Which NFL great will be the next to take over an FCS program?
And we're getting hyped for the potential of a Clowney-Garrett tandem in Cleveland
It started, as trends have occasionally the past three decades, with Deion Sanders. Jackson State University, a HBCU with no real tie to the former Florida State graduate, hired the NFL Hall of Famer and former broadcaster as head coach of its football program last September. It didn’t matter that he’d never had any college coaching experience, nor that his last foray leading student athletes led to the insolvency of Prime Time Prep Academy, a disaster of a charter school network.
The Tigers hadn’t appeared in the playoff tournament since 1997 and haven’t won a game there in school history. The last three coaches before Sanders combined for 21 wins the past seven seasons. They went 1-2 against non-Division I competition in that stretch. Unless Sanders was an abject disaster — always a possibility, but so far, so good — there wasn’t much room to go backward.
Prime Time’s coaching debut has been mostly positive so far. Though he’s lost his last three games, a 3-0 start leaves him only one victory away from matching his predecessor’s four-win campaign from 2019. His 2021 recruiting haul ranked tops among FCS schools and 86th in Division I thanks to a handful of blue chip prospects including Sanders’ son Shedeur. His Tigers — and not perennial powers like North Dakota State or James Madison — were the first FCS game nationally broadcast on ESPN this spring. If he can keep this pace, he’ll have a low-level FBS roster capable of tearing through Southwestern Athletic Conference opponents.
This success, despite being mostly theoretical, hasn’t gone unnoticed. Tennessee State, the team that will meet Jackson in the Southern Heritage Classic this fall, has followed suit. On Sunday the Tigers hired Eddie George, the former Titan tailback who had some of his best games at the Nashville stadium TSU calls home twice a year, to take over their program.
George, like Sanders, has no prior collegiate coaching experience. His most notable accomplishment post-retirement was playing Billy Flynn in a Broadway production of Chicago. Tennessee State is betting his local ties — not only did he play the bulk of his career in Nashville but also watched his son Jaire play his college ball at nearby Vanderbilt — will make up for the significant gap in popularity between a bonafide celebrity in Neon Deion and a workhorse tailback less known outside of football.
It’s another bold move, but one that could pay off if George is able to lure talent to TSU. He’ll have the opportunity to sell a HBCU experience few other schools can match thanks to its campus in Music City. He’ll also have an easier path to an FCS Tournament bid thanks to the Tigers’ spot in the Ohio Valley Conference, where opponents like Austin Peay, Eastern Illinois, and Southeast Missouri State lurk.
If George can achieve even modest results at Tennessee State, his hiring could turn this pair of outliers into a full-on coaching trend. And since seeing two NFL stars land in the FCS came with no prior ties to the schools that hired them, pretty much anything is on the table. Let’s talk more about that with some dream scenarios that would make as much sense as Eddie George, Broadway veteran and Tennessee State head coach.
Texas Southern head coach Andre Johnson
Texas Southern has a long list of illustrious alumni, including Winston Hill, Ken Burrough, and Michael Strahan. Its location in Houston allows for a similar “HBCU environment in a big city” feel as Tennessee State. There’s a lot of potential with the program!
But while Strahan is likely too busy hosting non-essential morning television shows, another local legend could break into the coaching ranks by relying on a Hall of Fame caliber resume. Johnson is the greatest receiver in Texans’ history and has more than 1,000 receptions in his 12 years with the franchise. He’s as tied to Houston as George is to Nashville despite growing up in Florida and spending his college days in Miami. He’s also shown the kind of pro-player sentiment that would go a long way with recruits after making a rare social media appearance to trash the Texans’ regrettable ownership.
Holy Cross head coach Wes Welker
Welker is actively working to raise his coaching status after assistant jobs in Houston and San Francisco. Holy Cross has never won a postseason game — which includes a Rose Bowl appearance against Miami (!). While the Crusaders are trending upward following a 2019 conference title and a spot in this year’s Patriot League championship game following a … 2-0 spring campaign GOOD LORD 2020 MADE THINGS WEIRD, they could be in the market for a new coach if rising star Bob Chesney gets called up to a bigger program.
