College Football Coach Hire Grades: Troy

Troy Trojans: Gerad Parker

Why the job was open: Troy is one of the better programs in the Sun Belt. They have great fan investment and the ability to have one of the biggest staff pools in the conference. This program is proud, expects to compete for conference championships and has the resources to do so. Staying in the family is important too, every time Troy needs a coach they always hire an assistant from elsewhere who has some sort of ties to Troy. It’s been a path that’s alternated results but they hit a home run with Jon Sumrall. Following several 5-7 seasons Sumrall came in and immediately won the Sun Belt both seasons. The Sun Belt was loaded with great teams both seasons and he came out on top, they spent time in the Top 25 thanks to his efforts. As a result, Sumrall got an offer he couldn’t refuse at Tulane and took it.

Coach Profile: Parker is a well traveled assistant coach. He moved around a lot early in his career before a longer stint with Purdue as an assistant under Darrell Hazell. Things get really interesting from here. Hazell was fired midway through the year in 2016 and Parker took over as the interim coach, the interim coach bump did not exist for him as he went 0-6 to finish out the year. Following that Parker managed to go through 3 jobs in 6 months, in January he was hired by Cincinnati as the Running backs coach, less than a month later he left that role for the WR coach job at East Carolina, less than a week after getting that job he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and ECU rescinded the offer. Finally, in June Parker landed on Duke’s staff. He moved around again before becoming the OC at West Virginia under Neal Brown in 2020, but he was demoted the following year and eventually became the TE coach at Notre Dame, in 2023 he was promoted to OC there.

Why he will succeed: The foundation is already in place. Coming off back to back conference titles this Troy program is in a very good spot. They built this foundation on out-muscleing opponents and dominating on defense, a style that suits Parker well. He’s worked with Neal Brown, a successful former Troy coach and the CEO style of being a head coach might be a better fit for Parker.

What obstacles are in the way of success: There’s lots of pressure taking over for a successful coach, you never want to be the guy that gets the keys to the Ferrari and crashes it. Honestly both of his stints as OC left something to be desired, his schemes and plays were often very predictable. Let’s put it this way, I’m pretty sure Notre Dame fans were sending fruit baskets to Troy’s athletic office to thank them for hiring Parker away.

Grade: D – I must be honest, I fail to make sense of this one. This is a good job, surely there were more proven candidates out there. Hopefully I’m wrong but this feels more like a Chip Lindsey hire for Troy compared to what they found in Jon Sumrall. Matching what they had in Sumrall was already tough which was already going to hurt the grade. It’s possible that being the head coach could suit Parker better than calling plays for an offense, but we’ll see.