Mike Bobo was one of the most successful offensive coordinators in the history of Georgia football before leaving to become head coach at Colorado State in 2015.
His tenure with the Rams came to an end this week, with CSU athletic director Joe Parker announcing that Bobo and the university reached a mutual separation agreement.
Bobo, a former Georgia quarterback from 1993-97, worked for the Dawgs from 2001-2014, where he manufactured some incredible offenses and more than a few of the program’s best passers of all-time.
Given Georgia’s offensive struggles the past few seasons and the lack of certainty currently at offensive coordinator with James Coley calling the shots, of course rumors will spread about Bobo returning to his alma mater and coaching under his former teammate and friend Kirby Smart.
However, former Georgia quarterback Hutson Mason, who played for Bobo in Athens, is not so sure it’s such a good idea for the former coach to return back home to UGA.
“I’m not for sure Bobo wants to come back to Athens,” Mason said on 107.5 The Game on Thursday. “You know he is very good friends with Kirby Smart, and obviously he has deep roots and deep ties at Georgia, but you know he left Georgia, and this was something he told me specifically is, he needed to kind of spread his wings and get away.
Mason mentioned the concern of doing business with a family member, noting how close Bobo and Smart are.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a family dynamic where you’ve done business with a family member, but I have,” Mason said. “It didn’t turn out well. And I think part of that is in play here with Kirby (Smart) and Bobo where they’re like, you know, if something did go wrong, do we want to go down that route?”
South Carolina, a team that is actually in the market for an offensive coordinator, has been linked to Bobo as well. However, the position under Will Muschamp is not the sexiest of ideas seeing as how he has had five offensive coordinators in eight seasons as a head coach.
Muschamp is another Georgia guy. He, Smart and Bobo are all good friends and all overlapped during their playing careers as Bulldogs.
On the possibility of Bobo going to South Carolina to coach under Muschamp, Mason was pessimistic about what it would do to Bobo’s career, using the term “career suicide” for anyone that accepts the job in Columbia.
He did have kind things to say about his former coach, though.
“If coach Muschamp can convince him to get to South Carolina, South Carolina fans should be excited,” Mason said, “because he is a heck of a play-caller. And he’s a heck of a recruiter. I just think he’s an incredible schemer. I think he understands football.”
Then there’s Bryan McClendon, another Georgia guy who played for the Bulldogs from 2002-05. He was offensive coordinator at South Carolina for two seasons before being stripped of his play-calling duties last week. He does still remain on the South Carolina coaching staff, though, but for how long?
His coaching career at Georgia was wildly successful, overseeing the running backs for a majority of his tenure at Georgia and helping to establish as RBU with some great ball carriers. Could McClendon be a guy that Smart looks at bringing in as OC for the Dawgs?
Basically, if you take one thing away from this story, it should be that the Georgia coaching tree is loaded.