Gary Andersen lasted just 16 games as Utah State’s head football coach in his second stint there before the school announced Saturday it will make a change following an 0-3 start to the 2020 season.
Andersen, who also served as the team’s head coach from 2009-12, will be replaced by Frank Maile, the team’s assistant head coach and co-defensive coordinator, on an interim basis through the remainder of this season.
That leaves the Aggies looking for their 28th head coach in program history. At least from an in-state perspective, there are several intriguing names for the now-vacant position.
Jay Hill: The Weber State head coach has a good thing going with the Wildcats, as he’s led the program to four straight FCS playoff appearances — including reaching the semifinals last season — and at least a share of three consecutive Big Sky Conference titles.
He has a 47-30 record in six seasons at Weber State, including three straight years of 10-plus wins, as the Wildcats have become one of the nation’s top FCS teams. They finished the 2019 season ranked a program-best No. 3 in the national polls.
Hill, a Lehi native who also serves as the team’s defensive coordinator, has experience at the FBS level, too, having been a full-time assistant on Kyle Whittingham’s staff at Utah for nine seasons prior to being named Weber State’s head coach.
Morgan Scalley: Utah’s defensive coordinator has an impressive coaching resume in his decade-plus on the hill. In addition to heading into his fifth season as the DC, Scalley continues to work with the team’s safeties. The proof of his coaching ability can be seen in current NFL players such as Marcus Williams, Julian Blackmon and Terrell Burgess.
Over the summer, Scalley — long considered the heir apparent to Whittingham — had his “head coach-in-waiting” tag at Utah rescinded as part of an agreement following news that he used a racist slur in a text message in 2013. He also accepted a reduction in pay and agreed to participate in diversity training. How that could play into being considered for a head coaching position remains to be seen.
Frank Maile: The now-interim coach of the Aggies is the most familiar of these potential candidates within the program, and he could have a leg up on the coaching vacancy if things go well over his time serving as interim coach.
Maile, a former USU defensive lineman, has been on the Aggie coaching staff for a decade — including the past five years as assistant head coach — and has worked on both sides of the ball, with tight ends and his current position work with the defensive line.
He served as interim coach the last time USU transitioned from one leader to another — when Matt Wells left to become the head coach at Texas Tech — and under Maile, the Aggies beat North Texas 52-13 in the 2019 New Mexico Bowl, the program’s most recent postseason win.
Ed Lamb: For the past five years, Lamb has served on Kalani Sitake’s BYU staff as the program’s assistant head coach and special teams coordinator. He’s also worked with the safeties (2016-17) and now linebackers (2018-present).
Lamb has more than 20 years of experience coaching at the college level. From 2008-2015 when he joined BYU’s staff, he served as Southern Utah’s head coach, and during his time there, the T-Birds reached the FCS playoffs for the first time (they played twice in the postseason during his time in Cedar City) and won a pair of conference championships. That came after he inherited a program that was on a 19-game losing streak when he took over.
Jeff Grimes, Aaron Roderick, Ilaisa Tuiaki: With the success BYU is having this season, it wouldn’t be surprising for Utah State to look at some of the Cougars’ other assistants, whether it be their offensive coordinator (Grimes), their passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach (Roderick) or their defensive coordinator/defensive line coach (Tuiaki).
Of those three, Grimes has the most varied college experience, including work at LSU, while Roderick spent over a decade on the Utes’ coaching staff. Tuiaki spent three years on the USU staff in 2009-11, working with the running backs and special teams.
This doesn’t mean Utah State will keep its search limited to Utah — far from it, as indicated by the school’s athletic director.
“We will start an immediate national search to find the best candidate to lead Utah State football going forward,” John Hartwell said in a statement Saturday.
That worked in the case of Craig Smith, the Aggies’ head men’s basketball coach whom Hartwell hired away from South Dakota following the 2017-18 season. In Smith’s first two years at Utah State, the Aggies have gone 54-15, qualified for NCAA Tournament both years by winning the Mountain West Conference tournament and brought back the Smith Spectrum magic — USU is 29-2 at home over the past two years.
Smith was named the conference coach of the year in 2019, and has won the award three previous times. All totaled, Smith has 24 years of college coaching experience, with nine of those as a head coach.
Additionally, the last time Utah State went looking for a head football coach, nationally prominent names such Rich Rodriguez, Mark Helfrich and Matt Canada were tied to the search.
Rodriguez, the former head coach at Power Five programs Arizona (2012-17), Michigan (2008-10) and West Virginia (2001-07), was most recently the offensive coordinator at Ole Miss in 2019 but is out of coaching this season.
Helfrich has spent the past two-and-a half-decades as a coach largely in the western United States, including four years as the head coach at Oregon (2013-16). Following two years as the offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears, he, like Rodriguez, doesn’t have a coaching job right now.
Canada, who’s worked as an offensive coordinator in the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and MAC over the past decade and was once the interim head coach at Maryland, currently is the quarterbacks coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers
In a story Saturday, The Athletic’s Chris Vannini also brought up a couple of other names with Utah ties to consider: former BYU offensive coordinator Robert Anae, who is now in the same position at Virginia and was in a finalist for the Hawaii job last year before backing out, and Stanford defensive coordinator Lance Anderson, who coached outside linebackers at USU in 2004 and recruits well in Utah and Idaho for the Cardinal.