According to this post over at KSR (Hat Tip: Wild Weasel), San Diego Torreros (FCS) coach Ron Caragher is another name making its way into Kentucky's head coaching search consciousness:
Enough recruiting, let’s switch over to what really has Big Blue Nation talking: the football coaching search. On Wednesday morning’s radio show, Matt introduced yet another name that Kentucky could be considering in that second tier of candidates below Sonny Dykes and Kirby Smart. It’s University of San Diego head coach Ron Caragher, a former UK running backs coach and recruiting coordinator at Kentucky from 2003 to 2006. He’s the guy who brought Stevie Johnson to Kentucky from way out there in California, and we all know how that turned out. Caragher isn’t high on the wish list, but he’s making his way into the conversation.
As a former Kentucky assistant, Caragher would seem to be a very logical person to include in the search. I should note, though that this is not the first time Caragher has been mentioned. A contributer to Larry Vaught's blog, Vaught's Views, wrote a fairly detailed post about Caragher back on November 7th. The post was written by Dan Burch, a former UK tennis player who worked in the athletics department. Here are the qualifications he lays out for Caragher:
** Played in PAC-10 and won 4 straight bowls as a player.
** As an assistant coach his teams played in 6 bowl games, including a team that had a 20 game win streak.
** Became an SEC Asst Coach and helped lead a turnaround on an underachieving team.
** In 2005, he became recruiting coordinator for that SEC team and 12 players went on to play in the NFL! 6 are still active as of 2012 – He can spot talent!
** Left to take Head Coaching position at San Diego when Jim Harbaugh was hired away by Stanford.
** Prolific offense which averaged 44 pts and 483 yards per game during first season.
** Won two conference championships (9-2 both seasons) and named Coach of the Year in the Pioneer League in 2007 & 2011.
** Charismatic and possesses a "winners" mentality.
** 45 years old, married with 3 boys. His wife was former athlete at UCLA & Tennessee (tennis).
That SEC Team was the Kentucky Wildcats….
That coach was Ron Caragher.
That's fairly persuasive, although as KSR suggested above, Caragher still doesn't seem to be running high on the UK wish list at the moment.
I'm sure more names will pop up in the next two weeks, and why not? Nothing is going to happen until the season ends, anyway.