This may take either a true college football historian or Selma's extraordinary memory to answer. This week, we were talking in the office about how bad AU's defense has played so far. One of the Auburn guys said, "Heck, we should have hired Chizik as DC instead of Muschamp. He still lived in town and hadn't taken the UNC job yet." He was half-joking, but somebody else said that they thought AU was still paying him anyway, so they probably should have.
Has there ever been a college head coach that was fired by a school and either stayed on, or later returned to, that same school as an on-field assistant? I know there have been at least a few head coaches who have left of their own choice, for another job or retired, and later come back as a HC. Like Mike Reilly at Oregon St. and Bill Snider at Kansas St. But, we couldn't think of any HC that had ever been fired and then returned as an actual coach of any kind.
Has there ever been a college head coach that was fired by a school and either stayed on, or later returned to, that same school as an on-field assistant? I know there have been at least a few head coaches who have left of their own choice, for another job or retired, and later come back as a HC. Like Mike Reilly at Oregon St. and Bill Snider at Kansas St. But, we couldn't think of any HC that had ever been fired and then returned as an actual coach of any kind.