The first installment in a two-week series leading up to the American Athletic Conference Football Summer Kickoff
Even if the rest of the college football world was stunned by the news, for Tommy Tuberville, the move made perfect sense.
Here was Tuberville, not too far removed from a 13-0 season as Auburn’s head coach and having just completed a solid regular season at Texas Tech, standing behind the podium at Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena, proclaiming to a crowd of 1,200 that, “I’m proud to be a Bearcat!”
The move was notable on two fronts. The first was in it’s efficiency - it took exactly one day from the time that Butch Jones stepped down at Cincinnati to take over at Tennessee for the Bearcats to introduce Tuberville as Jones’ successor. Secondly, Cincinnati had never introduced a head coach with the pedigree of Tuberville, who was the national coach of the year in 2005.
But Tuberville, after three seasons at Texas Tech, saw Cincinnati as a great fit. He didn’t have to rebuild the program as he did at his three previous head coaching stops - Mississippi, Auburn and Texas Tech. By amy measure, Cincinnati has been one of the nation’s better programs in the past decade and Tuberville inherits a team that shared the Big East title and won the Belk Bowl last season. He also had worked with Cincinnati athletics director Whit Babcock when Babcock was on the staff at Auburn from 1999-2002.
Tuberville’s move to Cincinnati added to the impressive roster of coaches that will compete in the American Athletic Conference in the league’s first season. As The American begins Year 1, it does so with two seemingly disparate factions on the sidelines.
On one side, you have the proven veterans: UConn’s Paul Pasqualoni, UCF’s George O’Leary, SMU’s June Jones and Tuberville, who, collectively, have won 501 games in the course of a combined 69 years as head coaches.
Compare that with The American’s other six coaches, who need a combined 441 wins between them to match the aforementioned quartet. Louisville’s Charlie Strong and USF’s Willie Taggart are the elder statesmen of the group - with three years each as a head coach. Houston’s Tony Levine, Memphis’ Justin Fuente and Rutgers’ Kyle Flood are entering their second seasons. Temple’s Matt Rhule makes his head coaching debut this season.
On paper, it might not seem like a fair comparison. Tuberville and Jones have both enjoyed perfect regular seasons - Tuberville had the 13-0 run in Auburn in 1995 and Jones went 12-0 in the 2008 regular season at Hawaii before falling in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. O’Leary has taken UCF to double-digit wins in two of the last three seasons. And Pasqualoni has 151 career victories and closed the book on the Big East as the league’s all-time leader in wins and championships.
But whatever the other six may lack in pure head coaching experience, there may not be a more accomplished group of younger coaches around. Strong has rebuilt Louisville to the tune of three straight winning seasons, capped by a convincing victory against Florida in last year’s Sugar Bowl. Flood delivered Rutgers’ first conference title in school history in his first year as the Scarlet Knights shared the Big East crown. Levine was the assistant head coach on Houston’s magical 13-1 season in 2011 and had a hand in two double-digit win totals in four years as an assistant with the Cougars. Fuente helped Memphis lead Conference USA in total defense in league games last year, improving the Tigers by more than 100 yards per game from the previous season, and was the co-offensive coordinator at TCU during the Horned Frogs’ back-to-back BCS game appearances.
Taggart, who is in his first year at USF, comes to Tampa after completing a major overhaul at Western Kentucky. The Hilltoppers were mired in a 20-game losing streak when Taggart took over, but went 14-6 in Taggart’s last 20 games there. And even though Rhule has yet to coach a game as Temple’s head man, one only needs to look at the national recruiting rankings to see the impact he is having in Philadelphia, not to mention his role in turning the Owls around as an assistant.
What all of that means is that with every team in the American Athletic Conference, you’ll find a head coach who has either accomplished great things already or has contributed to great things as an assistant. That alone will make The American a conference to watch in 2013.