Despite Virginia’s 42-34 win against Duke Saturday, for all intents and purposes, the Cavaliers’ season ended two weeks ago when a loss against Louisville eliminated coach Mike London and Virginia from bowl eligibility for the fourth straight season.
When athletic director Craig Littlepage announced Nov. 26, 2014 that London would return for a sixth season, he cited improvement in the football program as a reason. But even with a win against Virginia Tech this weekend, the Cavaliers would finish 5-7 — the same record as last year. London could very well coach his last game for the blue and orange Saturday against the Hokies.
And to Kendall, the author of the Virginia fan-blog “Wahooze” since 2009, such an announcement couldn’t come soon enough. A season-ticket holder until frustration boiled over in 2013, he started the blog as a way to communicate with his classmates. And starting two years ago, he took a different direction with his football coverage.
Following a 48-27 Cavalier loss against Ball State Oct. 5, 2013, Kendall decided it was time for Virginia to move on from London. Since, he has devoted the past two years to researching potential candidates to fill Virginia’s vacancy. His most recent installment, “The List, Part IV,” is an 8,000-word story examining over 20 coaching options for the Virginia job following the 2015 season.
The Cavalier Daily spoke with Kendall regarding the potential upcoming coaching search.
Robert Elder: We all know it’s not the “Virginia way,” but do you think it would have benefited the coaching search to fire London midseason, perhaps after the Boise State blowout?
Kendall: I think it might have benefited Hoofans' sanity, but I'm not sure that it would have benefited the search. Maybe I'm naïve, but I like to think the search — or some semblance of a search — has been going on for over a year now. I think the best coaching searches are those conducted in secrecy, through the back channels. When your search becomes public, there are a lot of prying eyes to avoid. So in a way, I think keeping lame duck Mike London in town probably helped Virginia be more ninja-like and stealthy in its head coaching search. But don't get me wrong — London should have been fired on the spot after losing 56-14 to Boise State on our home field.
RE: Your preference is to have an offensive-minded coach with a D-IA background. Why do you think that’s the best move for the program?
K: I could talk about this for days and days, but it really boils down to one thing: the nature of Virginia's talent acquisition impediments means we need to be able to win with non-elite talent. The way to do that — the only way to do that — is through innovative offense. Since we can't recruit the sheer number of studs necessary to line up and blow opponents off the ball (a la Alabama, Florida State, etc.), we need to use some creativity and some modern-style scheming. In other words, spread the field and put the best athletes we can find out in space where they can make plays the most easily. Plus, explosive offense is simply more fun to watch than conservative, grinding, pro-style offense or a team built around defense. We need to win some fans back, and you do that by putting points on the scoreboard and winning games. Yards, touchdowns, points, high-fives, wins, SportsCenter, fistpumps, records being broken and the “Good Ol' Song” being sung non-stop — that's all I'm asking for.
I think Baylor is the best parallel. A totally moribund program that found an identity, and national relevance, through building an innovative and explosive offense.
As for wanting a coach with a D1-A / FBS background — simple enough. We've had an NFL guy (Al Groh) and a D-1AA / FCS guy (Mike London), and neither was the answer.
RE: So then what’s your vision for the program five years from now?
K: I'm not greedy, nor am I delusional. If we hire the right coach, if he builds the right staff and if the administration (and fans) gives the new coaching staff proper support, then I could see U.Va. emerging as a consistent 7-to-8-win program, a bowl game mainstay, an ACC and regional power, and with upside yet to tap into. I choose to see this upcoming coaching search as an opportunity to finally begin realizing our potential as a football program. I'm excited about the future of Virginia Football.
RE: Despite openings at Illinois, USC, South Carolina, Missouri, Iowa State, Maryland, Miami, Virginia Tech, Syracuse and many more to come, you argue there are not too many jobs available for Virginia to land its coach. With so many schools in the market, why do you think that?
K: While there are a lot of Power Five jobs already open and more sure to open up — [Virginia and Rutgers] — and even more that could open up — West Virginia, Georgia, Kansas State, LSU, Colorado — I’m not worried. In fact, I’m not worried at all. Why? Because while there stands to be an inordinate number of open jobs, there are also way more quality coaching candidates than usual.
