Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi told Sports Headliners earlier this week he’s satisfied with the candidate possibilities for the head football coach opening and will be disappointed if a successor to Tim Brewster isn’t named by early January.
Maturi said the quality of possible candidates is about what he expected and indicated the search has been thorough in considering many names. That presumably includes unemployed coaches and possible names like ex-Oregon coach Mike Bellotti and former Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer.
The search is about a month old and presumably Maturi already has a working knowledge about not only who is qualified but also interested. Sports Headliners believes the following 10 coaches could be at the top of such a list: Troy Calhoun of Air Force, Al Golden of Temple, Brady Hoke of San Diego State, Ken Niumatalolo of Navy, Bronco Mendenhall of Brigham Young, Dan Mullen of Mississippi State, Greg Schiano of Rutgers, Randy Edsall of Connecticut, Kevin Sumlin of Houston and Bellotti.
Who the Gophers land depends on timing, not just qualifications. Absent from the list above are coaches like Chris Petersen of Boise State and Gary Patterson of TCU who are very unlikely to throw away a possible national championship season by leaving for Minnesota in December.
Impacting candidate availability for the Gophers, too, will be competition from other schools. Bellotti may favor the Colorado job where he could more easily use his California recruiting base. If Rich Rodriguez is fired at Michigan, two names that will quickly be in the headlines are Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh and Hoke who was associate head coach at Michigan several years ago.
The good news for the Gophers is it looks like there will be fewer major college head coach openings than during a typical fall.