Monday, November 26, 2007

Ousted: Nutt, Gailey, Doba, Roof and Bower

Five more coaches are gone in what has quickly become the bloodiest offseason in years. Houston Nutt and Arkansas have parted ways after the sides negotiated a buyout settlement of his contract. Nutt, 50, won't be out of work long. He reportedly is negotiating to become Mississippi's coach. Last week he had been mentioned in connection with the opening at Baylor.

Georgia Tech fired Chan Gailey after six seasons. Gailey, 55, was 44-32 at Tech, 28-20 in Atlantic Coast Conference games and 0-6 against Georgia.

Bill Doba, 67, is out at Washington State. He was 30-29 in five seasons after taking over for Mike Price, the current Texas El Paso coach who is expected to be at the top of the Cougars' list.

Duke fired Ted Roof, who was 6-45 in four-plus seasons. His winning percentage (.118) ranks as the lowest in the program's 87-year history.

In a controversial move, Southern Mississippi forced Jeff Bower, 54, to resign after a 119-82-1 record in 17 seasons. The Golden Eagles (7-5) clinched a 14th consecutive winning season with a 16-10 victory over Arkansas State on Saturday and received an invitation to the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham. It will be the team's ninth bowl trip in the last 10 years, but it wasn't enough to save Bower.

Nebraska has scheduled a meeting for players on Tuesday, but Tim Cassidy, the Cornhuskers' director of football operations, said don't read too much into it. Of interest is that a private airplane left Omaha for Atlanta on Monday morning — the second plane thought to be associated with Nebraska's search to land in Atlanta in two days.

This plane is owned by Howard Hawks, a Nebraska regent and substantial donor to the athletic program. On Sunday, a plane with Tom Osborne aboard left Lincoln and flew to Baton Rouge, where Bo Pelini was interviewed.

The plane carrying Osborne left Baton Rouge on Sunday night and landed in Atlanta, where Turner Gill was interviewed on Monday. Two other candidates are expected to be interviewed. One is thought to be Wake Forest's Jim Grobe. The other candidate is unknown.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does it take to find out who this other canidate is?


Thanks,
Andrew

GA Hill said...

Here are a few small updates, if interested:

http://heavysoul.blogspot.com/2007/11/is-bo-smoke-screen-or-is-turner.html#links

It's hard to tell who the smoke screen is; Turner Gill or Bo Pelini? Or is it both? With the most recent updates, it kind of points to Turner Gill getting the nod.