Why the 2016 college football coaching carousel is so calm (for now)

You’re familiar with the red-hot coach in the AAC, right? The one who’s improved recruiting despite the dominance of traditional state powers? The one coaches praise as an offensive innovator and who came up under that elite Big Ten coach? The one using a national stage to help rebrand an urban campus into a local identity?

Yeah, that’s Willie Taggart. Right?

Right. Entering Saturday night’s game at Memphis, USF is 7-2 (4-1 AAC), 33rd nationally in S&P+, and first in Offensive Explosiveness at Football Study Hall. FSH gives the Bulls a 74 percent chance of finishing out at least 2-1.

“It doesn’t bother the coaches at all when you’re not talked about [nationally], but you feel for the players,” Taggart told SB Nation. “We’re an explosive, athletic team. When we talk to recruits, we get to tell them, ‘Everybody eats.’ In this system, everyone’s touching the ball, and we can still maintain our identity of running physically.”

If you haven’t been paying attention to South Florida, you might remember Taggart from SB Nation’s embed with the Western Kentucky staff in 2012. That year, WKU made its first FBS bowl.

Taggart’s playbook was straight from the pages of Jim Harbaugh’s Stanford, where Taggart had been an assistant.

(Taggart played quarterback at WKU for Harbaugh’s father, Jack).

In a Sun Belt littered with speed but lacking size, the spread was king. WKU was a contrarian, meat-grinder attack, motioning two-tight end sets and playing power run with under-recruited fullbacks and tight ends to exhaust undersized defenses.

When Taggart was hired by USF for 2013, he brought the same philosophy to Tampa. Florida’s wealth of high school talent looked at under-center football as a foreign language.

After two wins in 2013, Taggart noticed in 2014 that when USF scored, it was on drives that lasted under two minutes.

Not to mention the raw ability of Taggart-recruited QB Quinton Flowers.

“I’m watching these guys score, and there’s a voice in my head screaming. It was the play of the team screaming out at me, ‘We need to go faster. We need to spread it and go faster.’”

During the 2014 bye week, USF experimented with running power plays and formations out a shotgun, sometimes with empty backfields. It worked in practice. By spring of 2015, the Bulls had revamped into the Gulf Coast offense: multiple formations during a drive, but at tempo. That’s the same thing Taggart ran at WKU, just quickly and in a shotgun.

“It wasn’t necessarily changing my philosophy,” Taggart said. “We still run the football in gap schemes. There’s no philosophical change in our football. We’ve gone about how we do that in a different way. In our old offense, we had a lot of different formations. Our new offense has a lot of different, really funky formations, and we do it fast, to be tougher on defenses.”

Taggart’s name was red-hot on coaching search lists after a 7-5 2015. Expect even more buzz if the Bulls finish 9-3. He’s among a growing list of mid-major program coaches, several in his own conference, who seemed to poised for that next step up.

The issue is that, as of this moment, the market for college hires is quiet.

The best thing that’s happened to the American is the Big 12’s false start on expansion. The second is a potentially static job market that could keep the league’s impressive coaching talent for another year.

“What I’d say about this conference is that not only are there well-coached teams and great offenses, but they’re very unique,” Taggart said. “There’s a lot of spread, but team-to-team they’re very different.”

Along with the oft-mentioned Tom Herman at Houston, former Baylor OC Phillip Montgomery is drawing attention at Tulsa, as is Chad Morris at SMU. Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo just changed agents, another sign that he’s closer to make a Paul Johnson-style jump to a Power 5 willing to use the triple option.

Between the start of the 2015 and 2016 seasons, 29 FBS jobs turned over.

It’s Nov. 10, and as of right now, there are only four FBS openings, if you don’t count the freshly hired Jeff Tedford at Fresno State: LSU, FIU, Purdue, and Baylor.

On Nov. 4, 2015, all of the following schools had interim coaches or pending retirements: USC, Maryland, Miami, UCF, Virginia Tech, Hawaii, Minnesota, Illinois, South Carolina, East Carolina, and North Texas, with some still yet to open. Granted, 2015 was a weird year.

Not only that, but the rumored openings are down, as well, thanks to key wins by Texas and USC in recent weeks. Changes in 2016 might be half of the 2015 cycle, or even a third.

1. Things are calm at the biggest potential openings (for now): Charlie Strong’s Texas has won two straight, both in conference and both statements for UT boosters (a win over reviled Baylor and outlasting Texas Tech in Lubbock).

