Minnesota Football Coaching Job

I was as shocked as everyone by Jerry Kill's recent retirement as head football coach at the University of Minnesota.  I'm a huge Jerry Kill fan, in my mind he represents everything that is good about college athletics.  I really hate to see him go, it's a huge loss to the University of Minnesota, the Big Ten and to college football.  I understand his reasoning though and I wish him nothing but the best moving forward.

The football program has to move forward too and that means finding a permanent replacement.  I truly hope that it will be Tracy Claeys, he's been with Jerry Kill every step of the way, he's seen firsthand how to build a program, it would be a pretty seamless transition, he wants the job, he could probably keep the coaching staff together, and he'd probably be able to hold on to most to the current recruits from a pretty good recruiting class, it seems like a no-brainer to me.  Give him a four year contract with a reasonable buyout and give him a shot!

That being said, Claeys has never been a head coach before, he's never been the face of a program, it's a fair question to ask if he's the person to take the program to the next level.  You can also make the point that they've stagnated a bit this year and the offense hasn't improved much under the current coaching staff.  Others may point to the poor game management that was shown on Saturday against Michigan to make the case that Claeys is not cut out for the position.  Perhaps, you stack it up to Jerry Kill building the foundation, for cleaning up the Brewster mess, but now it's time to find a new face to reach the next level.

Not having an athletic director complicates things too.  I would assume that if interim AD Beth Goetz gets the full time AD job, Claeys chances of getting the job improves dramatically.  They already know each other, they reportedly have a good working relationship and I'm guessing a lot of the Gopher insiders/alumni/donors would be urging her to keep Claeys.  If they bring someone in from outside as the new AD I suspect that Claeys chances drop though as I suspect a new AD would want to bring in their own head football coach to fill the signature hire they will have in their tenure.

That brings up the question then of who Minnesota could hire if they don't go with Tracy Claeys.  While it's a good program and Jerry Kill has built a solid foundation to build around, you really can't consider the Minnesota job to be an elite job.  There are other much more attractive jobs open that will have first shot at the top candidates (see Southern California, South Carolina & Miami).  So don't be expecting Tom Herman or Justin Fuentes to be heading to the U anytime soon.  I also think they'd have a hard time selling another assistant coach to take over the job, if they wanted to go that route why not just give Tracy Claeys that shot?  So don't look for a Dave Aranda or D.J. Durkin to get the job either.  So unless they can pull a rabbit out of a hat or offer a ton of money, I suspect they'd be take the same path they took with Kill, they'd find a successful head coach at a mid major level school and hope for the best.  I'll post a list of my top candidates tomorrow.

One last note, even if Minnesota doesn't hire Claeys, I suspect that it won't be the last we've seen of him and the current Minnesota staff.  I suspect that some other school will see what Jerry Kill and company did along their way up the ranks and decides to them a shot at their school.  Perhaps Illinois?  Or Kansas State?  Or any school in the MAC with an opening?