The Monarchists

Sun Belt Coaching Carousel…with Grades!

David Asbury

For the first season since 2018, Old Dominion will not have any major coaching changes. (More on that later).  The same cannot be said about the rest of the Sun Belt.  The Sun Belt Conference has really grown and emerged as a top G5 conference.  But with that growth comes a few draw backs.  One of which will be turnover.  Success at this level will often lead to Power 5 programs poaching Sun Belt coaches with large offers.  As of now, the Sun Belt still cannot match such salaries.  So we better get used to it.  After 2023, there has been a lot of turnover in players and coaches.  How did the Sun Belt do in this round of the coaching carousel?  Pretty good actually.

James Madison

Curt Cignetti had a lot of success at JMU.  The Dukes came in and were competitive enough to “win” the SBC East in their first two seasons.  He was a very hot name among bigger schools.  JMU tried very hard to keep him and internally offered him a large raise and asked for commitments to stay until retirement.  Unfortunately for the Dukes, Indiana offered four times as much as JMU did.  So it is no surprise that Cignetti left for a bigger job.  JMU had to look elsewhere to continue their success.

Bob Chesney has a 111-46 record dating back to his days at Salve Regina.

JMU searched among the FCS ranks which is where they found Cignetti.  After a short search, JMU brought in Bob Chesney from Holy Cross for half the cost they were willing to pay to keep Cignetti.  Chesney had great success in the FCS ranks and was in the running for the Syracuse job.  At Holy Cross he won five straight Patriot League titles and had playoff appearances from 2018-23.  There’s no reason to believe that success cannot transfer to the G5 ranks.

However, JMU fans should be a little patient with Chesney to rebuild the program.  The Dukes have an entirely new coaching staff and nearly all of their playmakers transferred or graduated.  Indeed, out of 134 teams, Madison ranks 126th in returning production.  The Dukes have a solid recruiting class and transfers in but it will still be a brand new team from top to bottom.  Furthermore, Chesney has no experience at any large public secular school like JMU.  There are going to be some growing pains.  But JMU will still likely be able to field a competitive Sun Belt team due to this pretty good hire. Grade: A-

Troy

Given the success Troy has had winning the Sun Belt Championship the past two seasons, it is no surprise that head coach Jon Sumrall would get poached.  What was surprising was that Tulane, a fellow G5 program, did the poaching by offering a large pay day.  Sumrall was quick to rise the ranks where his only two seasons as a head coach ended with SBC championships.  The loss of such a coach cannot help but lead to transition and growing pains.  Indeed, Troy ranks 129th out of 134 teams in returning production (last in the Sun Belt).

Troy has been really good lately. But this turnover cannot help but hurt.

Troy brought in Gerad Parker who spent time at Notre Dame and West Virginia as an offensive coordinator and a host of other schools as a position coach.  The only head coaching experience Parker has was from 2016 when he took over Purdue as an interim head coach.  Parker and Coach Rahne worked together on the 2019 Penn State team, Parker as the wide receiver coach and Ricky as the co-OC and quarterback coach. Unfortunately, Gerad is still looking for his first win as a head coach as he went 0-6 that year.  He is seen as a similar type of coach as Sumrall and schematically nothing is expected to change.  But still, Parker needs to rebuild the roster with so much lost production.  Grade: B-.

South Alabama

South Alabama was an enigma last year.  One week they would upset Oklahoma State.  Another, they would lose to Central Michigan.  Their 7-6 bowl season was seen as disappointing as they were expected to compete for the SBC West.  Head Coach Kane Wommack was expected to rebuild the team for 2024.  But then, Nick Saban retired and Wommack was poached to be Alabama’s defensive coordinator.  Is that really a promotion?  Well it is Alabama so it probably is.  But the Jaguars found a solid replacement in Major Applewhite.

Applewhite was an internal hire and was South Alabama’s offensive coordinator from 2021 to 2023.  But he has a lot of coaching experience for his relatively young age (he’s 45).  He previously coached at UH where he was 15-11 in two full seasons and brought the Cougars to a pair of bowl games. His familiarity with the South Alabama program should allow him to keep it at a relatively high level but like the other teams on this list, the roster is seeing a lot of turnover.  They rank 120th in returning production.  Applewhite will have to rebuild the roster but his experience shows he is capable of doing that.  Grade: A.

UL-Monroe

ULM has some problems.  The Warhawks were one of only two SBC teams to miss a bowl game last year and the other team, USM, beat them.  Looking at the big picture, ULM has not been to a bowl game since 2012 and has been stacking losing seasons one after another.  They have a low budget and it is hard to see them competing for a SBC title anytime soon.  There have been some calls to move down to the FCS and the team would be a natural fit for the Southland Conference.  But their athletic director said that is not an option.  So they will keep trying after firing head coach Terry Bowden had another disappointing season.

But they found a new coach in New Mexico’s OC Bryant Vincent.  He has been a head coach before when he went 7-6 as UAB’s interim coach in 2022 and led the Blazers to win in the Bahamas Bowl.  Like the other schools on this list, the Warhawks will have a lot of turnover in the roster but that is not necessarily a bad thing when the team has routinely failed to perform well.  Vincent is a good hire to rebuild the roster with his recruiting experience in the Southeastern footprint.

