Editor’s Note: This article was written in the past long before several college football conferences decided to postpone or cancel their seasons. It’s been sitting in the draft section of the site for a while and we might as well push it out to the masses before Saturday’s opener.
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Once upon a time there was a chance, however small, that Brian Kelly would not be coming back to coach Notre Dame. This was during the dark November of 2016 when there was radio silence out of South Bend. Ultimately, a rather firm approval eventually came through and Kelly has succeeded with a new coat of paint. However, in the moment we published The List of possible replacements if it came to pass.
The List 2016: An Intro
The List 2016: Part I
The List 2016: Part II
Putting together the list isn’t terribly complicated. We only use current college head coaches (unless there’s a major exception to talk about, which there isn’t right now passing over Urban Meyer intentionally) and coaches aren’t making lateral or downward movements from a currently elite program.
Once we have our list each coach is graded based on these factors:
WINNING- 6 Points
EXPERIENCE- 5 Points
CEILING- 3 Points
REALISTIC- 3 Points
FIT- 2 Points
SCHEME- 1 Point
TOTAL- 20 Points
Here are the men featured back in 2016 who are no longer on The List:
#26 Mike Riley – Flopped at Nebraska, he’s spent time in the AMF and XFL, enough said.
#22 Craig Bohl – He’s been doing okay at Wyoming after making the jump from North Dakota State, but not a real contender for the Notre Dame job anymore at 62 years old and no Power 5 experience.
#21 Larry Fedora – Crashed and burned hard at UNC, he was an analyst at Texas last year and is now the OC at Baylor.
#20 Les Miles – Technically he was a free agent in 2016 and we included him. He’d need several miracles at Kansas to be considered at Notre Dame at his age. He’s 8 years older than Brian Kelly, for reference.
#19 Matt Rhule – A lot of people like him after 2016 (coming off a 20-7 run at Temple). He quickly turned around Baylor (11 wins last year) and took the Carolina Panthers job this off-season. He’s probably not coming back to college football for a long time, if ever.
#16 Bobby Petrino – Stopped caring at Louisville in 2018 and got axed. He’s now the head man at FCS Missouri State after taking 2018-19 off. See what I did there?
#15 Willie Taggart – A hot commodity after a 10-2 season at USF following 2016. He had one average season at Oregon then lost 12 games in 1.5 years at Florida State before being given his pink slip. He’s now the head man at FAU following in Lane Kiffin’s wake.
#13 Mark Richt – Seemed to be turning Miami around after leaving Georgia while going 19-7 over 2016-17 then he abruptly retired after a 7-6 season in Coral Gables. He’s 60 years old now and doing well on television.
#10 Mike MacIntyre – Won the Pac-12 South in 2016 then cobbled together a pair of 5-win seasons before getting fired in Boulder. MacIntyre was the DC at Ole Miss last year and left for the same job at Memphis this year.
#8 Dan Mullen – After a 69-46 record at Mississippi State he took the Florida job in 2018 where he’s gone 21-5 with the Gators.
#6 Mark Dantonio – Abruptly resigned from Michigan State after 13 seasons and 114 wins. He’s 64 and has too many skeletons in his closet at this point.
#5 Tom Herman – Took the Texas job from Houston within days of our list being published in 2016. He’s won a Sugar Bowl with the Horns but has largely been spinning his wheels at 25-15 through 3 seasons.
#3 Dabo Swinney – At the time when we last published, Clemson had just lost a couple weeks earlier to Pitt but Swinney probably should’ve been untouchable at an elite school even then going 57-9 from 2012 through the end of the 2016 regular season. He’s certainly untouchable now with 2 National Championships and a 41-3 record since 2017.
#2 Bob Stoops – Left Oklahoma after the 2016 seasons with a program-record 190 wins to his name. He stayed away from the game until coaching briefly in the XFL this year. He’ll be turning 60 next month and this ship has likely sailed far away from South Bend.
#1 Chris Petersen – Stepped down at Washington after going 55-26 across 6 seasons with one playoff appearance. He appears to be comfortable in retirement and is entrenched in an advisory role at the University of Washington.
