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ACC QUESTION of the WEEK : Louisville, Georgia Tech and North Carolina hired new head coaches. What should excite each fan base the most about the new hires?
Louisville hired one of the most competent, organized and consistent coaches in the country. Scott Satterfield cranked out winners at Appalachian State with noticeable regularity. His teams took the fight to the likes of Tennessee and Penn State on the road in front of 100,000 people in separate seasons. Satterfield will now have a chance to recruit high-end athletes at Louisville and give the Cardinals a complete staff. Bobby Petrino didn’t hire good coordinators in his second go-round at UL, which cost him dearly. Satterfield should be able to upgrade the whole of the Cardinals’ staff.
No one hired Troy’s Neal Brown, one of the more puzzling developments of this coaching carousel. Louisville should be thrilled that it grabbed the other excellent Sun Belt coach on the market, while North Carolina chose to pass.
Georgia Tech got a coach who was born in Atlanta and left a job at Temple to come home. Geoff Collins kept Temple relevant and competitive, with minimal slippage compared to Matt Rhule’s spectacular body of work in Philadelphia before he moved to Baylor. Collins offers strong indications that he will generate consistently solid results. The question is if Collins can go beyond “solid.”
The best reason to think he will rise to a higher plateau on The Flats: Collins is a superb defensive coach. The Ted Roof years should melt away, which should improve Georgia Tech’s fortunes even with the disappearance of the triple option from the picture. If Tech can wreck ACC Coastal opponents with a fire-breathing defense, who cares if the Collins project is low on style points?
North Carolina has gone through a very weird double-process in pursuit of Mack Brown’s two coordinators. Reports of a hire have turned into false alarms. Does that mean “The Return of the Mack” to Chapel Hill is doomed? No. The coaching carousel spins in unusual ways all the time, and end results of coaching searches have been known to produce unexpectedly great outcomes for programs:
Pete Carroll was USC’s FOURTH choice in 2000. Always remember that.
The reason Mack Brown can succeed in his second tour at North Carolina is that he will be a CEO coach. If he finds the right assistants to “coach ’em up” on Saturdays, Brown can handle the recruiting and the other front-facing duties of a college head coach. His own X-and-O acumen might not be up to date after several years away from the action… but it might not need to be updated.
He can do what Clay Helton seems to be doing at USC: Get out of the way and let the new-age football brains take care of the detail work.
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