Redskins’ Lou Spanos Named New UCLA DC, According To Report

UCLA’s defensive staff is now complete, including former Arizona State coordinator Noel Mazzone as the OC, as they’ve reached the NCAA staff limit. Mora, a coach with a defensive background, is expected to have a large role in the Bruins’ defensive attack.

For more on the parties involved, be sure to check out UCLA blog Bruins Nation and Redskins blog Hogs Haven.

Jim Mora Jr. is wasting little time putting together his coaching staff at UCLA. The new Bruins coach’s most recent hire is apparently Noel Mazzone, who most recently was the offensive coordinator at Arizona State.

Mazzone’s hire is at least the fourth since Mora was officially announced on Dec. 10. He joins SMU’s Adrian Klemm, Washington’s Demetrice Martin and Arizona State’s Steve Broussard. All three of those coaches have strong recruiting ties to Southern California.

Johnson is UCLA’s offensive coordinator and is in charge of the team as it prepares for the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl where they will take on Illinois.

UCLA recently hired Jim L. Mora as its next head coach and it remains unclear if Johnson has a spot on his coaching staff.

The Bruins hit nearly every possible coaching candidate for the position, including Boise State’s Chris Peterson, Houston’s Kevin Sumlin, and even Washington’s Steve Sarkisian. Mora Jr. will be the first UCLA head coach who was not a player or assistant coach at UCLA in any capacity since Red Snaders in 1949. While Mora Jr. was never connected to the UCLA program, his father was an assistant coach for the Bruins in 1974.

More Jr. will fulfill his NFL Network broadcasting duties before coming to UCLA next week. As a head coach in the NFL, Mora Jr. was 26-22 with the Atlanta Falcons and 5-11 in his single season as the Seattle Seahawks head coach. The Bruins have gone 21-29 the past four season’s under Rick Neuheisel.

For more on the UCLA Bruins coaching search, visit SB Nation’s UCLA blog Bruins Nation.

Hard to believe one loss could damage Sumlin’s prospects this badly. It was kind of strange to see UCLA emerge as a contender for Sumlin’s services later than everybody else did.

This leaves Miami coach Al Golden, who recently signed a four-year extension, as the only reported UCLA candidate.

Enhanced compensation is in Sumlin’s immediate future, whether UH is able to pony up sufficiently or not. A&M’s pending SEC riches likely mean they can offer anything the Cougars can and then some, even with their various other budget concerns. TAMU is a bigger and better job in a familiar region and one to which Sumlin already has working experience ties.

Golden just signed a four-year contract extension with the Canes, locking him up (not locking him up at all) through 2019. The chance to leave the impending debacle in south Florida and join the nation’s sudden hottest coaches conference could be enticing, but who leaves a school weeks after signing a mega extension?

Can’t help but think UCLA’s heading down another dead end, if this is really Plan B. But, hey, Miami didn’t do Golden any favors by failing to warn him about the mess he’d inherit if he came aboard at the U.

UCLA reportedly wanted to make Chris Petersen one of the five highest-paid coaches in the land -- as it is, he makes less than the coaches at Duke, Navy, and SMU and way less than the coaches at Cal and Iowa -- but the Boise State coach values some things more than money, such as not coaching at UCLA.

So it’s no shock to see Joe Schad report that it’s one up, one down for the Bruins after Petersen has declined. That was a fun side quest, and now UCLA’s coaching search can begin in earnest. It’s a formality.

Insiders have said it would take “dynamite” to get Peterson out of Boise, and the UCLA job isn’t dynamite. The USC gig would be more like it. That sort of job is the only thing that could do it.

Wednesday was Neuheisel’s final practice with the Bruins, a tough moment for the fired head coach. From Johnathan Gold:

But his team responded with a nice gesture after everything was said and done. After the jump, a photo.

Boise State’s Chris Petersen is UCLA’s top target to replace the recently fired Rick Neuheisel, reports Chris Foster of the Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed “influential people with knowledge of the situation.” UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero is expected to travel to Boise to make his pitch, which reportedly includes an annual contract worth more than $3 million.

Whether that’s enough remains to be seen. Petersen is believed to have turned down a similar contract to replace Jim Harbaugh at Stanford -- and that was after Stanford’s 11-1 season in which they ranked fourth in the BCS.

According to Sumlin, he and Rhoades both want to save further discussions until the season is over (via Houston Chronicle).

Sumlin led the Cougars to a 12-0 record this season and Houston, with a win in the Conference USA Championship game, is in position for its first BCS Bowl invitation. Houston is 35-23 in four seasons under Sumlin and his current team lead the nation in total offense (613.3 yards per game), scoring (52.7 points per game) and passing yards (449.7 per game).

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.

It would be pretty amazing if the Bruins manage to make it to a Rose Bowl with Neuheisel fired along the way. Or without him being fired. Just going to the Pac-12 title game as a .500 team is pretty remarkable stuff.

For more on the Bruins, visit UCLA blog Bruins Nation and SB Nation Los Angeles, plus Pac-12 blog Pacific Takes.

UCLA football head coach Rick Neuheisel is expected to be fired at the end of the season, according to The Los Angeles Times’ Chris Foster, who cites “influential people close to the program who did not want to be identified publicly because the decision was not final.”

The Bruins lost to cross-town rival USC Saturday in embarrassing fashion in a 50-0 defeat. Yet, UCLA will play in the Pac-12 title game because USC is banned from postseason play.

Just two weeks ago, we checked in on the temperatures of quite a few FBS coaches’ seats. Time to update the list. And even though we are legally required to mention Mark Richt here, we’re not going to. Take that, laws.

Houston Nutt, Ole Miss. He experienced a two-year surge, mostly with Ed Orgeron’s leftovers, but the more the program became truly his, the worse Ole Miss began to perform. The search for his replacement could impact quite a few others, but with Athletic Director Pete Boone also stepping down (sort of -- he’s staying on for a while but won’t take part in the search, which is all sorts of awkward), it is hard to get a feel for how long it will last or which direction it will take.

Here’s Guerrero to ESPN:

At the moment, the Bruins are still somehow only a game out of first place in the Pac-12 South despite having a losing overall record. Based on earlier comments by Guerrero, a division title sounds like goal No. 1 for Neuheisel. Not that anybody foresees it happening, but it’s still possible. I guess.

The critical portions of his weekly blog:

The statement was meant to clarify Guerrero’s own earlier admission that Neuheisel’s job status at UCLA was “day-to-day.”