Jon Gruden 'Interested' in Return to Coaching at CFB Level After 2021 NFL Exit

Former NFL head coach Jon Gruden is open to working in the college ranks and might garner some consideration, according to CBS Sports' Brandon Marcello.

"Yeah, I'm interested in coaching," Gruden told Marcello. "My dad was a college coach, I was a college coach at Pitt, my wife was a cheerleader at Tennessee when I met her. Hell yeah, I'm interested in coaching. I know I can help a team, I know I can help young players get better, and I know I can hire a good staff, and that's the only thing I can guarantee. But yeah, I'm very interested in coaching at any level, period."

Marcello canvassed some people around college football and reported that a handful of athletic directors "hesitated to say whether they would interview him but all agreed Gruden would likely receive interest from some schools."

Gruden hasn't coached since his resignation from the Las Vegas Raiders midway through the 2021 season. He stepped down after email correspondence surfaced in which he used racist, anti-gay and misogynistic language.

The 61-year-old subsequently sued the NFL, alleging people within the league intentionally leaked the messages to force his ouster from the Raiders. His representatives are working to avoid having the suit moved out of court and into arbitration.

With the litigation ongoing, a return to the NFL is probably out of the question. His odds of landing a college gig are slightly higher if only because it only takes one of the 134 FBS schools to give him a shot.

One notable program will almost certainly be searching for a new coach before too long.

Gruden's coaching stock was trending in the wrong direction before everything unraveled in Las Vegas, though. The Raiders were 22-31 during his second stint and their lone playoff trip from that run came with interim coach Rich Bisaccia at the helm after he left.

Athletic directors might be reticent to take a gamble like this after how badly the Herm Edwards experiment went for Arizona State as well.

In Edwards, the Sun Devils hired an experienced NFL coach who had been out of work for a decade and whose last college job was 30 years earlier. The results on the field were mediocre, and more importantly, ASU got in trouble for violating NCAA regulations.

That's not to say hiring Gruden would blow up that spectacularly, but Arizona State learned the hard way how there's a clear difference between working in the NFL and in college and that a coach's skills may not be easily transferrable.