Tulane Hiring New Orleans Saints Assistant Curtis Johnson As Head Coach

Johnson coached for the Saints for five years, having previously worked for Miami, San Diego State, Cal, SMU, and Idaho. He was born in New Orleans, but raised in Idaho, making him at least mostly a local for Tulane.

Toledo coached Tulane (it’s confusing every time!) for five years, never bettering four wins in a year.

Taylor certainly has Tulane connections, having coached receivers for five years there. He’s from southeast Texas and has posted some of his biggest recruiting achievements in the Gulf Coast region. He has no head coaching experience, but he’s been an assistant head coach at two SEC programs for seven years total, plus a season’s worth of co-offensive coordinator experience.

If Gus Malzahn, Taylor, and Curtis Luper all leave the Plains for elsewhere, as could reportedly happen, Gene Chizik’s gonna have to do some mighty great coaching to hold this thing together.

As Christmas shoppers around the country prepared for Cyber Monday, a few football programs decided to go shopping for a new football coach. Sunday alone, Illinois, Kansas, UAB and Memphis dumped their coaches and entered what is suddenly a bustling sellers’ market. Mike Leach can only take one job, people!

Let’s take a look at the programs that are hiring (or could be soon), along with some general program strength numbers.

From the Journal-Sentinel:

You’ll remember Haywood as the coach who was hired to take over for Dave Wannstedt at Pitt after leading Miami from 1-11 to a 9-4 season and bowl victory in only two years. You’ll, unfortunately, also remember Haywood as the coach Pitt fired two weeks later due to New Year’s Eve felony domestic violence charges.

Boston College fans at BC Interruption are pulling for him, because if they can’t have him, well, somebody should:

For more on the wonderful sport, stay tuned to SB Nation’s college football news hub.

Tulane fired accepted the resignation of coach Bob Toledo earlier this fall, leaving the Green Wave in search of a coach. Because this is America, man, Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez are both apparently part of coaching search, according to Tulane reporter Scott Kushner.

On its face, this strategy of targeting disgraced former coaching luminaries seems a bit dumb. Would Leach and Rodriguez, with 84 and 120 career wins, respectively, deign to come to a school that kind of, sort of fired Toledo for going 15-38 over a little more than four years and fired Toledo’s predecessor, Chris Scelfo, for going 37-57 over nine years?

It’s funny. If you are the fan of a program generally considered to be a college football heavyweight, and your coach could be getting ready to either get fired or retire soon, you almost certainly think your school is getting either Urban Meyer or Jon Gruden. If you are a fan of a less than top-tier school in the same situation, meanwhile, you think your school is getting Mike Leach. And with a wider array of options in the non-heavyweight divisions, that makes the Mike Leach Watch a lot more entertaining.

Here are some of the schools to which he either has been tied by random rumor, or probably could soon be. We will use an entirely arbitrary ratings scale to judge Leach’s most likely destination.