last year (Dave Aranda at Baylor and Willie Taggart at Florida Atlantic).
We did a decent job with last year’s 5 Instant Impact New Head Coaches, and these five have a whole lot to live up to in their new gigs.
The five new coaches about to make the biggest instant impact are …
5. Danny Gonzalez, New Mexico
It’s been a rough run for New Mexico football.
Rocky Long was able to make the program a regular on the bowl circuit with five post-season appearances in six years in the 2000s, and then came one bad year in 2008. That was it for Long, the program was stale, it couldn’t make that next step, and …
Long made San Diego State a Mountain West powerhouse.
Meanwhile, Mike Locksley had a miserable run, Bob Davie went to two bowls in eight years – going 8-28 in his final three seasons – and it’s up to new head man Danny Gonzalez to try reviving his alma mater.
Getting Long to help the cause is terrific, too.
Long returns to Albuquerque as the Lobo’s defensive coordinator under the 44-year-old former defensive back/punter/jack-of-all-trades, but they both have a whole lot of work to do.
You’re not going to have New Mexico football to push around anymore … eventually.
The team will need the positive injury-luck on offense it hasn’t had over the last few seasons, it needs to improve on the nation’s worst pass defenses, and it has to be a whole lot better than the second-worst overall D in America.
He’s bringing a nastiness to the defense, a no-excuses attitude, and he’s bringing a whole lot of talent.
And he’s bringing back Rocky Long, too.
There might not be a Mountain West title right away, but with Idaho State, New Mexico State and UMass on the slate, beating last year’s win total shouldn’t be a problem.
With this coaching staff, New Mexico might just win more than five games, not just five weeks of off-season practices.
NEXT: Oh this will be fun …
4. Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss
It was just a question of where, not if.
Lane Kiffin is too good a head football coach to not be heading up a major program, and now he’s getting his chance in a different sort of role and a different sort of gig.
At 31 he wasn’t ready yet – and he didn’t have the team to work with – as the Oakland Raider head man for 20 games, but he did just fine in his one season at Tennessee. He never received enough credit for coming up with three winning campaigns at a USC program under NCAA sanctions.
When given his chance again at Florida Atlantic, he pulled off two Conference USA championships and two double-digit win seasons in three seasons.
And now the Lane Train is rolling into Oxford, and he gets to play the underdog role that’s absolutely perfect for him.
Kiffin is the poke-the-bear coach. He’s the antagonizer. He’s the coach who knows how to crank up an offense and give his team an attitude that’s needed to try surviving live in the SEC West.
He and Ole Miss might not win the division, or beat Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Texas A&M, and … he and the team might just find a way to win a few of those.
It starts with the lines. It’s going to take a redo on the defensive front, but the offensive interior should be okay, the skill players are interesting, and there’s just enough left over from the Matt Luke era to be better right away.
The Rebels that went 4-8 last season should be good enough to hang with Baylor, beat SE Missouri State, take out UConn, and beat Arkansas and Vanderbilt, Georgia Southern.
Do all of that, take back the Egg Bowl with a home win over Mississippi State, and/or a win over one of the big boys, and it’s back to a bowl game and a winning season as a big first step.
Oh, will this be fun.
NEXT: The bar is set way high, but …
3. Kalen DeBoer, Fresno State
Jeff Tedford destroyed the curve when it comes to being a first year head coach, taking a Fresno State team that went 1-11 in 2016 to 10-4 and to the Mountain West title game in 2017.
The Bulldogs needed more of a tweak than an overhaul, but he still did a Coach of the Year job to push the program back to an elite level.
The 2020 need more of a tweak than an overhaul.
2019 was supposed to be a rebuilding year after a 22-6 run with two bowl wins and a Mountain West title. The team had USC in trouble, and lost. It had Minnesota in a LOT of trouble, and lost.
There were injuries and ineffective performances, but there were also four losses by seven points or fewer, not counting the 31-23 loss to the Trojans.
Helped by the transfer of QB Jake Haener from Washington and 12 starters back overall – especially on an offensive line that went way, way young last year – this is a team that should be able to bounce back quickly.
The 45-year-old Kalen DeBoer should have plenty to do with the improvement.
The former Fresno State offensive coordinator was terrific with the Indiana offense last season, but he was even better as the head coach of Sioux Falls, winning three NAIA championships in five seasons going 67-3. Two of those losses were in his first year.
