Texas Football: What Dave Aranda-Baylor hiring means for Big 12

Maybe the biggest coaching news in the Big 12 this offseason, even beyond the Texas football program, came with Baylor hiring Dave Aranda as their next HC.

The connection between the Big 12 and SEC formed officially on the coaching front with the hiring of former LSU Tigers defensive coordinator Dave Aranda as the next head coach of the Baylor Bears. Aranda was a defensive coordinator that was highly sought after to be a Group of Five head coach and a Power Five defensive coordinator elsewhere for a long time. But Baylor managed to haul him away from head coach Ed Orgeron and LSU entering the 2020 offseason. How does this move impact the Texas football program and the rest of the Big 12?

A name that was thrown around at times to fill the defensive coordinator opening for the Texas Longhorns football program at the conclusion of the 2019 regular season was Aranda. But hauling him away from another blue blood to fill the same position on the Texas coaching staff seemed like a next to impossible feat without throwing ungodly amounts of money his way.

Instead, the Longhorns wound up hiring a more familiar face in relation to head coach Tom Herman to be the next defensive coordinator with former Rutgers head coach Chris Ash. That still looks to be a good hire for the Longhorns to replace Todd Orlando.

Aranda would be coming into Waco to replace the departed former Baylor head coach Matt Rhule. Earlier this month, Rhule bolted for the NFL for the Carolina Panthers head coaching job. He will replace the Panthers former head coach Ron Rivera (who is now in the same position with the Washington Redskins).

This offseason really defines the phrase coaching carousel, between the college and NFL ranks.

However, this loss is very notable for Orgeron and the LSU coaching staff. LSU has now lost their two key coordinators that helped boost them to the heights of winning the College Football Playoff National Championship Game over the Clemson Tigers. Former LSU passing game coordinator Joe Brady is off to the NFL to join the Carolina Panthers coaching staff, under Rhule’s direction.

It is very ironic how the dominoes fell there.

The original report that Aranda could be joining Baylor as their next head coach came courtesy of ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg on Twitter.

Not only will the Baylor program be impacted by the loss of Rhule, LSU will be too. LSU lost both Brady and Aranda, along with their all-time great Heisman winning senior quarterback Joe Burrow. Texas gets LSU early in the regular season for the 2020 campaign too.

The extreme turnover on both the LSU and Baylor coaching staffs could help the Longhorns rake in two wins against those two squads next season. The coaching carousel has also impacted Baylor more so than any other football program in the Big 12 this offseason. Rhule took their program to new heights, and now he will try to do the same with the Panthers in the NFL.

Baylor and LSU were both coming off magical seasons where each program rose to new heights. Orgeron, Brady, and Aranda combined to help guide LSU to their first national title since 2007. And Baylor went to a New Year’s Six Bowl game for the first time since the Art Briles-era in Waco ended in scandal roughly four years ago.