Formerly 1-3 USC is now 6-3, will be favored heavily vs. UCLA and Notre Dame. With a win this Saturday at Washington, they would completely erase whatever threat Clay Helton may have been facing.

LSU lost its first game under interim Ed Orgeron, but nothing about the 10-0 loss to Alabama was a referendum against what Orgeron’s staff has built in four games. He’s 3-1 with the chance to sweep Arkansas, Florida, and Texas A&M.

2. The same goes for regular Power 5 jobs (for now): Mark Stoops’ Kentucky started 2-3, including an opening loss at home to Southern Miss, but his massive buyout ($12 million) and UK’s legit contention in the SEC East race calmed criticism.

Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason almost upset Auburn and beat Georgia at home. Regardless of how the Commodores finish, he’s considered safe.

Boston College is 4-5, and head coach Steve Addazio is 21-26, but an AD transition should keep him alive through 2017.

Mark Coyle’s hire as AD at Minnesota was thought to be a curtain call for interim-turned-HC Tracey Claeys, but the Gophers are 7-2 with a chance to win the Big Ten West.

3. A lot of preseason hot seat coaches have responded with vigor: Gus Malzahn and Kevin Sumlin were pegged as potential firings, and now Auburn and A&M are both alive for New Year’s Six bowls.

Barring a total disaster, Penn State wasn’t going to move on James Franklin this season. But after a September loss at Pitt angered fans, the Nittany Lions are on pace for 10-2.

Before 2016 started, West Virginia was the one Big 12 job everyone in the industry picked to open. Dana Holgorsen is 7-1 with a shot at the conference title.

During the same time, Colorado seemed the likeliest Pac-12 program to make a move. Now Mike MacIntyre might be the league’s Coach of the Year.

4. Coaching staffs who can afford bad seasons are having them: At places like Ole Miss (2015 Sugar Bowl) and Michigan State (2015 Playoff), coaches with years of winning above expectations can cash in on equity. Same goes with schools like Duke, Arizona, and Mississippi State.

It also helps that the bottom of most leagues feature newer staffs — like Missouri, Virginia, Iowa State, Kansas, Illinois, Rutgers, East Carolina, and Tulane — in total rebuilds with no win-loss scrutiny this season.

Another top-25 job opens. Avalanches start at the top, and if any major Power 5 gig other than LSU opens suddenly — be it because that coach has gone to the NFL or is suddenly fired — the ripple will be felt at each succeeding level.

Oregon seems to be the mostly likely candidate, per multiple coaching sources.

And while SB Nation has no confirmation of a pending change at Notre Dame, Brian Kelly’s 3-6 season has been a disaster.

LSU loses one more game. Since our report last week, SB Nation can confirm that interim head coach Ed Orgeron is still considered a top candidate at LSU, but if the Tigers lose again, he’s expected to fall out of favor with “top influencers,” per a source at LSU.

Hiring LSU’s thought-to-be top candidates, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Houston’s Herman, would create coveted vacancies, and a domino effect would begin.

The predictable unpredictable happens. There’s always a retirement, right? No one expected Steve Spurrier to retire, let alone so early (Oct. 13) that South Carolina’s search began to affect the entire market. Along with Jerry Kill, Larry Coker, Frank Beamer, and Gary Pinkel, 2015 was a year of retirements. At 77, Kansas State’s Bill Snyder has to be considered a candidate.

There’s always a scandal, right? Ole Miss is 4-5 and preparing for potential NCAA sanctions, the depth and severity of which have vacillated wildly in recent months. Would Hugh Freeze be cut loose for a major penalty tied directly to him? It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

There’s always a weird NFL move, right? It doesn’t have to Bill O’Brien to the Texans, either. Southern Miss lost Todd Monken to Tampa Bay two weeks before National Signing Day. Is Kevin Sumlin back in favor? Did Jim Mora ever lose favor? Is Lovie Smith regretting his move to college?

Texas does anything. Beating Baylor is great leverage, but it’s not like Strong is safe. At 5-4, the best Strong can offer the school’s massive, fractured group of decision-makers is an eight-win season and an improved offense. In a sane world, that and Strong’s recruiting should be more than enough to buy him a 2017, but this isn’t a sane world. It’s Texas.

And if Texas opens, disregard everything I’ve said about a calm coaching cycle.