The Baylor Bears have themselves a heck of a football coach in Matt Rhule, but will the university be able to keep him from leaving Waco for another gig?
Through Week 11, there are five undefeated teams left in the Power 5. Three of those teams in the Clemson Tigers, the LSU Tigers and the Ohio State Buckeyes make sense. These are seen as three of the 15 best programs in the country, year in and year out. So it’s no surprise that those teams are the favorites to win their conferences and reach the College Football Playoff.
But as for the two other teams, raise your hand if you thought the two other undefeated teams would be the Big 12’s Baylor Bears and the Big Ten’s Minnesota Golden Gophers. Unless you spend time by the Brazos River in Waco or claim one of the Twin Cities your home, your hand remained lowered as was mine. How are Baylor and Minnesota 9-0 at this point of the year?
Well, both Power 5 schools have themselves elite program builders as their head coaches. P.J. Fleck is rowing the damn boat up in Minneapolis, as the Gophers are partying like it’s 1960. As for Baylor, the Bears have gotten Temple Tough under the direction of Matt Rhule.
Rhule cut his teeth in Philadelphia by spending 10 years coaching at Temple University. He spent the 2012 NFL season with the New York Giants before being hired back to coach the team he’s best associated with in 2013, replacing Steve Addazio who left for worse pastures in Chestnut Hill.
After four years as the Owls head coach, Rhule left Philadelphia an AAC Conference Champion to reclaim the Baylor program Art Briles had destroyed before him. Jim Grobe handed Rhule the keys to this sunken speedboat and said, “here you go” in 2017. Three years later, Rhule has brought Baylor football back to life with his Lazarus pit of coaching tactics.
But can Baylor keep him?
Baylor is a private Christian University in Waco, Texas. While its athletic program has competed in major conferences forever, the Big 12 now and the old Southwest before that, Baylor is closer to being Vanderbilt than Alabama, if you get the SEC football analogy. Baylor can pay whatever Rhule he wants, but private schools are never the biggest of spenders.
So can Baylor keep Rhule around forever? Who is going to try to poach him out of Waco, now and in the future? What is it going to take for Rhule to rule the Big 12 at Baylor for the foreseeable future?
After flirting with the NFL the two previous offseasons, Rhule signed an extension that was completed vs. Iowa State to improve to 4-0 that runs through the 2027 season. He could have been the head coach of the Jets but Rhule wanted to be in Waco, telling the Dallas Morning News he works in a really special place.
“When I was approached and Julie [Rhule] and I sat down and talked about it, we have a son who’s in, now, eighth grade, two young daughters. We said ‘where do we want to raise our family right now? Where do we want to live?’ Rhule said. “The commitment from Baylor to not just us, but our staff and the future of the program and just the quality of life that we have, the joy we have being here. It felt like this is what we wanted to do…
“There’s been other opportunities, lots of coaches get other opportunities every year, but we’re in a really special place with really special people and felt like this is where we wanted to work and live.”
Let’s face the truth here. Rhule is going to leave at some point. If he can make both Temple and Baylor into relevant teams, imagine what he could do at a college football blue-blood or for a sorry team in the NFL perpetually mired in dysfunction.
Fortunately for Baylor, there are two other coaches who have displayed this type of high and on-the-rise head-coaching acumen: Matt Campbell of the Iowa State Cyclones and Mike Norvell of the Memphis Tigers. As with Rhule, Campbell could be asked to fix a sunken team, collegiately or professionally. These two are poised for big things.
As for Norvell, he’s going to end up leaving Memphis soon. Some Power 5 program on the level of a Baylor or Iowa State will end up grabbing him. That could be the Arkansas Razorbacks, or maybe Baylor or Iowa State if Rhule or Campbell end up leaving their Big 12 post in 2020.
Rhule and Campbell are the type of head coaching candidates who have done enough in the Big 12 to merit consideration for gigs like the Florida State Seminoles or USC Trojans collegiately, as well as taking over NFL dysfunctional messes like the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets or Washington Redskins. Maybe even the better run Atlanta Falcons or New York Giants could be interested?
Rhule is a climber up the coaching ladder. He’s in his mid-40s and destined to do great things. If Baylor wants to keep him in the early 2020s, they must identify Rhule as a 21st Century Grant Teaff and hope he becomes a much younger version of Bill Snyder. It’s up to him, but Baylor has to find a way to keep Rhule in Waco.
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