Coker Eyeing Coaching Comeback

Larry Coker got fired from his gig as University of Miami's football coach after a six-loss season, and left the school with a respectable winning percentage of .800 and a national championship. Shortly thereafter, he lost out on a coaching job at Rice and has held some analyst gig at...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

February 5, 2009

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Larry Coker got fired from his gig as University of Miami's football coach after a six-loss season, and left the school with a respectable winning percentage of .800 and a national championship. Shortly thereafter, he lost out on a coaching job at Rice and has held some analyst gig at ESPNU ever since.

It seems he misses the on-field action and announced he applied to coach the University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners football program.

The what? The team doesn't exist yet but is scheduled to begin practice in August 2010 and start play in the NCAA Division I-FCS in 2011. The team will announce its head coach this month.

So rack up an .800 record at UM and you might be lucky to get a gig at a start-up team, but rack up a .524 and everything's fine and peachy?

If Coker gets the job, he'd be following in the footsteps of another former UM head coach, Howard Schnellenberger. He had some other gigs since his national championship-achieving run at UM, but Schnellenberger was the founding coach of FAU's football team. He even coached them into two bowl games in the past two seasons, which is more than you can say for Randy Shannon.

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