The List – 2020
| NAME | TEAM | WIN(6) | EXP(5) | CEIL(3) | REAL(3) | FIT(2) | X&O(1) | TOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P.J. Fleck (+16) | Minn. | 4.5 | 3.1 | 2.5 | 2.1 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 12.9 |
| Kyle Whittingham (+2) | Utah | 4.7 | 4.3 | 1.6 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 0.5 | 12.8 |
| Paul Chryst (+22) | Wisc. | 4.6 | 3.8 | 1.7 | 0.4 | 1.4 | 0.3 | 12.2 |
| James Franklin (+23) | PSU | 5.1 | 4.0 | 1.9 | 0.2 | 0.7 | 0.2 | 12.1 |
| Pat Fitzgerald (+19) | NW | 3.6 | 3.4 | 1.8 | 1.4 | 1.7 | 0.1 | 12.0 |
| Bryan Harsin (+6) | Boise State | 4.5 | 2.9 | 2.0 | 1.2 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 11.9 |
| Gus Malzahn (+16) | Auburn | 4.5 | 3.6 | 2.2 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 11.5 |
| Bronco Mendenhall (NR) | Virginia | 2.8 | 4.1 | 0.9 | 2.2 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 11.4 |
| Jim McElwain (+21) | CMU | 3.7 | 3.6 | 1.4 | 1.8 | 0.7 | 0.1 | 11.3 |
| Dave Clawson (NR) | Wake Forest | 1.9 | 3.6 | 1.3 | 2.7 | 1.5 | 0.2 | 11.2 |
| Matt Campbell (NR) | Iowa State | 2.2 | 3.3 | 1.5 | 2.4 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 10.9 |
| Jeff Brohm (+18) | Purdue | 2.3 | 3.4 | 1.2 | 2.3 | 1.2 | 0.4 | 10.8 |
| Gary Patterson (-4) | TCU | 4.1 | 4.2 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 10.6 |
| Mike Gundy (-1) | Okie St. | 4.0 | 4.1 | 1.3 | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 10.5 |
| David Shaw (-9) | Stanford | 4.2 | 4.0 | 1.2 | 0.1 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 10.5 |
| Luke Fickell (NR) | Cincy | 3.3 | 2.8 | 1.0 | 1.8 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 10.4 |
| Scott Satterfield (NR) | L’Ville | 3.5 | 3.1 | 1.6 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 0.2 | 10.2 |
| Justin Fuente (-8) | Va Tech | 3.2 | 3.2 | 1.1 | 1.6 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 10.2 |
| Mario Cristobal (NR) | Oregon | 3.0 | 3.4 | 2.1 | 0.3 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 9.9 |
| Josh Heupel (NR) | UCF | 3.2 | 2.1 | 1.7 | 1.3 | 0.9 | 0.3 | 9.5 |
| Scott Frost (NR) | Nebr. | 2.8 | 2.7 | 1.9 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.2 | 8.8 |
| Chris Klieman (NR) | Kansas State | 2.4 | 2.6 | 1.3 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 8.2 |
Just three and a half years later and 9 out of the top 15 and 12 out of the top 20 are completely gone from The List. Things change quickly in college football!
Four coaches had the opportunity to move up into top 5 spots in this vacuum but did not:
Patterson – Posted an 11-win season in 2017 but is just 15-17 since October of that year. He’s also getting up there in age and unlikely to leave TCU for anywhere else, let alone Notre Dame.
Gundy – A 15-11 record over the last 2 years has brought a little bit of tarnish to his legacy, in addition to a controversial 2020 off-season. He’s also likely a lifer at Oklahoma State.
Shaw – Last year’s pretty abysmal 4-win season takes Shaw’s stock tumbling down. It’s difficult to see any scenario in which he’d ever consider Notre Dame, though.
Fuente – One of the hotter names back in 2016 when he finished a 10-win debut season in Blacksburg. Since then he’s 23-17 with quite a bit of roster upheaval and very little national attention.
