Mizzou Football: Head coaching job among best vacancies

On Saturday, Mizzou football announced the firing of head coach Barry Odom after four seasons. Now, Mizzou athletic director Jim Sterk gets to bring in his own hire to lead the football squad.

The College Football Carousel is in hyper-drive at the moment with the Missouri Tigers opening one of ten (and counting) current vacancies while two others have already been filled. Counting Rutgers and Washington, which have both already named their new head coaches, seven of the 12 openings came from Power Five schools.

In fact, Missouri is just one of three Southeastern Conference schools currently looking for a new head coach.

So, among the current ten openings, where does the Mizzou job stack up? Pretty highly, turns out.

First, I’ll acknowledge that Rutgers did well for itself by re-opening talks with and landing Greg Schiano, the old Scarlet Knight head coach from the team’s brief glory days between 2005-2011. In those seven seasons, Rutgers made six bowl games, winning five of them.

Then Schiano made the ill-fated decision to leave for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coaching gig. Both he and Rutgers haven’t been the same since. But this reunion should be good for both parties.

And on December 2nd, the day I’m writing this, news broke that Washington’s head coach, Chris Petersen, decided to step down after six seasons with the team. In 2019, the Huskies took a step back, finishing only 7-5 (4-5) after three straight years of double-digit win totals.

Luckily for Mizzou and other schools with head coaching vacancies, in the same statement in which the school announced Petersen’s resignation, Washington announced his replacement: defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake.