FootballScoop, a well-sourced site specializing in sorting out coaching rumors in college football, is reporting that James Franklin, the OC and coach-in-waiting at Maryland, and Greg Roman, the OC and assistant head coach at Stanford, are the two finalists for the Vanderbilt job.
Sorry if you were hoping to get a big-name coach who could give you an immediate sense of false hope. Whoever we get, I'm sitting back and waiting to see what he does. Really, we're not gonna know if this is a successful coaching search for another two or three years. Vandy fans waited, what, 53 years to win another bowl game? We're used to waiting. I can wait two or three years to see if James or Greg or whoever will pan out.
I can call them James and Greg because both of these guys are under 40 years old. Roman has an NFL background but also knows how to win at an academic-minded university. Franklin has coached at a bunch of levels and has even worked with Brett Farve. He's a high-energy guy and a supposedly fabulous recruiter. Maryland fans think he calls too many screen passes and some of them are kind of hoping he goes to Vandy.
Anyway, he was named Maryland's coach in waiting nearly two years ago and has a deal that will pay him $1 million if sticks with the Terrapins and is NOT named Maryland's head coach by early 2012, which is a possibility because Ralph Friedgen just won ACC Coach of the Year and is pushing for an extension on his contract, which ends after next season.
Friedgen agreed to the head coach in waiting thing because other schools were telling recruits that he was going to retire because he was over 60 — or was going to die, because he tipped the scales at a fifth of a ton. But he went on a crash diet and lowered his weight to a sixth of a ton, and now he's coach of the year and the picture of health and he wants an extension.
Not sure if that's a good thing for Vanderbilt or not.
