Another Penn State candidate is officially no longer a part of the coaching search.
FootballScoop first reported early Monday afternoon that Bob Chesney would be accepting the head-coaching job at UCLA.
Chesney, who had been the coach at James Madison for two seasons and is from Klupmont, Pennsylvania, was a candidate for the Penn State job, as reported by multiple outlets such as FootballScoop.
The 48-year-old has won at the DIII (23-9 at Salve Regina), DII (44-16 at Assumption), FCS (44-21 at Holy Cross) and now FBS levels, where he’s 20-5 at James Madison and has the Dukes in the Sun Belt Championship Game, scheduled for Friday, Dec. 5 against Troy.
So if Chesney does end up at UCLA, where does Penn State go from there?
Well, Penn State has reportedly been interested in Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer for sometime. But with Alabama beating Auburn Saturday night and presumably clinching a spot in the College Football Playoff, the logistics of Penn State getting DeBoer to start the job soon become incredibly complicated, and that’s if it’s still a possibility at all.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.There’s also the internal option of elevating interim head coach Terry Smith to the full-time position. Smith went 3-3 after taking over for James Franklin, who was fired Oct. 12. Of those three loses, two of them were by a combined total of four points, and one of those was to No. 2 Indiana, the closest the 12-0 Hooisers came to losing a game this regular season.
There’s also BYU’s Kalani Sitake, who has emerged as a possible candidate over the weekend. Sitake is 83-44 at BYU, but has spent almost all of his coaching career in the State of Utah, meaning he doesn’t have regional ties to Pennsylvania.
Nonetheless, the Cougars are playing in the Big 12 championship game Saturday. Who knows what the world and the Penn State coaching search will look like by then.
