Rod Carey is expected to be the next head coach at Temple, sources told FootballScoop on Thursday. We are told the deal has not yet been signed, but Carey is the pick and Temple is expecting to get the deal done today.
Carey is currently the head coach at Northern Illinois, where he is 52-30 in six full seasons. He guided the Huskies to MAC championships in 2014 and 2018.
Carey would be the second head coach Temple hired this offseason. The Owls hired Miami defensive coordinator Manny Diaz on Dec. 11, but he left 18 days later to return to Miami as head coach after Mark Richt's abrupt retirement. The job originally came open when Geoff Collins left for Georgia Tech.
A former Indiana center, Carey rose the ranks as an offensive line coach. His first full-time job came as an offensive line coach at Division III Wisconsin-Stout in 2000; he became the Blue Devils' offensive coordinator in 2004. That led Carey to offensive line coaching jobs at Illinois State, North Dakota and Northern Illinois, where he rose from offensive line coach in 2011, to offensive coordinator and offensive line coach in 2012, to head coach in 2013 after Dave Doeren took the NC State job.
A Carey hiring would represent a break in tradition for Temple. Ever since the program's rise under Al Golden, the last five Owls head coaches (including Diaz) had no prior head coaching experience prior to their hiring.
Temple's head coaching salaries are not public information, but the Owls' status as an American Athletic Conference member indicates the school can offer a significant step up from the $633,000 Carey made at NIU, which ranked 103rd among the 123 publicly available FBS head coaching salaries in 2018, according to the USA Todaycoaching salary database. All 10 AAC coaches whose salaries were publicly available made at least $1 million in 2018.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.
Update>
Local news coverage is now reporting the deal is in place: