I saw The Athletic's Stewart Mandel mention on Twitter that Scott Frost is managing the awkward dance of going form one job to another better than any coach in recent memory, and I have to agree. There wasn't a ton of drama leading up to the decision, despite the clear mutual interest, and now that he's leaving, his UCF players actually seem happy for him rather than angry. I don't really blame any head coach for taking a job that makes his life better, but some of them just seem to handle things so poorly. Whatever Frost did (and if I had to guess, I'd say that he was honest and upfront with his team weeks ago that he had interest in going home to Nebraska), there seems to be a lesson to learn.
Pretty weak if true but gotta do what you gotta do. The sleaziness of the carousel is nothing new but the coverage nowadays is giving us Game of Thrones type entertainment. Something to keep an eye on is Arkansas and Malzahn after the beat down today.
I'm incredibly interested to see what Malzahn decides to do. There has been nothing but crickets from Fayetteville ever since they fired Bielema, and I have to imagine that's because they're waiting to see if they have a realistic shot at Malzahn. Auburn is a better job than Arkansas in just about every measurable way, but you're always one loss away from getting run out of town at Auburn, and I wouldn't blame him for wanting to get out from under that kind of pressure.
Convincing Florida kids to follow them all the way to Lincoln will be a tall task. Should be interesting to see what type of staff he puts together.
I actually kind of read Malzahn's quote the other way. I thought his outright refusal to say that he would be the head coach, instead choosing to say that he wants to be the head coach, was a careful word dance on his part. I took that as his way of saying that there are some things he needs to hear or say from Auburn to feel like he's wanted as the head coach. Or perhaps it means nothing and I've just been conditioned by years and years of coaches dancing around job rumors to parse words in press conferences.
Cashing checks, being irrelevant. The Spurrier Fun N Gun sure worked in the SEC back in the day. Leach would definitely be entertaining.
In the short term, yes, given that he's moving from the SEC West to the AAC, but Frost is leaving a TON of talent in place at UCF, and the one thing we learned from the Frost tenure at UCF is that the administration there is clearly willing to do everything they can to compete nationally. If he wins like Frost has at UCF over the next two years, he'll be back in the mix for some big P5 jobs. Would he have preferred to jump right back to a P5 job? Probably, but maybe a year or two at a place without a bright spotlight would give him a chance to evaluate what went wrong at A&M, how he'll do it differently the next time he gets a chance, and what types of jobs he'll look at when the come open, rather than just jumping at something this offseason to get back in the P5 game.
Not sure the point of this for either side. Sumlin can get a P5 job - he might have to wait a year, but it shouldn't be difficult with his resume. And if he's at UCF, he's gonig to be rumored to leave every year, so it seems pointless on UCF's side too. They need to go find another Scott Frost type - get a good up and comer and that wants to prove themselves. Would be funny to see Strong and Sumlin going from Texas and A&M to USF and UCF, though.
Strong and Sumlin were basically stealing money on the ruse that they were master recruiters. Doesn't matter how good of a recruiter you are if you're a bad game day coach. They are now coaching at their proper levels if Sumlin gets the UCF job.
Sumlin was ten times better than Strong, Strong needed NFL QBs to post winning records (see: T. Bridgewater, Q. Flowers) at least Sumlin never had a losing record despite playing Bamer and LSU twice a year