Pretty much no one thinks Whittingham, Chryst, Fitzgerald, Franklin, or Malzahn would leave their schools for Notre Dame for various reasons be they longevity (Whittingham), coaching at their alma maters (Chyrst, Fitzgerald) or borderline lateral moves (Franklin, Malzahn).
If we think of The List as a guide rather than a pure ranking system to check off after each interview then we have the following ‘top’ candidates in my opinion:
Fleck – Do you agree he has the highest ceiling? Since our last update he’s finished a 13-0 season (he didn’t coach in the Cotton Bowl) at Western Michigan and has quickly rebuilt Minnesota coming off an 11-win season. Some would like another stepping-stone job for more data on Fleck but he’s likely jumping to a blue-blood at some point over the next couple seasons. He’s signed through 2026 but his buyout drops from $10 million per his last contract extension to just $4.5 million by the end of this calendar year.
Harsin – He’s somehow gone a super quiet 64-17 at Boise State across 6 seasons when it feels like he’s only been there a few years. He’s won a Fiesta Bowl and dominated the Mountain West but a lack of big game wins outside of the conference drives some skepticism.
Campbell – Notre Dame fans got an up-close look at Campbell during bowl season and probably weren’t all that impressed. I like his ceiling and trajectory (I think he’ll take a quality Power 5 job soon like Miami or UCLA and raise his stock higher) but he’s a tough sell for some. Through 8 seasons coaching at two schools he has no 10-win campaigns and just a .500 record in Big 12.
Fickell – This season feels enormous for Fickell. If he’s over 11 wins again he’s in line for a big job and maybe the biggest fish for a top 20 program looking for a change. Anything less than 10 wins and he may come back down to earth a little bit. I still worry about that one year at Ohio State and bringing in a defensive-minded head coach so others may like Fickell more than me.
Satterfield – I’d love to get a look at Satterfield for 4 or 5 more years but he’s likely to be on the move prior to that. He quickly turned around Louisville last year and caught everyone’s attention. If they improve their defense, look out. He’s not exactly young (48 in December) and I can see him jumping to a big job after 2021.
Unless something changes 11 of these coaches in The List will not be participating in 2020, including the top 6!
I like your list. I think Mullin should have stayed on the list as a coaching posssibility although it may be hard to move him from UF after doing so well there so far. With the right inducement, I think he could be lured to ND (especially with a name like Mullin).
It just occurred to me that with the potential spring football season, it could affect the hiring and firing of coaches, quite a bit, especially the ones in the PAC 12 and the B1G. I’m thinking of Helton in particular if USC tanks. Some of those elite coaches might not be around in spring.
Mike Gundy having a fit of 0.2 feels about 1.5 points too high.
Curious how would you handle comparing assistants(namely lea) to the coaches with experience? Does recruiting potential tie in to ceiling when you are calculating that? Pretty evident for Nd to make the next jump they need an increase in recruiting while having many if not all of kelly’s current talents
Good points. Lea is the very professorial candidate compared to the others. I don’t mean this as an insult but I feel like his best career path is to be at a place of higher education without all the pressure to win. Like a 10-15 year stint at Duke or Vandy or BC. Like Lea seems to me to be the next Fitzgerald and not the next type of guy who wins titles today (Dabo, Jimbo, Meyer, etc).
So I’d put Fleck number one right now on the wish list. I think he could be the next transcendent type of coach who can get to the next level. Lea is super solid but I don’t think it’s in his personality to improve Notre Dame where it needs to improve.
It’s hard to not be impressed when Lea is interviewed… but also, at the same time, in listening to those interviews you can see why he has not been a top-level recruiter. He’s kind of quiet and cerebral. So, ultimately, I think Lea would be a great representative, but I wouldn’t expect him to be able to recruit the type of talent that would keep the program at the current level, much less raise it up.
Totally. Lea would knock it out of the park with the AD’s and University President’s and at that level. But is he going to connect sitting in the living room of a southern elite prospect’s family compared to when the Dabo/Saban/Day’s come through?
