The Sacramento State head coaching job has been open for nearly two weeks now, and sources indicated the Hornets' search is well down the road to making a hire.
Sources indicated there are four candidates Sac State strongly considered to replace Jody Sears, and all have strong local ties, either as Sacramento natives or as Sacramento State graduates. Those strong candidates, per sources, are Utah offensive coordinator Troy Taylor, Nevada assistant head coach/offensive line coach Angus McClure, American River College head coach Jon Osterhout and former Colorado co-offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Klayton Adams.
Taylor is a Sacramento native and was a fixture in the Sacramento-area high school football scene before jumping into college football. He jumped into coaching at Sacramento's Casa Roble High School before joining the college ranks at California and Colorado, then returned to Sacramento as the AD at Christian Brothers High School. From there, Taylor became the head coach at Folsom High School, a Sacramento suburb, where he built a NorCal football dynasty while also founding The Passing Academy to train prep quarterbacks, where Washington quarterback Jake Browning was one of his pupils. (Taylor also served as the color analyst on Cal football radio broadcasts during his sabbatical away from college coaching).
Taylor returned to the college game in 2016 as the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Eastern Washington in 2016, then joined Kyle Whittingham's Utah staff as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017.
McClure is not a Sacramento native but played on a Division II national semifinalist team at Sacramento State and returned to his alma mater as assistant head coach and offensive line coach from 1997-03 -- while also serving as a member of the faculty. From there, McClure coached at Nebraska and Buffalo before returning to California as UCLA's offensive line coach in 2007. He switched to the Bruins' defensive line coach from 2012-17, then joined Jay Norvell's staff ahead of the 2018 season.
McClure's eldest son, Hamish McClure, is a freshman quarterback at Sacramento State.
Osterhout is also a Sacramento State graduate and a former Hornets assistant, spending two separate tenures as defensive line coach. He has served as the head coach at American River College, a junior college in Sacramento, since the 2014 season, where he has gone 44-15 in five seasons.
Like Taylor, Adams is a Sacramento native who spent the 2009-10 seasons coaching offensive linemen at Sacramento State before joining Mike MacIntyre's staff at San Jose State in 2011. He followed MacIntyre to Boulder in 2013, where he remained through MacIntyre's firing last month.
With the job open for nearly two weeks now, a hire is expected soon. The Hornets went 2-8 in 2018.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.