Jon Gruden to South Florida?
Oh boy.
There is a lot to unpack here, and to be clear, it’s all just hearsay right now. The report, as of the moment, is that Gruden would like the job and USF’s decisionmakers may or may not like him to have the job. They’ve got time. They’ll probably use that time. I have no magic gauge on the probability of Jon Gruden getting an FBS coaching job, but it’s evidently somewhere between 2% and 50%? It really depends what USF thinks of the guy, and what USF thinks of the coach.
To begin unpacking: Gruden has an ongoing lawsuit against the NFL and Roger Goodell for the exposure of his use of numerous anti-LGBT and racist slurs/tropes/etc. in emails with Bruce Allen, at the time the general manager of the Washington Commanders. How you view the content of the emails is a bit of a Rorschach test for where you’re at on numerous hot-button issues, but if you’d like my personal read, I’d call it a lot of “drunk uncle” stuff. I have issues with ninety percent of it, but in the time period in which the emails were sent, I probably had issues with more like forty percent of it.
To continue unpacking: Gruden has a weird coaching record. He made the playoffs twice and never had a losing record in his four years in Oakland, he won the Super Bowl in his first year in Tampa Bay, and after that it mostly went downhill. His comeback tour didn’t go well. He’s never been a collegiate coach. In terms of his overall performance, it’s not all that different an idea from Arizona State hiring Herm Edwards, but Edwards and Gruden are different people, would have different approaches, and come from different sets of experience. I don’t remember Edwards’s life path off the top of my head, but it’s been more than thirty years since Gruden has coached in the college game (he was the tight ends coach at Pacific in 1989 before joining the Niners as an assistant when Joe Montana still had multiple seasons left by the Bay). He’d be a wildcard.
To unpack some more: USF could probably get a good mid-major coach, or a good power conference assistant. This is generally what they’ve done, and while it hasn’t worked for a while, that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong approach. The question is how much they prioritize upside vs. how much they prioritize downside vs. how much they want to engage their alumni. Hiring Gruden could have upside—it’s possible he’d be an effective recruiter, it’s possible he has football knowledge his competitors for the job do not—and it also has significant downside, probably best epitomized by Edwards’s utter failure in Tempe. With the alumni question, it would certainly be a polarizing hire, but polarization can be an effective business strategy, and it’s not like Jon Gruden is Ted Cruz. He’s a football coach, and he hasn’t exactly leaned into the culture war, despite having a clear path to making money pounding his chest about being “canceled” by Goodell. Could USF thread that needle where they avoid ostracizing a large share of their supporters to the point of no return and also rev up a different section of the base? Do they need to? I’d avoid trying, personally, but maybe the situation there is feeling dire. Gruden did win in Tampa specifically at the NFL level, and Florida is more on the red team than the blue team in the national culture war, so his popularity probably overindexes around that Bay, but given how small the likelihood he’s a game-changing coach, it just doesn’t seem worth it.
And, to unpack one last thing: There’s no reason South Florida can’t be UCF. For a minute there fifteen years ago, they were comparable to today’s UCF. They play in a big city in Florida, they’re a big public school with a decent number of commuters, they aren’t a bad school academically but they’re clearly not Florida or Miami or probably Florida State. The upside with Gruden isn’t realistically all that high, but the upside at South Florida is theoretically enormous. Get the next Josh Heupel in there for a few years, and you could routinely win the new AAC, and with that routinely get into the twelve-team College Football Playoff. It’s not a sleeping giant, but it’s definitely a sleeping factor. It’s kind of bizarre how bad they’ve been in recent years. Either the athletic department is broken, or they’ve been unlucky. My guess is the latter, but I admittedly am not familiar with their AD.
We’ll keep an eye on things. Odds are greater than 50% that Gruden is not the next coach at USF. The question is how much greater they are.
What’s Going On with San Diego State and the Pac-12?
We got contradicting reports from Dan Patrick and Nicole Auerbach yesterday on what’s going to happen between San Diego State and the Pac-12. Patrick said the Aztecs are joining this week. Auerbach said they’re not, and that the conference will finalize its media rights deals before expanding. That implies, to me…I’m not sure what. I think Auerbach’s probably right, because she was second to the party and contradicted the guy who was first (nobody’s confirming Patrick’s report), but she left a lot of room for interpretation, and a lot of uncertainty. I guess that means it’s an uncertain situation, which does track with our impressions. The Pac-12 still doesn’t know how much money it can get. How much money it can get likely impacts schools’ decisions to stay or leave. My question then, I suppose, is where everyone is on the spectrum between leaving and staying. Is it a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, and then everyone stays, and then they expand? Is there a final dollar amount Oregon or Washington or Stanford needs to see on the TV contracts before they agree to stay? Does the UC Board of Regents’ negotiation with UCLA have any impact? Maybe on Cal, somehow?
