Rivals’ Mike Huguenin says, “Charlie Strong Right Man for Job”

In Mike Huguenin’s weekly monday column, he discusses four college football head coach hires in Bowl Championship conferences. He mentions how it is encouraging that three of the four hires are African-Americans.

It’s a good sign that Big Six athletic directors finally appear to be willing to move from the norm when making coaching hires. Moving from the “norm” doesn’t mean hiring black coaches for the sake of hiring black coaches. Rather, it means finding the best man for the job and hiring him. Given some of the coaching hires this decade, it’s truly hard to believe that some of those hired truly were the best man for the job.  

He then goes on to speak about Charlie Strong more specifically.

Of the new quartet, Strong — who had been defensive coordinator at Florida — would seem to be walking into the best situation. Louisville got good relatively quickly, then went south even more quickly. Becoming bowl eligible is not that difficult in the Big East. Conference teams have five non-conference games annually, and judicious scheduling means a 4-1 or 5-0 non-conference record isn’t that difficult. That means winning just one or two conference games makes a team bowl eligible.

Strong has a solid coaching background and has worked for three coaches who have won national titles — Lou Holtz, Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier. Given his background at Florida, Strong obviously has excellent recruiting ties to that state, which is important given the relative paucity of high-echelon Kentucky high school prospects.

Strong’s first task is to make Louisville nationally relevant again. That’s the same task for London, who had been coach at Richmond. The Spiders won the FCS title last season in London’s first year as coach. London is a former Virginia assistant, so he should be familiar with the pros and cons of the UVa program. London is known as a solid recruiter, and given the large amount of talent available in Virginia’s Tidewater region, his first recruiting goal should be to re-establish the Cavs in that area. Virginia is a clear-cut No. 2 in its home state, and London needs to cut into Virginia Tech’s recruiting base to change that.

Courtesy of Rivals.com – Mike Huguenin

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