Skip to main content

Kevin Higgins to the Citadel?

Former Lehigh head coach coach Kevin Higgins, recently let go by the Detroit Lions as quarterbacks coach, is reportedly being interviewed for another I-AA head coaching position at the Citadel.

CSTV has the whole scoop here:
Robinson to interview 4 in Charlotte

Citadel athletic director Les Robinson will not just be watching basketball at the NCAA Tournament in Charlotte this weekend.

Robinson said Friday that he will interview up to four candidates for the job of the Bulldogs' head football coach while he's in Charlotte.

He declined to name those candidates, but two of them could be Rice offensive coordinator Scott Wachenheim and former Lehigh head coach Kevin Higgins, according to sources at The Citadel. Neither coach could be reached for comment Friday.

...

Higgins, 49, had a 56-25-1 record in seven seasons as head coach at Lehigh from 1994-2000, including teams that won or shared four Patriot League titles. His last three teams at Lehigh posted records of 12-1, 10-2 and 12-1.

Higgins left Lehigh for an assistant coaching job with the NFL's Detroit Lions, where he coached quarterbacks for three years and wide receivers for one year. He was let go by the Lions last month and has been in the running for a couple of NFL assistant coaching jobs.

Higgins succeeded Charleston Southern athletic director Hank Small as the head coach at Lehigh, and Higgins coached at Small's alma mater, Gettysburg College, from 1981-84. Higgins also was an assistant at Richmond from 1985-87.


A nice summation of Higgins' career, but it really doesn't do justice to what Higgins was able to accomplish here at Lehigh during his tenure. When Higgins became head coach in 1994, the Patriot League was a football conference which was a wannabe Ivy league. Now, Patriot League schools are regularly recognized in the Sports Network Top 25. Coach Higgins is one of the big reasons why this is the case.

Not only did he preside over what could be called a Lehigh dynasty in the late '90s, he brought respect to Lehigh and Patriot League football. Teams who took Higgins' teams lightly during the playoffs more often than not found themselves exiting the playoffs.

Personally, I think the Citadel would be fools to not hire Coach Higgins if they had the chance. The question is, would Coach Higgins be in a good position to succeed there? The Citadel is in the Southern Conference, with perennial powerhouses such as Appalachian St., Georgia Southern and Furman. In the past nine years, only twice have the Citadel had a winning record. The last coach was at the helm only 1 year before he went to the New York Jets as an assistant.

By the weekend, we should probably know if Higgins is going there. Stay tuned...

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's official. HIggins is the new HC at The Citadel. IMO, it is the worst decision The Citadel could have made. Higgins' credentials as a passing-oriented coach are terrific; unfortunately, you can't win at The Citadel or any other military school unless you run the ball. The only times in the past 25 years that The Citadel or the service academies have been successful, were when they ran an option offense. I can name at four candidates (3 with ties to Air Force football) who would have been better choices.
6:34 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League....
43 comments
Read more

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though?  Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me?  Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything.  Everything.  The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...
2 comments
Read more

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a ma...
9 comments
Read more