One thing to consider with San Diego State is that they aren’t exactly a hot commodity. They’re fine athletically, they play in a big city close to an even bigger city which newly does not have Pac-12 teams, but conferences haven’t been clamoring to add these guys, and there are bounteous reasons for that. If the Pac-12 does add them, it’s likelier a long-term investment and an investment in stability for the league than a big immediate pickup. It’s not Cincinnati or Houston or BYU, where the benefits are immediate and clear.
With this, there are a few possible interpretations. One is that the Pac-12 is going to sign a great TV deal and Oregon & Washington are not only going to stay but are going to welcome a slight dilution of their value in exchange for the stability San Diego State and an additional addition would provide. One is that someone unexpected is on the verge of leaving, like Stanford for the ACC, and we are about to be stunned. The likeliest is that San Diego State is trying to get this narrative out there because San Diego State wants to be in the Pac-12, and the Pac-12 is saying, “Dammit, San Diego State, shut the hell up, we aren’t even telling Apple and Amazon about you.”
In the end, I don’t know how smoky the smoke really is, but my guess is that this is just about nothing. Our previous hypothesis—that the Pac-12 is either signing a short-term deal because Oregon and Washington and Stanford all have their eyes on the Big Ten and the Big Ten’s got the ‘no vacancy’ sign lit OR that Oregon and Washington and Stanford are waiting on the dollar amount and ready to jump ship, starting a cascade—stands, with the one addendum being that it’s possible the Pac-12 is going to do unequal revenue sharing, which would make San Diego State’s addition not affect Oregon and Washington and Stanford all that much anyway.
The Panic Room: Oklahoma, USC, Florida State
I don’t know that we learned a lot in college basketball last night aside from the big red flags, and of the buy game losers, only Oklahoma, USC, and Florida State jump off the screen.
For Oklahoma, it’s not as huge a deal as it could be. Sam Houston State’s believably solid and pesky and a contender in the WAC, and Oklahoma’s aimed close to the bubble but they have both time and chances. Teams lose bad games. It happens. They dropped from 28th to 36th in KenPom. Could be the loss that comes back to bite them, but for now: Big deal.
For USC, it’s ok to panic. They not only lost but lost badly, and FGCU is not the FGCU of the days of Andy Enfield. They could be in the ASUN picture, but they’re in the Bellarmine seat—that league runs through Liberty, so it kind of comes down to who ultimately challenges them in the conference tournament and takes their one shot at the king. USC dropped from 36th to 57th in KenPom, and while KenPom isn’t everything, 1) it’s the best thing we’ve got and 2) it’s saying the Trojans just jumped all the way across the bubble line. Plenty of time, but that’s a bad loss at an order of magnitude beyond Oklahoma’s.
Florida State’s loss is worse in a vacuum than USC’s, because Stetson is worse than FGCU (what a night for the ASUN) and the loss was comparable in style, but for Florida State, it’s more confirmation for the pessimists than some shocking twist. This is a program coming off a terrible season which was only nearly salvaged with a last-three-games surge. It wasn’t even wholly salvaged. They finished by losing by 39 to Syracuse. I don’t know exactly what’s happened to Leonard Hamilton’s program, but it is in a terrible spot again. These guys are not in the NIT picture.
Miscellany, Iowa State
It doesn’t appear anything seismic’s gone down in the MLB offseason, but if it has, please correct us because we want to know and we clearly don’t know. More college basketball tonight, but much less of it, so we’re less likely to learn things. MACtion is happening, so that’s fun, and the NBA and NHL wind on, but we’re very out of the loop on that. The only other thing is that Iowa State took care of business last night against IUPUI, and Gabe Kalscheur shot well from beyond the arc, all of which is good. Well done, Cyclones.
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Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
College basketball (the best we can offer):
- 6:30 PM EST: Rider @ Providence (FS1)
- 8:30 PM EST: Coppin State @ Georgetown (FS1)
- 10:00 PM EST: Georgia Southern @ San Jose State (Mountain West Network)
College Football Rankings
- 7:00 PM EST: CFP Rankings Show (ESPN)
MACtion
- 7:00 PM EST: Eastern Michigan @ Akron (CBSSN)
- 7:30 PM EST: Ohio @ Miami-OH (ESPN2)
- 8:00 PM EST: Ball State @ Toledo (ESPN)
