North Carolina Tar Heels: What Texas loss to KSU means
The North Carolina Tar Heels are well positioned for this year, but open jobs in other places could haunt them this winter.
The news for the North Carolina Tar Heels seems pretty good. After a victory over Virginia the Heels are 6-2 on the year and tied with Virginia Tech atop the Coastal. The Hokies still hold the advantage with a head-to-head tiebreaker. The Heels are also bowl bound, but this rosy picture for this year could look very different for next year.
Two other stories came out of Texas. One story is that Texas lost to Kansas State. With that Texas fell to 3-4 on the season and likely means that Charlie Strong will be fired at the end of the year according to reports from CBS Sports’ Ben Kercheval.
The other story was the thumping that the Houston Cougars took from the SMU Mustangs over the weekend. After their big win against Oklahoma in week 1, Houston now has two conference losses on the season. The appeal of Coach Tom Herman remains high, but perhaps a little bloom is off that rose.
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What do those stories have to do with North Carolina? Simple, LSU and now probably Texas will be looking to replace their head coaches this winter. When Houston was dominant it was fairly easy to plug Herman into that job. Now he is less of a sure thing and there is an additional big job open. Baylor might also be open though former Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe has done a good job piloting that team to an undefeated season as the interim.
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Larry Fedora should be high on the list at both LSU and Texas if he can get the Heels to another ACC Championship game. He just might be the favorite if he can win that game. He is about to lose his receiver corps, offensive line, and potentially his quarterback at the end of the year. This marks the next off-season as the best time to jump if he is going to jump.
Fedora is from Texas with ties to the Big 12 when he was at Oklahoma State. Texas will always have a hard to beat recruiting base.
LSU fans have made known their interest in a more offensively minded coach. They have a good recruiting base as well. Fedora may be somewhat familiar with that area from his time at Southern Miss. Unlike Texas, Fedora would inherit a proven defense like he did when taking the North Carolina job (whether he can maintain it is an open question).
Perhaps LSU and Texas have a plan in place for handling a transition. Maybe they are looking in other directions for their guys. But they both can’t get Herman. That means the Tar Heels fans may have sweat out this off-season more than normal. It is almost twenty years since Mack Brown made that move after all.