There’s no Boise State on the slate, and missing Wyoming from the Mountain Division of the Mountain West helps, too.
There are six games against teams that didn’t go bowling, Air Force, Hawaii and San Diego State are home games, and DeBoer might just be able to double – at least – last year’s win total.
NEXT: He doesn’t have the brand name of the others in the conference, but …
2. Sam Pittman, Arkansas
In the SEC West, there’s Nick, and Coach O, and Gus, and Jimbo, and Kiffin, and Leach, and …
Sam Pittman?
He doesn’t have the brand name, but Bret Bielema had that and it didn’t work out so hot in Fayetteville.
Chad Morris had the upside coming off a resurgence at SMU, and that didn’t work out so well.
Arkansas went 11-2 in 2011 with a Cotton Bowl win over Kansas State. In the eight years since then, the program has gone 37-54. Even worse, it lost its last 19 SEC games, hasn’t beaten Alabama since 2006, and it’s coming off its worst back-to-back seasons since winning four games total in 1931 and 1932.
Enter Pittman, a 58-year-old career assistant with one stint as a head man at the community college level in the early 1990s.
He was a star of an offensive line coach at Georgia over the last few years, and that came after handling the Arkansas line for three seasons. Now it’s his job to bring the program back to respectability, much less any sort of prominence.
He’s not a big name – especially in a division that just hired Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach – but there’s plenty of reason to hope for a huge early turnaround.
It’s not like Morris dominated on the recruiting trail, but a slew of his recruits are starting to mature. Almost everyone on last year’s offense is back, and Pittman did a wonderful job with his recruiting class even though he had little time to work.
Former Florida QB Feleipe Franks has transferred and should be ready to go this fall, and almost everyone on the defensive back seven is back. Throw in a slew of transfers for the defensive side, and at least an experienced group will be in place.
And then there’s the schedule. Arkansas can’t take anything for granted lately, but Kent State, Charleston Southern, ULM. Win those three, and it’s already a better season than either 2018 or 2019.
Coming off a week off, can the Hogs beat a Tennessee team coming off the date with Alabama? Can they have a shot against an Ole Miss team coming off a trip to Texas A&M?
As bad as things were last season, three of the losses were by a touchdown or less.
There won’t be any expectations, but win five games, and everyone will know who Sam Pittman is going into 2021.
NEXT: A team finally snagged a Clemson offensive assistant …
1. Jeff Scott, USF
Brent Venables has been on Dabo Swinney’s coaching staff since 2012.
Tight ends coach Danny Pearman has been around since 2008, running backs coach Tony Elliott has been there since 2012, quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter has been on the staff since 2015, and on and on and on.
What helped grow Clemson into one of college football’s juggernauts under Swinney? The continuity on the coaching staff is almost unheard of for a program this successful.
Compared the turnover on the Tiger staff to, say, the revolving door at Alabama. Nick Saban’s program isn’t having too many problems overall, but Swinney has created a different type of vibe and atmosphere.
It’s not that the top assistants can’t go get other jobs. They just don’t.
But the USF had coaching gig was the right one at the right time for the 39-year-old Jeff Scott.
The former Tiger special teamer and receiver had plenty of superstar talents to work with over the last decade as the receivers coach – and as the co-offensive coordinator over the last five years – but as a recruiter and offensive mind, he played a big role in the success.
Now he brings it all to a USF program that hasn’t quite been able to get its groove back since Willie Taggart built it up.
Between 2016 and Charlie Strong’s first year in 2017, the Bulls went 21-4, and started out 7-0 in Year Two under Strong.
They went on to go 4-14 since. Meanwhile, that UCF program a few miles up I-4 has turned into something amazing.
There’s some reworking for Scott to do, but he’s getting back seven starters on offense, he should have seven back on D, and a few nice transfers are starting to trickle in to work with the guy who helped turn Deshaun and Trevor into Deshaun and Trevor.
Last year’s team had four wins, and why? NO offense, scoring ten points or fewer six times. USF lost two winnable games against Georgia Tech and Cincinnati by a combined seven points. Win those, and it’s a 6-6 season.
This year, the new head man has Bethune-Cookman, Nevada, East Carolina and Tulsa at home. His Bulls have to take down those four in Tampa, come up with a win over Willie Taggart’s FAU team on the road pull off a road game somewhere, and in the dream of dreams, beat UCF.
As long as the team goes bowling with a new and better direction offensively, this will be a terrific first year.
