Clemson’s Chad Morris top candidate to replace June Jones at SMU

The surprising decision by June Jones to resign as the head coach at SMU has the coaching rumor mill season started much earlier than anticipated.

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Tom Mason will be the interim head coach for the Mustangs for now, but an offensive innovator from the ACC could be coming for the 2015 season.

One of the top assistant coaches in football is Chad Morris who is the Clemson Tigers offensive coordinator and responsible for the prolific numbers put up by Tajh Boyd, Sammy Watkins and others since he was hired in 2011 and could be the top target to replace Junes.

Morris is a Texas native and went to school at Texas A&M before embarking on a legendary high school coaching career in the Lone Star State, including winning back-to-back state titles with Lake Travis high school in 2008-2009 before taking the offensive coordinator job at Tulsa.

He is one of the top assistants in the country who are destined to be head coaches somewhere soon.

Other candidates who will be of interest to SMU according to USA Today’s Dan Wolken include Baylor offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery, Texas A&M offensive coordinator Jake Spavital and Arizona State offensive coordinator Mike Norvell.

Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman tweets that Ohio State offensive coordinator Tom Herman would be a logical choice as well due to his ties to the state where he was a grad assistant at Texas and coached at Sam Houston State, Texas State and Rice before landing in Columbus.

At 45-years-old Morris could be looking to make the leap to a head coaching job, but could he find a job in a Power 5 conference?