In a surprising turn of events, Florida State recently fired its embattled head coach, Mike Norvell, after a 3-5 start to the season.
While his record would indicate it was long past time for him to hit the road, the shocking part of it all is the fact that FSU was willing to pay his exorbitant buyout, which is reported to be around $50 million when all is said and done.
This means one of the premiere coaching jobs in college football has suddenly, and perhaps unexpectedly, come open, and the Seminoles will be in the market for a new head coach in the coming months.
Many expect the Noles to take a swing at a big, currently established head coaching name, but recent history shows that may not be the smartest play.
Some programs think they need to make a big splash hire, when in actuality, the best candidates are often the ones hiding in plain sight.
Take the Kentucky Wildcats, for example.
They fired Mark Stoops after a 13-year stint in Lexington, and instead of parking a Brinks truck in front of a seasoned veteran, they handed the keys to Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein.
The results speak for themselves, as the Wildcats lead the SEC eight games into the season.
All that is to say, who will be the next hot-shot coordinator to take a job like Florida State and become the greatest thing since sliced bread?
One man who has a few names on his list is college football analyst Brooks Austin.
Austin watches hours of tape a week and identifies the best units across the country, and when I asked him about who the next big name will be when scouring the coordinator ranks, he had more than a few options.
“I’ve always studied Buster Faulkner at Florida and loved what he’s done,” Austin says. “I loved what he did at at Georgia Tech.”
While Faulkner was one of the hottest coordinator names in the country heading into October, the months of spooks and scares certainly did a number on the Gators’ OC and his reputation among elite playcallers, something Austin admits.
“I think Buster… he’s kind of gotten tipped off lately in, in this league. People are kind of figuring out what it is he’s doing.”
A name that might be flying under the radar but needs some more attention is Utah offensive coordinator Kevin McGiven.
“I watched what Utah does, and I’m like, ‘This is fun, man,'” he says with a smile. “This is fun, that you’re getting to a different play in a different way every single time you do it.”
In his first year in Salt Lake City, McGiven has the Utes scoring nearly 39 points per game, and doing so with an innovative two-quarterback system.
Austin admits that, while he likes what he’s seeing from Utah and McGiven, there is a chance if it doesn’t work right away in one of the “big boy leagues,” it could fall apart quickly due to the impatience of SEC fans.
“If an SEC school hired Kevin McGiven, and it didn’t work out in like the first six weeks, are they gonna sit there and go, ‘why did we hire this high school offense,'” asks Austin.
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“If you do that, and you hire that at a bigger like like blue blood program, and it doesn’t work, people are gonna be like, ‘well, duh, he runs a high school offense?'”
For all the talk of the offensive side of the ball, there are a few defensive coordinators who have also caught Austin’s eye.
“Glenn Schumann at Georgia, he’s always been a guy that is like really, really smart, and is just such a great teacher of concepts, and is still really young.”
Another one who fits the mold of young, innovative DC is Bryant Haines at Indiana, whom Austin calls “a lunatic” (that’s a positive trait for a defensive coordinator, by the way).
One more name Austin mentioned is a guy who is flying way under the radar given his current employer, and that is Louisiana Tech DC Luke Olson.
“(Olson) is like 33 (or) 34 years old, and he is highly, highly respected,” he mentions “Like when (offenses) go to face this guy, they’re like, ‘We got a tough one this week.'”
“Luke Olson’s a dude.”
Suffice to say, there are a lot of brilliant football minds in the college game right now, and although Florida State may go in a different direction, they can’t go wrong taking a look at some of these names.
If the Seminoles want a “dude” at head coach, they know where to look.