NFL Hall of Famer Ray Lewis is Reportedly a Front Runner to Be FAU's Next Head Coach

On3 - Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis emerged as a candidate for the Florida Atlanticopening, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

“Following the Deion Sanders-to-Colorado model, Hall-of-Fame linebacker Ray Lewis has emerged as a candidate to become the next head coach at Florida Atlantic University, sources tell ESPN,” Schefter wrote on Twitter.

Lewis, a two-time Super Bowl champion with the Baltimore Ravens, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018. Despite not having prior college coaching experience, FAU has him on their list following the dismissal of Tom Herman.

I'm a big fan of this new wave in college football where instead of hiring a "qualified head coach" to run your program, you simply the find the most motivational ex-football player on the market. Someone who can fire up the boys. Who knows the game well enough that he's not going to be a complete idiot on the sidelines. Someone who will be an effective recruiter because players think is cool. Someone who players have a healthy fear of because they're pretty sure he stabbed a guy to death outside of a club in Atlanta back in 2000.

Then give him a couple coordinators who know how to coach up an offense & defense the traditional way, and suddenly you have a team people give a shit about. If you're a program like Colorado was before Deion Sanders, or FAU now, then what do you have to lose? Worst case scenario it doesn't work out and you're right back to where you started. 

Well I guess technically, worst case scenario is Trent Dilfer at UAB, who's 6-16 since being hired and has done damage to that program to levels nobody thought was possible. 

But Trent Dilfer doesn't really fit that mold anyways. Nobody was ever going to respect Trent. The team will respect Ray Lewis. He had a hall of fame career. He killed a guy (probably). Maybe he'll be nice and hire on Trent to be a Special Advisor to the QB Coach or something. 

FAU tried hiring a more traditional, proven head coach in Tom Herman before last season (who it seems like just yesterday was supposed to be the next great coach in college football). That clearly didn't work out. FAU actually has a pretty fun list of past head coaches. They've hired Lane Kiffin, Willie Taggart, Bo Pelini's brother Carl (who may or may not have been forced out because of drug use), and before all that they had that guy with the mustache who coached in a suit & tie, Howard Schnellenberger, for a full 10 years.

J. Meric. Getty Images.

Why not add Ray Lewis to the list? His motivational speeches are probably worth a couple extra wins per season on their own. 

And the first time their middle linebacker sacks the quarterback and does the Ray Lewis dance is going to be pretty sick.

Another interesting thing about the FAU Owls head coaching position that I'm just now learning. Apparently their head coaching contracts all come with this unique "option" where when coaches are "fired", they're not actually fired from the university as a whole. They're simply reassigned to a position elsewhere.

So I'm not sure if that means Willie Taggart spent a few weeks mopping floors in a campus cafeteria until he found his next gig (running backs coach for the Baltimore Ravens). It sounds like a sneaky way for FAU to get out of fulfilling their contract after they fire a head coach. Like an, "If you want the rest of your money you're gonna have to be a janitor for a while" type of thing. Which seems to make the job much less desirable, in comparison to other coaching jobs where getting fired makes you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe that's another reason they're looking at a coach like Ray Lewis, who already has more than enough money to retire, and won't be deterred by their weird buyout cop out clause. Either way, I hope he gets the job. At minimum it makes for another interesting team in college football.