Infographic: Watch More Coaches Climb Up Football's Hierarchies
Last week, after Cincinnati snagged Tommy Tuberville away from Texas Tech, we took a look at some of the longest chains of football-coach hirings in recent memory. Since then, this chain grew one link longer, as Texas Tech hired Texas A&M offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury to fill its vacant position.
Kingsbury's old position remains open, so we'll hold off on mapping that one out for now. In the meantime, here are the best chains that readers were able to find.
At the top of this post is an epic double-chain—involving 10 college and pro teams, one of them an XFL squad—sparked by Notre Dame's hiring and then near-immediate firing of head coach George O'Leary in 2002. For ease of visualization, I drew it up so the first chain plays out before the second begins, but in reality these dominoes were toppling simultaneously. Commenters sgjllasjg and bthedon both nailed the first half, but only sgjllasjg found the second half, with an assist from intelligentsia121 and thedryyyyyycracker to finish it off.
Sgjllasjg, who admits to keeping a list of all FBS coaching changes dating back to 1997, also found this much more modest chain from 1999:
Tyler Williams, drjayphdAtWork, and daswento all put together great chains that didn't quite follow the rules: at least three head-coaching jobs have to change hands, and it doesn't count as a chain if a coach is fired and then hired by a new school for the next season. MeNoSeeGood found a good one for basketball coaches, which we'll get to once the shitcanning season begins.
Earlier: Infographic: Watch Coaches Climb Up The Hierarchy Of College Football
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