There is nothing wrong with this hire on its face.  He has the experience and acumen any SBC team would like when hiring a head coach.  However, Monroe’s athletic problems are steep hills to climb.  That is not really reflective of Vincent but can he really work miracles? Grade: B-.

Marshall (Offensive Coordinator)

What happened in Huntington?  They started the season 4-0 defeating Virginia Tech and Old Dominion and looked like they could compete in the SBC East.  But the wheels fell off and went 2-7 in their next nine games.  They may have made a bowl game but their 3-5 conference record was good for 7th/last place in the SBC East.  First the defense fell off with a first-year defensive coordinator.  Then their offense struggled with either Cam Fancher or Cole Pennington at quarterback.  Accordingly Coach Charles Huff fired offensive coordinator Clint Trickett.

Seth Doege played football at Texas Tech (2008-12), the Atlanta Falcons (2013), and Saskatchewan Roughriders (2014-15).

Huff hired former Texas Tech quarterback and Purdue tight ends coach Seth Doege.  Doege has been coaching in some capacity since 2016.  He has also spent time as an offensive analyst at USC and Ole Miss.  He is young and may be ready for an offensive coordinator gig for a G5 team. However, hiring a tight ends coach from Purdue just does not generate a whole lot of excitement.  Grade C+.

Southern Mississippi (Offensive and Defensive Coordinators)

2023 was a disaster for USM.  The Golden Eagles were expected to be a mid-tier SBC West team but it turned out to be a 3-9 losing season.  Will Hall’s seat is pretty warm in that Coacheshotseat.com ranks it the 8th hottest seat entering 2024.  Hall needed a shake up and he let go of both the offensive coordinator Sam Gregg and defensive coordinator Dan O’Brien.

At offensive coordinator, Hall brought in Chip Long who has worked as an offensive coordinator at Memphis (2016), Notre Dame (2017-19), Tulane (2021) and Georgia Tech (2022). He comes to Southern Miss after spending the 2023 season as a quality control specialist at Louisville.  His career looks like he has bounced around a lot and not always in an upward protectory.  Still, his experience may help Will Hall keep his job or his inconsistency may help his seat get hotter.  Grade C+.

At defensive coordinator, Hall brought in Clay Bignell who was an assistant coach and defensive coordinator at Eastern Illinois.  The Panthers had an impressive 8-3 season in the Ohio Valley Conference last year and was an FCS coach who appeared ripe for promotion to the G5.  Grade B+.

Texas State (Defensive Coordinator)

2023 was GJ Kinne’s first season and he hired defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke.  Patke helped guide the Bobcats to the program’s first eight-win season and FBS bowl appearance.  But in December of 2023, Patke took the open defensive coordinator job at Duke, a promotion to a P5 team.  Accordingly, Kinne promoted Dexter McCoil, Sr. after serving as the Bobcats’ safeties coach last season.

McCoil played college football at Tulsa. From 2014 to 2021, he played professionally for the Los Angeles Kiss, Edmonton Eskimos, San Diego Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, Calgary Stampeders, St. Louis BattleHawks (with Taylor Heinicke) and Toronto Argonauts.

McCoil has very little college coaching experience as he only stopped playing football in 2021.He coached safeties at Incarnate Wood in 2022 and Texas State in 2023.  Which is to say that he coached safeties Shawn Holton and Kaleb Culp who played for both Incarnate Wood and Texas State.  Both played very well under McCoil.  Kinne must think very highly of McCoil to promote him to defensive coordinator so early in his coaching career.  Kinne could be right about McCoil and just sees that he has an “it” factor to him.  But the promotion is still a pretty big gamble.  I would just like to see him have more experience and with other players before getting this type of promotion.  Grade D.

Old Dominion (Wide Receivers and Tight Ends)

Let me take you back to 2018.  Bobby Wilder was coaching ODU and was mostly successful in his FCS to FBS transition winning a bowl game in 2016.  However, the defense was a mess after the 2018 season and despite defeating Virginia Tech, the season was very disappointing.  Wilder hired a new defensive coordinator for the 2019 season starting a trend that would last the next four seasons.  2020 was canceled.  2021 was Rahne and his staff’s first season.  Rahne then hired a new offensive coordinator for both 2022 and another for 2023.  OC Kevin Decker returns for his second season in 2024.  It will be the first time since 2018 that there has not been a change at head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator.

However, Rahne did make some minor changes to the staff.  Wide Receivers coach Mark Dupuis was quietly let go.  The wide receiver room has been very talented but they have underperformed expectations and Dupuis’ seat has been rather hot the past two seasons.  J.J. Lester comes in after coaching receivers at Western Carolina the past three seasons.  Meanwhile, the Monarchs’ tight end coach was also quietly relieved of duties but landed on his feet quickly at JMU as their wide receivers coach. Rahne brought in David Weeks who spent this past season as an offensive analyst at Tennessee and previously worked with Coach Decker at Fordham.

Neither of these changes are Earth shattering but ODU’s passing game was very hot and cold in 2023.  The hope is clearly that these hires give a boost to those practice groups and provide for more consistent passing game which was the biggest weakness on offense after pass protection.  Grade B.