The Stanford football team has a head coaching job available after a surprising move to fire Troy Taylor. Andrew Luck, the former NFL and Stanford QB, is the new general manager at Stanford. Luck decided to move on from Taylor and begin a new chapter of Cardinal football, especially after the allegations involving the Stanford coach.
However, the timing of the move is interesting, given it's the end of March and there are very few coaches available.
Still, the Stanford football program has some options, and Stewart Mandel of The Athletic named a couple options in his latest mailbag.
“(Jeff) Monken for one would make a lot of sense at Stanford, but Group of 5 guys in general would likely be less concerned about leaving their current teams in the spring. If you pass on this Power 4 job, who’s to say you’ll get another crack?” Mandel wrote.
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Monken is currently the head coach at Army, where he has been for the last 11 years. He has compiled an 82-57 record and a 5-1 mark in bowl games, so he has Army playing well seemingly every year. In this case, moving to a Power 4 conference such as the ACC could have some appeal as Stanford searches for a new coach.
On the other hand, Mandel has another idea, and it is current San Jose State head coach Ken Niumatalolo.
“If not Monken, there’s another former service academy coach not far south on the 101 right now: San Jose State’s Ken Niumatalolo, Navy’s former coach of 16 seasons, took the Spartans to a bowl in his first season while running a full-on passing offense under offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann. I don’t think you could go wrong with either Niutmatalolo or Monken, whose team just won 12 games last season,” Mandel wrote.
The current San Jose State coach was at Navy from 2007 until 2022 before being an assistant at UCLA and then taking the San Jose State job. While there aren't a lot of options, both of these candidates have experience that could be available to Stanford.
a]:text-link [&_>a]:underline">Matt Wadleigh is the lead NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball editor for ClutchPoints, and he also specializes in MLB and NFL coverage. Born and raised in Oceanside, Matt went to Fresno State before covering sports for FanSided, Sportscasting, and Trojans Wire.