Over the last month, there was a migration of sorts in college football from Orlando to Knoxville. Tennessee hired Danny White to replace the retiring Philip Fulmer as the new Athletic Director, who in turn hired Josh Heupel to become the successor to the recently-fired Jeremy Pruitt as the Volunteers' new head coach.
That leaves the Knights as the only top-flight program without a head coach as teams prepare for the 2021 season. Former Miami coach Randy Shannon is acting as the interim head coach until a permanent replacement is found, but the school wants to hire a new AD first and then let them make a decision on a head coach.
UCF is behind the 8-ball in several ways as other schools continue finalizing their staffs. Let’s take a look at two schools that just added key coaches to the offensive side of the ball.
Kansas Finds New OC
The Kansas Jayhawks announced the hiring of Mike DeBord as their new offensive coordinator. The 64-year old is a former head coach at Central Michigan and spent last season as an offensive analyst at Michigan. DeBord will be reunited with Kansas head coach Les Miles, with whom he worked at Michigan in the early 1990s.
DeBord previously served as the offensive coordinator with the Wolverines (1997-99, 2006-07), at Tennessee (2015-16), and Indiana (2017-18). He went 12-34 in four seasons as head coach at Central Michigan (2000-03)and was also an assistant in the NFL with the Chicago Bears (2010-12) and the Seattle Seahawks (2008-09).
DeBord will replace Brent Dearmon, who left last month to take the offensive coordinator job at Middle Tennessee State.
Vanderbilt Fills OC Position
The Commodores have named David Raih their new offensive coordinator, reuniting with Vandy head coach Clark Lea after the two worked together at UCLA in 2009. Lea was a graduate assistant, and Raih was a coaching intern at the time. The UCLA gig was Raih’s first college-level coaching experience.
Raih spent the last two seasons as the Arizona Cardinals’ receivers coach after spending five seasons with the Green Bay Packers in various roles.
Lea also has hired Joey Lynch as the passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Lynch has coached quarterbacks the past seven years, most recently at Colorado State. He also spent 11 seasons at Ball State, where he was an offensive coordinator the final six years. He was the offensive coordinator at Ashland (OH) University in 2008, and he started his career coaching quarterbacks at Saint Joseph's College in 2007.
So as these two vacancies are filled, UCF and Tennessee are the only schools that still need to fill their OC openings, with Heupel’s move directly affecting both schools.
Household names like Tedy Bruschi and Vince Young found new roles with their alma maters this week as well, with Young joining Texas as a special assistant and Bruschi signing on as an adviser to the Arizona program. Both schools hired new head coaches this offseason after Tom Herman and Kevin Sumlin were fired.
.svg)
