Once deemed unemployable as an NFL quarterback prospect, Graham Harrell has had no such problem in his new career as a choreographer of prolific college football offenses.
As an offensive coordinator, Harrell is as in demand by college football programs as he was loved by Texas Tech football fans, who keep handy for viewing his most famous pass, to Michael Crabtree in the final minute of a Bevo barbeque in 2009.
It apparently was meant to be that a former Texas Tech QB would take over Southern Cal’s offense.
It wasn’t original hire Kliff Kingsbury, but rather Harrell, who finally was offered something he couldn’t refuse after passing on an offer to join Mack Brown’s staff at North Carolina, as well as overtures from Florida State coach Willie Taggart.
I suppose it should go without saying that we need to give this a full six weeks to marinate. Harrell, like Kingsbury, might yet renege.
In truth, there is no reality in that quip. A coordinator’s job at a program like Southern Cal, as steeped in history and tradition as any of the others, is a dream job, particularly for a young guy who has only been in the profession for five seasons, if you count one season at Washington State as an “offensive analyst.”
It’s also social media official. Harrell’s Twitter handle has been converted to “@CoachHarrellUSC.”
A career in coaching is a foregone conclusion when the hand of Texas high school football’s God touches you as a babe. His dad, Sam, was an assistant at Brownwood under Gordon Wood at the time of his birth in 1985.
The working premise going into this off-season was that North Texas head coach Seth Littrell would be on the short list of every Power Five conference school looking for a new coach.
He fit the criteria, taking a downtrodden football program in the Group of Five and making it relevant with, and this is the most important part, a wide-open, up-tempo offense that the booster believes is the only way to play this game.
The Mean Green went to a third consecutive bowl game after finishing 9-4 this season.
Littrell elected to return to North Texas after his flirtation with Kansas State ended in mystery and no job. Whatever, in the end, happened with that situation, the North Texas administration is more than happy to have him still.
As it turned out, it was Harrell who was anointed by college football’s figurative central committee as the most coveted on the staff, not only that up-and-comer assistant, but one whose time had arrived.
Founding father John Adams will forever be considered the best talent scout in the history of talent scouts. Red Murff was great, and Gil Brandt’s eye was better than 20/20. But no one nailed it quite like Adams: Washington for the Continental Army and Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence.
College football believes it’s good, too. When the powers-that-be hand you a ladder for a climb up because they recognize your ability and DNA as “transcendent,” you’re in.
Getty Images
Unlike his pro playing career – Harrell managed four snaps in four seasons of mostly practice squad experience – he has been bathed with the holy water.
As soon as the Mean Green’s season ended in a loss in the New Mexico Bowl, Harrell’s FaceTime began lighting up.
Rumors circulated about an overture from Willie Taggart at Florida State. Nothing about a difficult first season in Tallahassee that throwing the ball 50 times a game can’t fix.
Nothing ever came of that, but Mack Brown, the new coach at North Carolina, almost got a date.
The headlines blared: “The Air Raid is coming to North Carolina.”
It was all premature. Harrell turned down Brown, perhaps that association with UT too much taint for the Techsan to be around on a daily basis.
Harrell is in the group considered chic at the moment.
At 33, he’s young. That’s a prerequisite. Sports is such a copycat business. Youth is in, and, thanks to Sean McVay, very young is, too. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks. They have all these great new ideas, the thinking goes. Truth is, there aren’t ever really new ideas. They’re mostly all recycled … just no one of the era has heard of them.
Rusty Russell was throwing the ball all over the field in 1930 at age 35.
Kingsbury, still clocking in at an age of sub-40, drinking from the fountain of youth helped him rebound off the best trampoline to the top with the Arizona Cardinals.
Harrell has the pedigree as the son of the coach who brought wide open to Texas high schools at Ennis, where Graham was a state record-setter and state champion. Young Harrell is also linked to Mr. Avant-Garde himself, Mike Leach, college football’s futurist two decades ago and public relations machine. Harrell was also on Leach’s staff two seasons at Washington State.
Harrell shares with his mentor a zany personality. Riding down an elevator from the coaches box in the last minutes of a blowout victory at UNT’s Apogee Stadium — that also included leftover food from a game suite being taken to the bin — he was found playfully picking at picked-over nachos and wondering how safe it would be to take a bite from the vestiges of a pizza pie lying vulnerable on a baking sheet.
Unconventional and even peculiar are assets for coaches.
Also in his portfolio is Mason Fine, the junior QB at North Texas and two-time Conference USA Offensive Player of the Year, and this year a Davey O’Brien semifinalist.
An offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach who has shown the type of success Harrell has had with Fine is worth his weight in gold today. As a reference, see Kingsbury.
Fine actually looks a lot like Harrell on the field. He even wears Harrell’s No. 6.
Not only has Fine put up the type of inflated numbers a Wall Street banker craves, he has improved every season. His yardage numbers were essentially the same the past two seasons, but his interceptions were down from 15 a year ago to five this year.
Fine is seeing the field better, making better decisions, and the game has slowed for him.
That’s growing a quarterback.
The guy getting the credit for that isn’t the head coach, but rather Harrell, whose rise as head coaching material is something resembling a beanstalk.