Look no further than the AP Top-25 where we've seen Memphis, Houston, Toldeo and Temple ranked. Boom, that’s four coaching candidates right there in Justin Fuente, Tom Herman, Matt Campbell and Matt Rhule, respectively. Meanwhile, Navy (Ken Niumatalolo) is winning, Marshall (Doc Holliday) is winning, Western Kentucky (Jeff Brohm) is winning, Bowling Green (Dino Babers) is winning, Western Michigan (P.J. Fleck) is winning, Northern Illinois (Rod Carey) is winning, Utah State (Matt Wells) is winning, Air Force (Troy Calhoun) is winning, Arkansas State (Blake Anderson), Georgia Southern (Willie Fritz) is winning and there's always Mark Hudspeth at Louisiana-Lafayette. That’s 15 candidates, getting the job done on the field, playing D-1A football, ready to make the leap to P5 jobs. And that’s not to mention Kirby Smart, who is said to be ready to take over his own program, or Greg Schiano, who is said to be ready to return to college football, or Pep Hamilton, who is suddenly out of a job in Indianapolis and will probably be looking to return to college football, or Mario Cristobal, who is ready to emerge as a head coaching candidate somewhere. So with nine P5 jobs already open, another [two] certain to open, and four to six others on the “maybe” list (I consider half of those will pop), that leaves 14 openings for 19+ candidates. An oversimplification, sure. But no matter how many different ways I crunch the numbers, Virginia comes out okay. It’s like a giant game of musical chairs, and U.Va. is one of the chairs. The key is finding the right butt to fill our chair.
RE: Of those schools, who will be Virginia’s biggest competitor in the coaching market?
K: You know, it's not really like that. Virginia will be shopping for the proverbial "fit." I'm not sure there's really another school with the same blend of academics and football ambition that we'll be bringing to the table. Hoofans want to get up in arms because of the coaching search in Blacksburg, but you have to remember that they can only hire one guy, and that their list of candidates will be culturally different from our list of candidates. There might be some overlap, but I'm not concerned. We'll find our guy. But to answer your question, I think our biggest competitors will probably be Virginia Tech, Maryland and maybe South Carolina and/or Missouri. I think those four candidate pools could have some overlap with ours.
RE: If Virginia does defeat Virginia Tech Saturday, do you think Littlepage will be inclined to retain London?
K: Gosh, I hope not. If we beat Tech, we'll finish at 5-7. [That’s] 4-8, 2-10, 5-7 and 5-7 (16-32 overall) over the last four years, with no bowl games. Is that worthy of a contract extension? It's hard to imagine a bigger insult to the fans or a bigger white flag being waved by the athletic department than to bring Mike London back for 2016.
RE: On your list, published Nov. 6, you rank Memphis’ Justin Fuente as your top candidate. What do you like in him?
K: You know, a lot has changed in two weeks. Namely, Memphis lost to Houston and got their butts kicked by Temple. Plus, I've seen some Memphis players conducting themselves a little bit inappropriately on the field. Thus, I've cooled on Fuente considerably. The reason I liked him is that he succeeded so comprehensively in building a program from nothing. But there are other coaches in the market who can do the same (and it's not like we have "nothing" here at Virginia). Right now, I'd say my top potential candidate is Temple's Matt Rhule. Or maybe it's Greg Schiano? Or maybe Dino Babers and that Art Briles offense he runs? Or maybe Air Force's Troy Calhoun?
This list changes for me day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. But currently:
#1 Matt Rhule, Temple
#2 Greg Schiano
#3 Matt Campbell, Toledo
#4 Dino Babers, Bowling Green
#5 Troy Calhoun, Air Force
If California’s Sonny Dykes is get-able, he's in there somewhere, too. Probably slots in between Campbell and Babers.
Jeff Brohm (Western Kentucky), Mike Sanford (Notre Dame offensive coordinator), Lincoln Riley (Oklahoma offensive coordinator), and Mike Bloomgren (Stanford offensive coordinator) are sniffing around my top five.
[As for] Navy's Ken Niumatalolo, I like him a lot, but I'm not entirely sure what to do with him. Do we want the triple option at U.Va. with Georgia Tech already running it in our division?
Matt Wells (Utah State) and Mark Hudspeth (Louisiana-Lafayette) are up there, too.
So many exciting options for U.Va …
RE: Given Mark Richt’s success at Georgia and the fact that he interviewed for the Virginia job in 2000, how would he fit into the list if he became available?
K: I have heard that if Richt is out at Georgia, he'll simply retire to focus on his ministry. So I don't even consider him as a potential candidate (Georgia would be crazy to fire him, by the way). If he were to be realistically available to Virginia, he'd be a slam-dunk hire for the Hoos.
RE: If Virginia does indeed fire London, who do you think ultimately winds up as the next coach in Charlottesville?
K: This is a tough question, and impossible to answer! If I were running the search, my first calls would be to Temple's Matt Rhule, (former Rutgers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach) Greg Schiano and Toledo's Matt Campbell. Let the three of them duke it out in the interview process, while keeping Dino Babers, Troy Calhoun and about 10 other guys up near the top of my rolodex. The main takeaway here is that Virginia is an attractive job for the right head coach, and we will have no shortage of quality candidates when the time comes. Better days are ahead, Hoofans.
Virginia has not commented on London’s job security. If Littlepage cuts ties with London, the announcement would likely come Sunday — the day following the Virginia Tech game.
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