College football’s 2019 coaching carousel predictions

1. Cleveland Browns, Michigan, and Iowa State

The final butterfly effect would be a major shake up that would rock the college football world. Imagine the announcement of Jim Harbaugh to the Cleveland Browns. I wrote about his possible reputation tour as a return to the NFL in my piece comparing Harbaugh to Taylor Swift.

Harbaugh won’t let his ego be destroyed by both Urban Meyer’s ability to dominate him annually at The Ohio State, or his much-too-early departure from the 49ers after an 8-8 season. If Harbaugh so chooses, he could be the next Cleveland Browns head football coach.

The Browns are stockpiling weapons, especially on offense, and Pep Hamilton and Harbaugh have experience in the league and I could see Don Brown’s defense being successful with the elite athletes of the NFL. The Browns haven’t had a winning season since 2007’s 10-6 finish but with franchise quarterback Baker Mayfield and company on board Cleveland is a perfect as a franchise and city fit for the Midwestern Harbaugh.

Harbaugh has done a great job of replenishing the talent in Ann Arbor while bringing cameras back on campus via the ‘All or Nothing’ Amazon Prime show and his team trips to IMG, Rome and Paris.

Now that talent is on board and money is back in the coffers, the Wolverines should go with Iowa State head football coach Matt Campbell. He is from football city, aka Massillon, Ohio. He played at Pitt and Mount Union which has slowly become a coaching breeding ground like Miami (OH) was in earlier college football history.

After his playing career, Campbell has coached at Bowling Green, Mount Union and Toledo before taking the Cyclones’ head coaching job. He has an offensive background as a coach (although he played defensive line), and that would fit the Michigan mold already established by Harbaugh.

As a head coach, Campbell has taken lowly Toledo and transformed them into a nine-game winner and has pushed Iowa State into an eight-game winner in 2017. If ISU can repeat, and knock off another top opponent like they did to Oklahoma in 2017, he will write his meal ticket to Ann Arbor.

This would open the Iowa State job and the Cyclones administration would look to Jason Candle from Toledo. He served as the offensive coordinator for Campbell before he departed to Ames and Candle could follow in Campbell’s footsteps once again.

Next: Way-too-early 2019 NFL Mock Draft

Administrations have benefitted from similar coaching tree pipelines. As head coach of the Rockets, Candle has won twenty-one games with only seven losses in just over two seasons. If the Ohio native wants to move on, he’s ready for a power five gig.