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The American Conference has been through a significant upheaval, losing a trio of perennial championship contenders to the Big 12, grabbing 6 new entries from Conference USA, and finding a new head coach for half of the 14 teams.
Let's first review what has happened to the conference's school membership, before we examine each of the new hires.
At least one of the three teams leaving participated in each of the last six conference championship games, and won or shared five of the last ten titles. Cincinnati won in 2020 and 2021 and lost in 2019. Houston lost the title game in 2021 and won it all in 2015. UCF won in 2013 and lost to Tulsa last year. Additionally, UCF and Cincinnati shared the crown in 2014 with Memphis.
But, the American came out okay after taking six teams out of Conference USA - Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA. Three of those schools account for the last six Conference USA champions - North Texas (2017), UAB (2018, 2019, 2020) and UTSA (2021, 2022). Additionally, North Texas played for the title last season, while FAU played in the Conference USA championship game in 2019 and 2017.
In the end, the conference swelled from 11 teams to 14.
Not only has the makeup of the league changed, but as we already mentioned, 7 of those 14 teams will have a different head coach to launch the 2023 season than they had in place at the start of their 2022 campaign. That means that the American Conference accounts for 29.1% of ALL of the FBS coaching changes.
The Power 5 conferences, by comparison, have a total of 11 head coaching changes with 2 in the ACC, 3 in the B1G, 1 in the Big 12, 3 in the PAC-12, and 2 in the SEC.
Outside of the American, the other Group of 5 conferences have a combined total of 6 new head coaches with 1 in CUSA, 2 in the MAC, 1 in the Mountain West, and 2 in the Sun Belt.
The American Conference teams with new leadership are Charlotte, FAU, Navy, North Texas, Tulsa, UAB and USF. Of those 6 schools, only FAU and North Texas have odds to win the league title that rank in the top six of all 14 teams with the Owls 5th and the Mean Green 6th. Meanwhile, Tulsa is 9th, UAB 10th, Navy 11th, and USF is 12th. Charlotte brings up the rear.
Defending champion Tulane has odds (+200) that make the Green Wave nearly twice as likely to win the American Conference than the No. 2 favorite, UTSA (+430). In fact, Tulane is the ONLY Group of 5 program that ranks among the 40 (of 133) FBS teams to win the national title, but those odds sit at +25000 at FanDuel.
Charlotte and USF are, by far, the American Conference teams that are most desperate for a turnaround under new leadership. The 49ers have just one winning season in their brief 10-year FBS history (2019), and USF is just 8-37 over the last four seasons.
Tulsa was actually on an upward trajectory, but still ran off Philip Montgomery who was subsequently hired by Auburn to serve as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under that school's new hire, Hugh Freeze.
The North Texas move was also a bit puzzling as Seth Littrell was fired after leading the team to the Conference USA Championship game (lost 48-27 at UTSA). It was the second time he led UNT to the CUSA title game as the Mean Green also came up short in 2017 with a 41-17 loss at FAU.
Navy had a long run with Ken Niumatalolo who had 10 winning seasons in his first 12 full campaigns. However, the Midshipmen have finished no better than 4-8 in any of the last 3 seasons so his firing was no major surprise. But then it seemed to make no sense at all after the school promoted its own defensive coordinator, Bryan Newberry, as the replacement and vowed to continue to run the same offense that Niumatalolo and his predecessor, Paul Johnson, had been operating for years. Did Navy want change, or not?
UAB was in need of hiring a new head coach after Bill Clark (49-26, 32-12 CUSA) abruptly announced his 'retirement' roughly two months before the start of the 2022 season, for health reasons. The program still managed a 6-6 campaign under the interim leadership of Clark's offensive coordinator, Bryan Vincent. But Vincent was passed over when it came time to hire a permanent head coach, in favor of former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer. Dilfer had spent the last four seasons as the head coach at a small private Christian high school in Nashville. He has no other coaching experience.
Charlotte wound up hiring Michigan assistant head coach Francis "Biff" Poggi to replace Will Healy (15-24) .The 63-year-old has very little college coaching experience above the high school level, but yet has been given much credit in the Wolverines' success since his arrival in 2021. He was the head coach for 20 years at The Gillman School from 1996 to 2015 after spending 8 as an assistant (1988-1995) and won 13 state titles in Maryland. Gillman is an all-grades, all-boys independent school in Baltimore with a high school tuition of over $34,000.
At FAU, the late great Howard Schnellenberger launched the program in 2001 and hung around for 11 seasons. Since his departure, FAU is on its 7th new head coach since 2012, including a pair of interim stints. Tom Herman is the latest to be tasked with the responsibilities of guiding the Owls to a conference title for the first time since 2019 when Lane Kiffin accomplished that feat in CUSA for the second time in three seasons before he moved on to Ole Miss. The school's only other conference title came under Schnellenberger when the school was in the Sun Belt.
Herman replaces the well-traveled Willie Taggart who was let go after three seasons at the helm in which the school won exactly 5 games each year. Herman had previous head coaching stints at Houston from 2015-2016, and Texas from 2017-2020. He has career records of 54-22 over-all, 34-17 in conference games and 5-0 in bowl games. Herman is a definite upgrade.
North Texas hired Washington State OC and QB coach Eric Morris as Littrell's replacement. Morris was 24-18 in his only previous head coaching job at FCS member Incarnate Word from 2018-21. Littrell was 44-44 overall and 32-23 in league play. It appeared to us that Phil Bennett's defense was the bigger problem. His unit was 9th out of 11 CUSA programs and 124th out of 131 FBS schools in the nation. This change at head coach might be lateral, at best.
Tulsa hired former Indiana head coach Kevin Wilson who went 26-47 over-all and 12-37 in the B1G in his only other head coaching gig. The 61-year-old spent the last six seasons at Ohio State where he served as the offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, and stayed on as co-coordinator under Ryan Day. Maybe this will work out for everybody as Montgomery landed a top SEC job as a coordinator, Wilson gets a second shot as a head coach, and Tulsa could see improvement.
USF had a great final season under Willie Taggart in 2016, and a super first season under Charlie Strong in 2017. Since then, the program has been mired in mediocrity or outright awfulness. Most people thought former Clemson offensive guru Jeff Scott would be the solution, but his 4-26 record stands as the worst, by far, of any USF head coach in school history. He was canned with 3 games remaining in the 2022 season. Now, it's up to Alex Golesh who served as Tennessee's offensive coordinator in 2021 and 2022 and was a Broyles Award finalist for the top assistant in the nation last year. As with Scott, this will be Golesh's first head coaching gig.