Every year, as the coaching carousel turns, different trends emerge. So far, the 2014-2015 off season seems to be the year of the open receiver coach position.
Of the new head coaches, Paul Chryst at Wisconsin and Jim McElwain at Florida have all yet to fill their receiver positions. Other coaches that have found themselves looking to fill their receiver jobs the past few weeks are Sonny Dykes at Cal, Bob Stoops at Oklahoma, and Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech.
Middle Tennessee, Syracuse, Purdue, and UTSA are among the other programs looking to hire guys to coach their wide outs. That's a total of 11 at first glance.
Now, it's worth noting that nearly all of the programs listed above have been turned down by at least one candidate and have had to make their way down their list. As the coaching carousel starts to slow down a bit we may be able to provide a more in-depth look at why things have played out this way, but for now we can say that we expect a number of these to play out soon enough.
A number of dominoes have fallen today. Earlier this morning we received word that Purdue receivers coach Kevin Sherman would be joining Pat Narduzzi's staff at Pittsburgh in the same role. South Alabama hired Alabama director of player personnel Tyler Siskey and Nebraska has brought Tulane receivers coach Keith Williams on board to coach their wide outs.
Other recent receiver hires include Jay Norvell (former Oklahoma receivers coach / co-offensive coordinator) at Texas and Virginia Tech receivers coach Aaron Moorehead headed to Texas A&M.
Over the course of the last few months a number of high profile receiver jobs have opened up, perhaps none of them bigger early on in the process than the one at Texas A&M where David Beaty left his post as the receiver coach to become the head coach at Kansas. Beaty is the only receiver to FBS head coach move of the 2014-2015 hiring season.
Some of these open spots will be filled by NFL guys looking for work, while others will be obviously be filled by college guys looking for new opportunities, thus setting off a chain reaction of receiver spots to be filled before spring practices start.
Interestingly enough, of the 14 FBS head coaches hired this past off season, five of them (Lance Leipold, Jim McElwain, Tom Herman, Neal Brown, and Tony Sanchez) coached receivers at one point or another in their coaching career. Perhaps that explains the tendency this off season to take things slow and make the right hire.
We'll have more on these jobs in the coming days as things develop. Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.
Update > South Alabama and Nebraska have found their respective receiver coaches.