West Virginia’s ideal Neal Brown replacement may have shown his hand

Oh, this would be something... After having great success at Troy, West Virginia hired a former Kentucky football player to be their head coach in Neal Brown. Years later after failing at WVU, there is a chance the Mountaineers could hire another former star head coach at Troy with strong Kentucky ties in Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall. All signs point to Sumrall leaving Tulane after only one season.

There are other jobs available besides the one in Morgantown a head coach like Sumrall could be up for. Other programs that could conceivably hire Sumrall include North Carolina and UCF. At this point, there is no way Sumrall leaves New Orleans for anything other than a Power Four job. What I am curious to see is if any other jobs open up that he could potentially be interested in, including UK...

Look. I have been a huge fan of Sumrall's coaching chops since taking over at Troy three years ago. He did extraordinary things leading the Trojans. Prior to the weather starting to change, he was doing amazing things at Tulane. Since shutting out Navy a few weeks back, the Greenies have lost to Memphis and then Army in the AAC title bout. You have to wonder if Sumrall's head is elsewhere...

Sumrall was already the best Group of Five head-coaching candidate out there to start this season.

Jon Sumrall may have mailed it in at Tulane with Power Four offers abound

This has happened before and it will happen again. Anytime a team overachieves at a lower level of college football, you have to wonder if the head coach will have any staying power at his current institution before inevitably getting poached. Tulane was able to keep Willie Fritz from leaving for one year, but the Houston opportunity beckoned, and the 60-something head coach was Big 12 bound.

While I am not the one to say where Sumrall's leanings are between openings such as North Carolina, UCF and West Virginia, he at the very least can use any of them as leverage to get a bigger deal to remain at Tulane. He may be a head coach on the come-up, but none of the jobs he would be in line to take over at are even the least bit easy. All three do have their challenges as Power Four programs.

Ultimately, we should expect some of the head coaches who took their teams to Group of Five championship games to be up for some of these bigger and better jobs. I would not be shocked if head coaches like Tim Albin, Tyson Helton, Barry Odom, Rich Rodriguez and Sumrall all could be looking for what is next. Sumrall might actually beat out Rodriguez and Jimbo Fisher over at WVU...

For now, expect for somebody to be paying a small fortune for Sumrall's head-coaching services.