Why did Holtz, Gruden, Mack Brown leave their easy gigs to go back to coach?
They go because they want to see if they can make a change. Put their stamp on it. Might be something as simple they love to coach.
$$$ helps also.
Look up Sparky Woods. Check out all of the places that guys been. Most people probably would have quit years ago.
Hotlz, Gruden and Brown are not comparable. Ellis didn't come out of retirement or some tv job to go to get back into coaching.
Couldn't have been money. Ellis was making $700,000/yr here as DC. His contract at Southern Miss, for head coach, was only for $740,000/yr. That's not job-hopping money.
Of course, I understand the draw for him at his age was to get one last shot at proving he could be a head coach. Southern Miss was coming off something like 18 straight winning seasons, so it probably seemed like a soft landing spot for him. He didn't have to do any heavy lifting to build anything. Go in, just keep things going for a few years and then retire. All he had to do was not wreck a good thing. As it is, they had one of the worst turnarounds ever, going from 12-2 to 0-12.
But, again, going from coaching at what was then a top 10 program that seemed like it was on the verge of contending for a title to making a financially lateral move to coach in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? Maybe if you were in your 30s or 40s and rising up the coaching ranks it would have made sense. But for a guy in his 60s, who already had 2 bad stints as a head coach, it didn't make sense.
It also made zero sense from Southern Miss' perspective. Why would you entrust an 18 year streak of winning seasons to a 61 year old with a career 17-28 record?
It was, all around, a move that made absolutely no sense for both parties. And, of course, the results showed that it made no sense.
But, he was fantastic here as DC. Only wish he would have stayed.
