Some of the most popular names you’ve probably seen thrown out there for the West Virginia job include sRich Rodriguez, Jimbo Fisher, Barry Odom, Jon Sumrall, Andy Kotelnicki, and so on. One potential candidate that has been mentioned, but not nearly as much is Army’s Jeff Monken.

It’s a bit unconventional for a Power Four school to hire a head coach from one of the service academies because of the triple option offense they all run, but at some point, some school is going to roll the dice on Monken, and when that happens, other schools will likely regret not being the one to do so.

Monken is the second-winningest coach in Army football history and has the second-best winning percentage for those who have coached a minimum of 100 games at Army. He’s produced three 10-win campaigns in his eleven years on the job, helping him to a current record of 81-56. The six head coaches before him all finished their tenure with a sub-.500 record, which just shows the kind of job he’s done since arriving at West Point.

Because of the commitment that the student-athletes have to make at the service academies and the off-field requirements, recruiting is pretty challenging. You’re not going after the same types of recruits as Tulane, Memphis, South Florida, East Carolina, and others in the conference. There were many challenges for Monken to overcome, yet he coached his team to a conference title and nearly into the College Football Playoff.

If Monken makes the move to a Power Four job, what style of offense is he going to run? Who is his offensive coordinator? Those are questions that will produce hypothetical answers because of his history with the triple option, an offense that won’t work at this level.

Georgia Tech ran it for years under Paul Johnson, and while they had some special seasons, they were few and far between. Once he left, it put the Yellow Jackets in a tough spot because they had an entire offense used to running the option and struggled to find a new identity until last year.

With the transfer portal being so prominent now, you can flip your roster a lot faster than ever before. But that still doesn’t eliminate the concern of how the offense will be called and who will be in charge of operating that side of the football.

As previously mentioned, I feel pretty confident that Monken will have success wherever he decides to go. That being said, I don’t think right now is the time for Wren Baker to think this far outside of the box. He has to go with a coach that doesn’t have quite as many questions/unknowns with the offense.

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