New England is rife with FCS programs (11 total, including three in the football cradle of America, Rhode Island). The ultimate clout move for any of these teams would be to hire a sigil of the Patriots’ glory days. Welker would certainly fit the bill — even if he’s more qualified than some of the other candidates on this list.
San Diego head coach Philip Rivers
Jim Harbaugh’s transition from marginally successful NFL quarterback to marginally successful NCAA coach began with the Toreros. Rivers could do the same by returning to the city where he sired no fewer than seven of his nine children.
The former Charger ended his career after a successful but ultimately meaningless season with the Colts (he finished the way he started, god bless). He’d bring a seasoned mind to the sideline as a man who was once so detail-oriented he turned his SUV into a mobile film room to grind tape during his commute to Los Angeles. He’d also bring the same fire and passion he brought to the little-watched games against the Jaguars and Raiders to little-watched games against Drake and Valparaiso.
Rivers’ reputation as a frugal man means there’s an added benefit to taking a job at a school that could sweeten the pot by throwing in free tuition for his brood. It’d be a better deal than his players get — San Diego plays in the Pioneer Football League, a national conference that doesn’t award football scholarships (and thus, typically has a very bad time in the playoffs).
Gardner-Webb head coach Steve Smith
Like Sanders, Smith went from accomplished All-Pro and god-tier shit-talker to NFL talk show mainstay. I have no idea if he’d be a good leader of men. I just know the postgame press conferences would be legendary.
What’ve you got to lose, Gardner-Webb? You haven’t won more than seven games in a season since 2003. Give Steve Smith a call; if nothing else, he’ll piss off the rest of the Big South. — CD
Better late than never
I’ve always liked time travel as a plot device in fictional works, this idea that after you’ve already seen how one decision plays out, you can get a do-over. Sometimes going back in time changes things for the better, like in Back to the Future and Looper (we hope that kid didn’t turn into the Rainmaker after all that, anyway!). Sometimes, it makes things worse, like when the main character in 11/22/63 saves JFK from his assassination attempt and it ultimately leads to nuclear wars. And sometimes it’s all a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the episode of the UPN version of The Twilight Zone where Katherine Heigl travels to the past to kill baby Hitler, succeeds, and then the Hitlers’ maid replaces him with a gypsy baby, who will become Hitler Hitler.
Real-life do-overs are, of course, much different. We can’t erase the past, but we can learn from it. For one of the top available free agents, this offseason represents a second chance of sorts: Jadeveon Clowney can sign with the team that was most interested in him last time he hit the open market.
Last offseason, Clowney passed up the Browns’ hefty offer — higher than any other team’s — and joined the Titans. Clowney reportedly wanted to sign with a contender, and it’s understandable that he’d opt for a franchise coming off an AFC title loss over one that hadn’t made the playoffs in nearly two decades.
But he chose … poorly. Clowney played in just eight games for the Titans before going on injured reserve, and the Titans bowed out of the playoffs in the Wild Card Round while the Browns came up short against the Chiefs in the Divisional Round.
Depending on his health, Clowney likely would have made more of an impact in Cleveland. Despite notching zero sacks in Tennessee, he did generate a good amount of pressure.
If he had been partnering up with Myles Garrett instead of on one of the weakest defensive lines in the league, his production would’ve skyrocketed. Run defense has always been Clowney’s strength, though, and I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if he had been on the field when Chad Henne’s third-down run basically sealed the Chiefs’ playoff win:
What if the Browns had gotten the ball back, down five, with less than two minutes to go? Alas, we’ll never know without our own Flux Capacitor/ TARDIS/hot tub time machine.
However, we could finally see what Clowney would look like lining up next to Garrett. Clowney is nearing a deal with the Browns that could be done as early as Monday. This signing would make sense for both sides, just like it would have a year ago. It’s almost like it was density … uh, destiny. — SH