Not that just personality is everything, but I think Fleck has that special “it” factor that translates. Satterfield too, for your other comment. Lea is a very good coach, a high floor, but does he have HC national title upside? I don’t know if I see it.
I know it’ll never happen, but Fitzgerald in the media spotlight of ND would be a hilarious train wreck. Dude says some really, really idiotic stuff, but nobody pays attention, because Northwestern.
If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Fleck or Lea.
ND: Fitz, we need you to contact these recruits on Twitter.
Fitz:
Any thoughts on Wilcox out at Cal? I don’t know much detail about him, but I have heard good things about him improving the Cal team
His defenses are fun to watch, but his offenses are, uh….well, go watch the 2018 Cheez It Bowl.
For a minute I thought he was fired at Cal, I just did a Google search.
The formula spitting out Jim McElwain ahead of Matt Campbell (the seemingly most likely guy if Brian Kelly quit after this season) and Scott Satterfield (certainly a top-5 likely guy) is… interesting!
Honestly, how is Jim McElwain even on this list at all. Complete non-starter after everything he did at Florida, on and off the field.
The Camping World Bowl killed whatever minor interest I had in Campbell. I know the game was a mismatch in several respects, but that was a pathetic showing by the Windybirds.
You left off 2 obvious top 5 picks- Clark Lea for sure and if it’s 2-3 yrs from now, Tommy Rees.
For this list and from above —
“We only use current college head coaches”
Lea would definitely get an interview and surely be a strong candidate, but he doesn’t qualify. Also, this is the 2020 rankings. Everyone loves Tommy Rees (well, most everyone). But at 28-years old, he ain’t getting the HC job at Notre Dame in 2020. If this was the 2030 list, he might be on the radar..
Well the job isn’t open in 2020. In 3 yrs when BK retires, Rees may be a top candidate. I personally hope so. He’s a true ND man, an amazing guy and a football savant, a lot in common with Lincoln Riley.
The conventional wisdom is that you have to have been a head coach elsewhere to succeed at ND but the world has changed a lot since Ara said that.
Of the 5 top programs in the country- Bama, Clemson, OSU, UGA and OK – only Saban had previous head coaching experience.
There are very few names on this list that I could see succeeding at ND. Even Fleck could be a Gary Barnett flash in the pan. He’s so annoying too.
We all know the head coach line of succession is:
Brian Kelly -> Clark Lea -> Tommy Rees -> Louis Nix -> Chris Finke
Conditioning cancelled, ice cream parties mandatory under HC Louis Nix.
Let’s see how the offense does for a couple years before comparing Rees to Riley. Riley is probably the best play-caller in the country and basically was from the jump. Maybe Rees is that… but, considering there can only be one best, he’s probably not.
I still like Lea for the job depending on the timing of Kelly’s departure, but if we’re looking outside the program, I really think that Fickell is our guy. And I think he’s in a position where he can continue to run roughshod over the G5 and wait for a very specific job (like ND or OSU) to open. Not completely ruling out PJ, but something about him brings back the old Matt Doherty nervous tick to my eye.
I’ve been a bit lukewarm on Fickell, which is probably residual from his one-year audition at Ohio State. That’s probably unfair to him. He’s certainly done a fine job at Cincinnati and would be worth an interview, at minimum. If he can recruit (and he worked at Ohio State, so he probably can), I’d be intrigued.
That’s reasonable, but at the same time it was basically a decade ago when Fickell was maybe 35 (?) and probably not quite ready to have that whole thing dropped into his lap. It’s also worthwhile to remember that the program was very good under Tressel but not anything like the NFL factory juggernaut that Ryan Day more recently inherited from Big Urb. Fickell has accumulated some great experience since that point, both under Meyer and in having a chance to actually build a program of his own from the ground up. I imagine the difference between Fickell then and now as a coach is rather significant.
Also, it would be hilarious to steal another coach from Cincinnati, although YMMV there depending on how many UC fans you know personally.
