Tommy Tuberville stepping down as Cincinnati head coach

Cincinnati will be replacing head football coach Tommy Tuberville, according to Football Scoop, which reports Western Michigan’s P.J. Fleck and Troy’s Neal Brown are expected to be candidates. (Fleck’s in high demand and believed to be a top Oregon candidate.)

SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey confirms the news, adding that AD Mike Bohn will meet with remaining staff today at 4pm ET to asses the future of the program.

It ends a four-season run in the Queen City, where the 62-year-old coach went 29-22.

Things started well for Tuberville at Cincinnati. He went 9-4 in 2013 and 2014, winning the American Athletic title in his second year. But the Bearcats slipped a bit in 2015, to 7-6, and fell off badly this year.

They finished 4-8, and they looked pretty terrible doing it. Their offense was one of the worst in the country after existing at a top-40 level before that, and the defense, while improved, wasn’t nearly good enough to pick up the slack. After one ugly loss, a fan heckled Tuberville, and the coach told the fan to “get a job” and “go to hell.”

Cincinnati’s last game was an overtime loss at Tulsa in Week 13, which included one dope trick play but also included UC blowing a 24-7 lead.

At 62, it makes it hard for Tuberville to say whether he’ll go for another shot as a head coach. With the exception of 2009, Tuberville’s been a head coach every year since he took over at Ole Miss in 1995. He spent four years there, 10 at Auburn, and three at Texas Tech before he arrived at Cincinnati. Tuberville’s departure from Lubbock for Cincinnati surprised the Red Raiders, who wound up with Kliff Kingsbury.

Tuberville’s always going to be best known for his time at Auburn. His 1999-2008 stint there was his longest as a coach at any one spot, and Tuberville did some good things on the Plains. He went 85-40, highlighted by a Sugar Bowl win in 2004 when Auburn went undefeated but was shut out of the national championship Orange Bowl between fellow unbeatens USC and Oklahoma. USC won that game and finished No. 1, right ahead of Auburn, though the NCAA forced USC to later vacate its BCS win.

National champs or not, Tuberville’s 2004 team was a blast. Auburn’s offense, led by quarterback Jason Campbell and running backs Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown, had memorable names. But the defense was Auburn’s driving force, holding teams to a national-best 11.3 points per game.

Tuberville had many good years at Auburn, including four other top-15 finishes. He won six Iron Bowls in a row against Alabama from 2002 to 2007 and seven of 10 overall. His 2006 team got to 11 wins, two years before he went 5-7 and resigned in December 2008.

Then-Bearcats athletic director Whit Babcock (now at Virginia Tech) told SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey that it was a “home run swing” to lure Tuberville away from Texas Tech, where he’d gone in his post-Auburn life.

“It was a pretty quick conversation,” Babcock said at the time. “I said, ‘Hey coach, I think the world of you, but I really only have one day to work on this. If you’re not interested, I’ll move on quickly.’”

Tuberville said one of the things he wanted at Cincinnati was a recruiting base that would work for his preferred, pro-style offense.

“It all goes back to one thing - quarterback,” Tuberville said. “What kind of quarterback can you recruit? And in Texas most of the high schools were running spread [offenses], and you could either go out and find a throwing quarterback or a scrambling, running quarterback. There wasn’t many pro-style guys, and if you bring in a guy that’s never been around a pro-style offense that’s taken a snap underneath the center, I mean, it’s a huge transition. So I’ve noticed in [Ohio] that there’s a lot more pro-style offenses.”

But Tuberville’s best year at Cincinnati came in 2014 with a Notre Dame transfer, Gunner Kiel, at quarterback. Kiel went over 3,000 yards and threw 31 touchdowns (and 13 picks) that year. But he lost time to Hayden Moore in 2015, and Moore kept the job with limited success this year. The Bearcats never found the answer Tuberville was looking for, and that was a big part of their fall in the last two years.

There’s a good bit to like about the job, though. Nippert Stadium has undergone an impressive renovation. The Bearcats are big-time enough that the Big 12 at least considered adding them before deciding in the fall not to expand. Ohio is one of the country’s most fertile recruiting states, and the Bearcats should be able to do OK with the players who don’t get lapped up by Ohio State and Michigan.

From Mark Dantonio to Butch Jones to Brian Kelly to Tuberville, UC’s been either a stop along the way or a stop after a major job or two. The Bearcats could go for experience again, or they could go a younger route. They could hire from within, although a season like this one doesn’t inspire much confidence in such a move.

Either way, athletic director Mike Bohn has decisions to make.