TEMPLE HEAD COACH GEOFF COLLINS (Photo courtesy of JS Garber)

Temple head coach Geoff Collins has emerged as a top contender for the head job at Georgia Tech after Los Angeles Chargers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt took himself out of the running to replace Paul Johnson, who is retiring after 11 seasons mentoring the Yellow Jackets, according to ESPN.

Collins, who is 15-10 in two seasons at Temple, seems to be an ideal for the job. The 47-year-old is a native of Conyers, GA which is 24 miles from Atlanta – home to Georgia Tech. He’s twice been on the staff there, from 1999 to 2001, he was a graduate assistant then tight end coach. In 2006, he returned to be recruiting coordinator and is credited with putting together the 2007 recruiting class that was the core of the Yellow Jackets 2009 ACC Championship team.

Additionally, he’s an outside the box thinker. He got the Owls noticed in Philadelphia with some of his off-the-wall ideas. He’ll need to do the same in Atlanta which can be an indifferent sports city. There’s talk that some Yellow Jacket fans had grown tired of Johnson’s run-based option offense, Collins is just the coach to shake things up.

He can recruit. If he can win a few ACC Coastal Division titles (and he should, it’s far from the toughest division in college football). Occasionally, take a conference championship over the powers in the Atlantic Division and beat rival Georgia from time-to-time. Geoff Collins can coach at Georgia Tech for a long time.

Of course, if Collins leaves (and he will, if not this job then some other job either this year or next), the Owls will be on the hunt for the next “right guy” and they’ve been pretty successful with Al Golden, Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule and now Collins. That’s a nice string of hits after years/decades of swings and misses. They’ll need to find someone who can pick up the talented pieces Collins leaves behind and continue to build the program.

It’s disheartening for Owls fans to continually see their coach poached by the bigger schools but after all those times they were happy to get rid of coaches, this is a better alternative.