Lest anyone thought the annual college football coaching carousel had stopped spinning several weeks ago, this week brought the biggest change of all when legendary Alabama head coach Nick Saban announced his retirement.
On Friday evening, Alabama announced that it has hired now-former Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer to take on the Herculean task of replacing Saban, leaving a very attractive job open in Seattle.
Who could replace DeBoer?
It is still early in the process (although these things tend to move very quickly), but already three names with Utah ties have been mentioned as possibilities.
Early Friday afternoon when it appeared that DeBoer to Alabama was all but a done deal, ESPN’s Pete Thamel floated Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham and BYU head coach Kalani Sitake as potential candidates to move to the Pacific Northwest.
Thamel’s list included seven other names: Kansas head coach Lance Leipold, Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch, Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell, Washington offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, UNLV head coach Barry Odom, Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman and Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson.
A short time later, a story by The Athletic’s Chris Vannini was published in which he named Sitake and former BYU/Virginia head coach and current New Mexico head coach Bronco Mendenhall as possibilities.
Vannini observed that Sitake has a 61-41 record during his time as BYU’s head coach, “including two 10-win seasons and top-20 finishes in 2020 and 2021. Throw in 2022, and the Cougars went 29-9 over a three-year stretch. Sitake is plenty familiar with the West Coast, with a decade of experience at Utah and a year at Oregon State before getting the BYU head coaching job. He built the program back into a winner, but his Big 12 debut was a letdown, with a 5-7 overall record and a 2-7 record in conference play.”
As for Mendenhall, Vannini wrote, “The former BYU and Virginia head coach has just started as the head coach at New Mexico, and it might be difficult to immediately take another job, but Washington would obviously be a major step up. Mendenhall went 99-43 as BYU head coach, followed by a 36-38 run at Virginia that included an Orange Bowl appearance in 2019. He’s from Utah and played and coached at Oregon State.”
Grubb, Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, Campbell, Leipold, Fisch, Cal head coach Justin Wilcox, Florida State offensive coordinator Alex Atkins, Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun, Washington State head coach Jake Dickert, San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan, former Boise State/Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin and recently departed Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll were the other possibilities mentioned by Vannini.