College Football Coach Hire Grades: South Alabama

South Alabama Jaguars: Major Applewhite

Why the job was open: Kane Wommack found a lot of success with the Jaguars program. He led South Alabama to their best season ever and their first ever bowl win. This is still a young program but it clearly has momentum, still Wommack got the opportunity to reunite with his old colleague and try to win a nation title as Alabama’s Defensive Coordinator, it was simply an offer he couldn’t pass up.

Coach Profile: Major Applewhite was well known from his playing days at Texas before he even got into coaching, but he moved up quickly, Fun fact Major Applewhite was Nick Saban’s first OC at Alabama. He was promoted from the OC job at South Alabama when Wommack left. Applewhite does have previous head coaching experience going 15-11 with Houston, an era that infamously began with Houston’s president saying “We’ll fire coaches for going 8-4.” Houston has only done better than 8-4 in the regular season once since that quote.

Why he will succeed: South Alabama’s program has more momentum than ever currently and Applewhite was part of that. He was promoted to keep that going. The facilities are constantly improving to help out matters. Applewhite’s time at Houston didn’t go as hoped, but he was following Tom Herman’s incredible run there and he’s yet to have a losing season as a head coach.

What obstacles are in the way of success: Despite the potential that exists for South Alabama’s program, there’s been a surprising lack of success so far. All of South Alabama’s winning seasons have occurred the last 2 years. This is still a new program, the Jags only started playing football in 2009. Applewhite will face an uphill climb early on with a lot of their top players from 2023 gone.

Grade: C – I don’t have a problem with the hire. Applewhite has never had a losing record as a head coach which is notable for a program that has lacked winning seasons so far, but there’s some concerns based on how the Applewhite era ended at Houston. I can’t give it a high grade because promoting from within for the sake of maintaining the same level of success doesn’t have a great track record.