Every young coach taking a graduate assistant or off-the-field position wants to learn under good coaches, gain valuable experience and an eye-catching line for their resume and land a full-time job either on their current staff or somewhere else. All four goals are great, but every aspiring coach really wants that last one accomplished above all others.
Every head coach worth his salt works to pay the tireless work of his off-the-field staff forward to springboard their own careers, but some coaches manage to do a better job of that than others.
For instance, Monday's news of Ball State defensive grad assistant Thad Bogardus landing a quality control job with the Buffalo Bills rang a bell with us. Sifting through The Scoop archives, we saw that Cardinals grad assistants Billy Riebock (wide receivers) and Cris Reisert (tight ends) landed full-time jobs at Elon and Gerald Chatman has moved on to coach the defensive line at Butler. That's a perfect 4-for-4 job placement cycle for Pete Lembo.
Arizona State's Todd Graham joined Lembo in finding four jobs for his graduate assistants: T.J. Rushing is now coaching cornerbacks at Northern Arizona, Dan Lanning will coach the defensive backs at Sam Houston State, Trent Figg found a job as the defensive backs coach, special teams coordinator and recruiting coordinator at Southern Arkansas, and Keola Loo will now coach the offensive line at West Texas A&M.
Aside from graduate assistants, it seemed like every week this winter a new football analyst or off-the-field staff member at Auburn and Alabama found a full-time on-the-field job elsewhere. Other coaches wanted guys on their staff who worked under Nick Saban and Gus Malzahn.
Lembo, Graham, Saban and Malzahn aren't the only head coaches serving as matchmaker for their support staffs. What other staffs have had a number of off-the-field staff find full-time work this off-season? Who did we miss?