Chad Scott leaving Kentucky Football for North Carolina; Blake Rolan may be targeted as replacement

The Kentucky Wildcats are losing an assistant football coach to one of their biggest rivals...on the hardwood at least.

Running backs coach Chad Scott is leaving UK for a job with the North Carolina Tar Heels, according to a report from Football Scoop. The reports says Scott will coach UNC's tight ends, which is a bit of an odd move since he's been coaching running backs most of his coaching career.

After all, Scott originally played for the Cats in 2000 as a true freshman running back, starting in six games while totaling 611 yards and was named to the All-SEC Freshman Team and third-team Freshman All-America honors. This was before he before transferred to North Carolina to finish his collegiate career.

Scott would later become a graduate assistant at UNC before becoming the RBs coach at Troy and Texas Tech while working alongside former UK offensive coordinator Neal Brown and current offensive line coach John Schlarman. Back in 2013 when Mark Stoops hired Brown, he also brought Scott to Lexington as he became the running backs coach, a role he served in until this offseason when he moved to wide receivers coach.

This is an odd move to say the least for Scott given his background. He's never coached receivers or tight ends, so there's probably at least some sort of raise that's led to him leaving for the Tar Heels.

Either way, UK is now in the market for a new receivers coach, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. While Scott was viewed as a good option for this job at UK, it's not a position he's played or coached, so now UK can actually go after someone that has.

In fact, Jen Smith of the Lexington Herald-Leader already views Cincinnati Bearcats receivers coach Blake Rolan as a likely target for UK.

The obvious move for Gran and Hinshaw would be Blake Rolan, who has coached with them at Cincinnati since 2013. He was the quality control intern at Tennessee when Hinshaw was coaching wide receivers there.

Rolan, a Georgia native who played for Hinshaw at Middle Tennessee State from 2000 to 2003, has Kentucky ties. The former tight end graduated from Louisville in 2005. His first coaching job was as assistant head coach and offensive coordinator at Kentucky Country Day.

At Cincinnati, Rolan made $145,000 for the 2015 season season. UK’s outgoing wide receivers coach Tommy Mainord made $275,000 last season as did Scott.