UPDATED AGAIN: Nick Saban staying put, but Chip Brown was right about Mack Brown

his price tag and control demands are off the chart, IIRC. What general manager wants to have to answer to the coach for every personnel move? Kind of defeats the point of even being a GM, doesn't it?

 

Gruden's demands may be easier to meet at the college level. He ran off a very good GM in Tampa and that is something NFL guys are very aware of. It's one of the reasons why, if he goes back to the NFL, Oakland may make the most sense for him since he's been friends with the GM when they were all newbies working under Holmgren and Wolf.

Carroll was, for the most part, a failed NFL coach when he went to USC. Saban's situation was different because while he wasn't successful in the NFL, he had won a title at LSU.

I would fully expect Gruden to have the kind of success at Texas that Carroll had at USC.

 

Has Gruden ever coached in college? Or was he NFL from the beginning? First I can remember of him was as an assistant under Holmgren in Green Bay in the mid 1990s.

 

He was very famously a graduate assistant at Tennessee in the mid-80s. It's where he met his wife (a former Vols cheerleader) and a big part of the endless speculation that he'll one day coach in college.

He was also later an assistant at SEMO, Pacific and Pitt before joining the Packers' staff in 1992.

 

OK, thanks. Did not know that. He doesn't look that old to have coached in the 80s. (Then again, neither do I, but.....)

 

Gruden is 50. He did get an early start.

 

Gruden's dad was an assistant at Notre Dame under Dan Devine. Doubtless, that helped him get his foot in the door at an early age.

 

So he coached for a program that dropped football, one that should and SEMO...

 

How many $100 handshakes did he get from Rush Limbaugh?

 

Gruden? Or Brown?