Ranking the college football head coaching hires for 2021, from Gus Malzahn to Terry Bowden
Paul Myerberg, USA TODAY
Thu, June 17, 2021, 11:02 AM EDT
Editor's note: This story was updated June 17, 2021, to include new hires.
Auburn paid Gus Malzahn $21.45 million to pack up his stuff and never coach the Tigers again. Tennessee owes Central Florida $6 million in combined buyouts for new athletics director Danny White and coach Josh Heupel.
Availability and increased financial flexibility on both sides allowed
UCF and Malzahn to connect on a five-year deal worth $2.3 million annually. It's a bargain-basement deal relative to Malzahn's ample SEC experience and the program's goals of reaching the College Football Playoff and aligning itself for the next round of conference expansion.
On paper, Malzahn and UCF are the dream marriage of the 2020-21 coaching cycle, which was expected to barely make a whisper amid the COVID-19 pandemic but still yielded 15 changes, down from 24 moves a year ago.
That says something about Malzahn and UCF — though you can find flaws in the new pairing if you look close enough — and about the uninspiring series of coaching hires, which featured a handful of big names but largely involved Group of Five and second-level Power Five programs.
The hires can't be fully judged until three or four years down the road. For now, let's rank the new names by best fit and the best chance for immediate and long-term success.
Gus Malzahn led Auburn to a 68-35 record in eight seasons before getting fired in December.
1. Gus Malzahn, UCF
Malzahn will inherit one of the top teams in the Group of Five, including one of the nation's best quarterbacks in Dillon Gabriel, and for the first time in his coaching career have the luxury of holding a talent advantage against nearly every opponent. First off, he'll have to show how his hurry-up offense can be tailored to fit Gabriel. But to reel in a coach who won 66% of his games at Auburn (2012-20), beat Alabama three times and played for a national championship is an enormous victory for UCF.
2. Bryan Harsin, Auburn
Harsin had options over the years but waited patiently for the right opportunity, following the trajectory of a career that has always taken a calculated approach to the next move. His program at Boise State (2014-20), where he won 78% of his games but never fully escaped Chris Petersen's shadow, developed the most important positions on the field: quarterbacks, offensive tackles and edge rushers. As long as the standard for success isn't unseating Nick Saban and Alabama from atop the SEC, Harsin is a very good fit.
6. Butch Jones, Arkansas State
Jones is back in more comfortable surroundings at Arkansas State, one of the most consistently successful programs in the Group of Five. Before being hammered on his way out of the SEC at Tennessee and learning new tricks in his three years as an off-field assistant at Alabama, Jones won 50 games in six seasons at Central Michigan (2007-09) and Cincinnati (2010-12).
7. Clark Lea, Vanderbilt
Lea made his national reputation by putting together three top-15 defenses in a row as the coordinator at Notre Dame. The question of how serving as an assistant at Notre Dame prepares you for running the show with the Commodores — a genuinely important question to ask — is tempered by Lea's time as a Vanderbilt linebacker (2002-04), giving him a taste of how the program has operated in the past and what can be done to bring the team back into SEC contention.
11. Josh Heupel, Tennessee
Heupel accepts the toughest job of any new hire: taking the mess that is Tennessee and slowly bringing the Volunteers back into the mix for the division championship and New Year's Six bowls. That's a multiple-year process, if it happens at all. If not the name most UT fans were expecting, Heupel will update an underwhelming offense and make Knoxville an appealing destination for skill talent.