I think my list of the guys I think likely to jump would still be Fleck, Campbell, and then Lea/Fickell. The end of the BK era should result in a far higher floor than the one he inherited in terms of stability, talent, resources, etc. The next step I think requires an infusion of even more top end talent, which I think Fleck gives the best chance at.
Franklin I wouldn’t mind stealing for the same reason despite his in-game struggles (and I wouldn’t want to see him at USC). Iowa State is a really hard job and I think Campbell would bring a BK-like ability to staff fairly well and evaluate / develop. Fickell and Lea both seem like slam dunk cultural fits but I’m not sure either really pushes the ceiling higher.
Coming back to this, I have to admit that seeing what a total nothingburger Campbell had dialed up for us in the bowl game has tempered my interest in him. Anyone who came off watching Clark Lea twist that dude into knots for four quarters and still believes that Campbell is the superior option for ND must have seen a different game than I did. My short list:
…
’99. Getting hit by a bus
‘100. Pat Fitz
I’m surprised so many have Lea as the No. 1 choice right now.
4 years ago the ND defense was so bad at tackling I wanted to bring in the Denver Stampede’s head rugby coach. They may not be the top defense in the country year in and year out, but Lea has some glow on him for how things turned around so successfully.
I’m also not on board with having Pat in your top 100, Rufus. He should be behind falling off a mountain and being bitten by sharks also.
I’m not sure why. We’ve seen other healthy, stable programs transition from HC to top assistant in recent years with great success. Lea is a fantastic DC, young, highly intelligent and (at least by all accounts) very popular with the players. His only downside that I can see is that he’s not a maniac on the recruiting trail, but I don’t think that should be a dealbreaker as long as he appreciates the value and stresses surrounding himself with assistants who can take the lead on that front. Adding coaches like Mickens and Lezynski to the staff suggests that he does.
There’s just nothing about having a nice season or two at Minnesota, UC or Iowa State that would compel me to demo the framework of the program Kelly has built here and essentially start from scratch with an outsider. Certainly, we’ll gather more evidence about other candidates between now and whenever BK decides he’s had his fill.
I look at it from this perspective…
In 2013 we thought the same things about Diaco, too. To lesser degrees, both Chuck Martin and Mike Sanford were talked about as Head Coach In Waiting situations.
I like Clark Lea a whole lot too but college football is littered with young coordinators who have done good things through 2 or 3 years. That doesn’t necessarily make me skeptical of him at all, but I’m not sure there’s enough evidence for him to be my number one choice right now.
Although, the market doesn’t look great in comparison.
I’ll admit that Diaco is a reasonable comparison, although Lea is younger and I think he’s been more consistently impressive as a DC than Bobby was. Diaco also had the benefit of an historically superb player in Manti Te’o to QB what was by far his best defense. I don’t know that it’s fair to assume that Lea’s path forward will look like that of Diaco based on shared traits, although it’s always a crapshoot trying to speculate about the leap between coordinator and HC.
I never seriously considered Martin or Sanford as options for us, certainly their performance here did not engender such discussion in the same way that Lea’s does.
I am not advocating for him, but realistically, Martin might be a better option than Lea (as of right now). Martin has solid head coaching experience (he has been improving Miami’s record) and has coached a lot of different positions on both sides of the ball.
I like Lea’s defenses, but Lea has no head coaching experience, and his “so-so” reputation as a recruiter is at least a yellow flag for me — one of the big complaints about BK is that he is not a stud recruiter.
I just read the profile in The Athletic about Billy Napier and I think he’s now my number 1. 41 years old, great recruiter, has spent time under Dabo and Saban, 14-3 since start of 2019 at Louisana. Not sure what the fit and realism would be on system above but for a ceiling and excitement type hire, I think he would be the guy.
I bet at the rate Napier is going he’ll be coaching somewhere bigger before the next time Notre Dame is looking to fill the HC job, but that would be the type of home run to push the recruiting and ceiling up there if they could land an exciting young coach with extensive roots in the south. And like do it before Texas or Miami or Auburn or whoever else gets to him first…