Report: San Diego Chargers Want To Interview UCLA’s Jim Mora Jr.
By Josh Hill
Back in December, we reported that Jim Mora Jr. could have the San Diego Chargers head coaching job on his radar. Turns out that report was true, but inly inversely so. Rather than Mora approaching the Chargers, San Diego has reportedly approached Mora about interviewing for the vacant head coaching position up the road from where Mora currently coaches.
Mora is coming off a 9-5 season with the Bruins, an impressive mark for his first year with the program. While 9-5 may pale in comparison to the kinds of records college football fans are used to seeing called “impressive”, since 1998 the Bruins have only won more than eight games once.
News that the Chargers are interested in Mora jives with the current trend of NFL franchises making a run at college head coaches. Chip Kelly was the most coveted name, while guys like Bill O’Brien and Nick Saban have also been the source of speculation when it comes to NFL jobs. San Diego showed interest in another college coach, Syracuse’s Doug Marrone, before he became the first college coach of the offseason to make the leap to the NFL and Buffalo.
[RELATED: Is the Chargers Job on Jim Mora Jr.’s Radar?]
But while the Chargers are following the trend of trying to lure a college coach out of the NCAA and into the NFL, Mora seems to want to follow the college trend of staying put at your current program. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mora is likely going to stay at UCLA for at least another season. While Mora would love to return to the NFL, where he was notably mild with the Falcons and Seahawks, after posting a 9-5 season, there is much hype building around UCLA and Mora may want to create a college legacy before he tries to recreate his NFL legacy.
If Mora did make the jump to the NFL, San Diego would be an attractive landing spot. Not only is it not far from where he currently calls home, More began his pro coaching career with the Chargers in the mid-to-late 80s, before taking off as a coordinator in the 90s and an eventual NFL head coach in the early 2000s.
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