Please be aware that this situation is highly fluid. What I’m writing below is speculation based upon rumor. Even if it’s accurate right now, it could change in an hour.
So, apparently Randy Shannon is in the driver seat for defensive coordinator. They’re supposed to be in negotiations today. If it’s going to happen, it’ll probably happen today, but it might not be announced right away.
I’d be happy with this choice. Shannon wasn’t a very good head coach, but he was a hell of a DC at The U. He’s also supposed to be a very good recruiter. And he’s enough of a name that it would stop some of the bleeding with recruits
There is some word that an OC has been picked, but no announcement is going to be made until after that person’s bowl game. The smart money is on Bryan Harsin from Boise State. When it looked like Chris Petersen was going to get snatched up by someone, apparently Harsin wanted to stay at Boise thinking he would get the head coach job there.
Now that Petersen is clearly staying put, and there is no longer the confusion of a HCIW position at Texas, he’s supposedly much more interested in moving to Austin.
Major Applewhite is the wild card. It doesn’t seem that Florida has made an offer to him yet, but they certainly might. I don’t think it’s in the cards that he’ll be offered the OC position at Texas outright. He might be offered some sort of co-OC duties. It’s not clear whether that would be sufficient to keep him.
If we were to land Shannon as DC, and have Harsin and Applewhite as Co-OS’s, I’d be quite happy. That’s probably about as good as we could do in this cluster f—k.
It would be sad to lose Applewhite, but if we got Shannon and Harsin, I would still be fairly confident about our future.
Interesting times…