With Alabama head coach Nick Saban retiring and Kalen DeBoer taking over for the Crimson Tide, DeBoer looked to the Group of Five to begin putting together his coaching staff.
Kane Wommack, who’s been South Alabama’s head coach for the past three years, has been hired as Alabama’s defensive coordinator. The Jaguars, who have been above .500 the past two years, began looking for a new head coach.
They didn’t look far for Wommack’s replacement, though.
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South Alabama has reportedly begun working toward making current Jaguars offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Major Applewhite their next head coach, per ESPN.
South Alabama scheduled an interview with Applewhite on Thursday, sources told HERO Sports.
Current and former players have publicly expressed support of Applewhite to be the Jaguars’ next head coach. Former South Alabama quarterback Carter Bradley, who will be playing in the Senior Bowl, and current Jaguars wide receiver Devin Voisin posted on social media “There’s only one option…” with a picture of Applewhite when he was playing for Texas.
Applewhite has been with the Jaguars for three seasons. In his first season at South Alabama, he coached current NFL wide receiver Jalen Tolbert, who was the Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year as he totaled 1,474 yards and eight touchdowns on 82 receptions. In the past two years, 10 South Alabama offensive players have earned all-conference accolades.
This past year, the Jaguars were third in the Sun Belt in total offense (440.5 yards per game) and fourth in scoring offense (33.1 points per game). They were fourth in scoring offense (31.2 points per game) and total offense (423.5 yards per game) the previous year as well.
Applewhite has been an FBS head coach before. He was the head coach at Houston from 2017-18 after two years as an assistant there from 2015-16. He went 15-10 while leading the program.
Applewhite began his coaching career at Texas, where he was the Big 12 Conference Freshman of the Year in 1998 and the conference’s Co-Offensive Player of the Year in 1999. He was a graduate assistant with the Longhorns from 2003-04.
After that, he was an assistant at Syracuse (2005), an offensive coordinator at Rice (2006), and an offensive coordinator at Alabama (2007). He was the assistant head coach at Texas from 2008-10 and then was a co-offensive coordinator there from 2011-13.
Applewhite hopes to continue the strong success South Alabama has enjoyed the past few years. The Jaguars won their first bowl game in program history when they beat Eastern Michigan 59-10 in the 68 Ventures Bowl this past season.
