Which Current College Football Coach Is Most Likely to Jump to NFL Next Year?
With the money that college football coaches are getting paid, it's hard to believe reaching the pinnacle of the sport and its pay scale wouldn't be enough. More than 25 percent of the 128 FBS head coaches are paid at least $3 million per season, according to USA Today, with 16 sitting at or above the $4 million threshold.
Yet every year we hear several of the top college names bandied about for jobs at the next level, often before the positions have even opened. It's been a longstanding trend for standout college coaches to move up to the NFL, with this past offseason marking the first time since 2009 that no such jump occurred.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
If it's going to happen this year, there's a short list of prime candidates who appear most likely to take that step. Notre Dame's Brian Kelly, UCLA's Jim Mora and Texas A&M's Kevin Sumlin have had their names linked to the NFL before and are likely to again this offseason, but will one of them actually move?
Before we answer that question, let's look at why these three coaches—whose teams this season are a combined 19-5 and are all in contention for either a division or conference title or a playoff bid—would be coveted by owners looking to jump-start their pro franchises.
Brian Kelly, Notre Dame
Now in his sixth year running the most famous college program in the country, Kelly has won 223 games in his college career, including 52 with the Fighting Irish. He's reached a national title game and has his team in position to compete for another this year, and unlike many of his recent predecessors in South Bend, he hasn't suffered a notable backslide in performance at any point.
In other words, he's not looking like a Charlie Weis or Tyrone Willingham, who were hot early but then cold as ice not long after, resulting in quick terminations.
As a result, the 54-year-old's name has been linked to NFL openings for the past few years. This started after the 2012 season, when he led Notre Dame to a perfect regular season and to the BCS title game, losing to Alabama. He reportedly interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles (for the job that eventually went to another college coach, Oregon's Chip Kelly), according to ESPN, and since then his name has been among those tossed out for various pro gigs.
Based on Kelly's career arc, this isn't surprising. Since leaving Division II Grand Valley State after the 2003 season, he's jumped up in competition each chance he's received. He spent three years at Central Michigan, logged four seasons at Cincinnati and reached the big time at Notre Dame, but there's still one more step to take for a coach whom Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel called a "climber."
Jim Mora, UCLA
Los Angeles still doesn't have an NFL team, but a strong option to coach one of the franchises interested in relocating there is already firmly entrenched in the region. And he's shown he can handle the competition, having lifted UCLA out from the shadow of its rival in little time.
Jim Mora, 53, won at least nine games in each of his first three seasons with the Bruins, doing so with a program that averaged 5.7 wins over the previous six years. UCLA is 6-2 in his fourth season, and despite some early hiccups that have knocked it out of playoff contention, another push for a Pac-12 title is still alive.
The quick success that Mora has had in Westwood has come at the same time crosstown rival USC has been on a downslide, the product of uneven play on the field and near-constant off-field turmoil, including numerous coaching changes.
All the while, Mora has been methodically producing. Now that he's also made inroads on the recruiting trail—all four of his recruiting classes have been ranked in the top 20 by 247Sports—he appears capable of not just competing with USC but winning that battle by more than just three straight wins against the Trojans.
Yet Mora still seems like a pro guy, and not just because he was an NFL head coach at two different stops before coming to UCLA. It's in the way he answers questions, particularly how he tends to gripe about certain issues with the college game as if he'd rather not have to deal with them.
He referred to his team's playing consecutive Thursday night games as "a complete injustice," via Chris Vannini of CoachingSearch.com, and though he cited how it might impact his players' academics, it sounded more like a complaint about the logistical changes that weeknight games bring about.
In the NFL, there might be only one Thursday night game, if that.
Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M
Sumlin is an offensive genius, an innovator whose college teams at Houston and now A&M have always been among the tops nationally in most statistical categories. He turned Johnny Manziel into a superstar and is one of the first choices for top-tier quarterback and receiver recruits to play for on an annual basis.
In a lot of ways, Sumlin is similar to Chip Kelly in the way he's operated at the collegiate level, though his success hasn't been the same as Kelly's with the Ducks. A&M's record has dipped each year under Sumlin, from 11-2 in 2012 to 8-5 last season; the Aggies are 6-2 this year, starting 5-0 before dropping two straight and then squeaking by a bad South Carolina team last week.
Kelly won at least 10 games in all four of his seasons at Oregon, including 12 in each of the last three years, and throughout you could sense he was just waiting for the right opportunity to move to the NFL, where he could focus on X's and O's and not worry about banquets and boosters. Sumlin might be in that same boat, especially with a second straight year of seeing his team get off to a hot start and then hit a wall.
"Though the Aggies have cooled off somewhat the past two years, Kevin Sumlin is a rising star in the coaching industry, and there are only so many places that count as more attractive jobs than Texas A&M," Connor Tapp of 247Sports wrote.
Who Will Go?
From this list of three, the best bet is Mora. Though he has a losing record as an NFL coach, with his best season coming in his first (going 11-5 and reaching the NFC Championship Game with the Atlanta Falcons in 2004), that still trumps Kelly and Sumlin in terms of pro experience. It doesn't matter that he was fired twice, including after just one season with the Seattle Seahawks.
If there's one thing that rings true in pretty much every pro sport, it's that failure makes a coach even more attractive to other owners. Why else would three of the NFL vacancies from this past offseason have been filled by coaches who were either fired or pushed out by other teams in the previous year or two?
"Mora has previous NFL experience, which is commonly seen as a benefit for any coaching candidate in the NFL," Kevin McGuire of NBC Sports wrote.
Brian Kelly and Sumlin would be first-time NFL head coaches, and though that's by no means unheard of, there's more risk involved. Sumlin might be too similar to Chip Kelly, who in his third year with the Eagles has been figured out by the rest of the league; that's why his name is getting tossed out for several of the college openings that have already popped up, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (h/t SB Nation).
Brian Kelly would be a safer gamble than Sumlin, and his track record has shown his ability to rise up the ranks and succeed everywhere. But the jump from college to the pros is much different than the one from the Mid-American to the Big East, so anything he's done in the past would be wiped out. Notre Dame might be as close to an NFL job as there is in college, but there's still a major difference.
Mora makes the most sense when you compare his career to that of Pete Carroll, who was a two-time failure in the NFL before going to USC and turning the Trojans into a powerhouse. He stuck around a decade before going back to the pros in 2010 with the Seahawks, but if the opportunity had presented itself earlier, he might have left at the high point of his college tenure.
That's what Mora would have the opportunity to do if he were to explore a return to the NFL ranks. His time in college could be looked at as a reset on his career, thus wiping out his previous pro results and focusing more on recent success. He'd be giving up a good thing at UCLA, but that hasn't stopped many other big-time college coaches before him.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
