Without a doubt, Mike Locksley  is the best candidate available for Temple.

The top talk in Philadelphia football this week will center on potential coaching hires, but chances are Temple fans are not as interested in who succeeds Chip Kelly as much as who will succeed Marcus Satterfield. Satterfield, who took the Tennessee Tech head coaching job on Sunday, was a three and four wide receiver guy who was running an offense ill-suited to Temple’s defense-first, run-the-ball, style of play. Fortunately, head coach Matt Rhule put his foot down prior to this season and told Satterfield that he wanted to run the ball. That is the very definition of Temple football and head coach Matt Rhule is most comfortable with that style and now has an opportunity to find guys who are better-suited to that system. Here are five possible candidates:

Adam DiMichele is a fan favorite.

5. Adam DiMichele

Currently Temple’s director of player development, DiMichele—one of Temple’s greatest quarterbacks of all time—was wide receivers’ coach in 2014.  DiMichele spent the 2013 season at TU as a graduate assistant coach, working with the offense. DiMichele was part of some of the most imaginative plays in TU history, including the fake kneel down in the final seconds before halftime that found Bruce Francis open for 55-yard touchdown at Navy in 2008.

4. Mike Gibson

Probably the best pure name  🙂 among the five, Gibson—a former Temple offensive coordinator (and no relation)—currently is the head coach at the University of Regina (Canada). He was offensive coordinator at Rice, Temple and Rutgers before embarking on career in Canada in 2001. An offensive coordinator in the states makes more than twice as much as a head college coach in Canada, so the former Western Maryland center could probably be enticed back to his native land. Since the name already was mentioned on Pravda as a candidate, we figured we research his credentials.

Todd has a NC and Temple ties.

3. Todd McNair

On Dec. 7, a ruling by a three-justice panel in the 2nd District Court of Appeal affirmed that McNair “has demonstrated a probability of prevailing on the merits of his defamation case (against the NCAA),” Justice Richard D. Aldrich wrote in the 30-page opinion and that probably clears the way for the former national championship assistant to be hired by Temple or any other school. The former Owl would be a great recruiter and coach here.

Probably the least “sexy” choice (see Lockley’s wife), that’s why he probably will get a bigger office.

2. Glenn Thomas

Rhule has shown a propensity to promote from within, so that probably makes him the leading candidate. His credentials, though, other than being Atlanta Falcons’ QB coach, don’t seem nearly as impressive as the other candidates. From 2001-07, Thomas spent his coaching tenure at Midwestern State. Four of those years were as a grad assistant coaching wide receivers (2001-04). From 2005-2007, he was the OC there.

Mike Locksley: Could be recruiting coordinator or OC.

1. Mike Locksley

Four days ago, it was reported that Locksley, this year’s interim head coach at Maryland, would not likely be retained on D.J. Durkin’s new staff, making him a free agent. During Maryland’s debut campaign in the Big Ten in 2014, Locksley coordinated the highest scoring offense for the program in four seasons. The Terps averaged 28.5 points, which is the most since the team averaged 32.2 points per game in 2010. Locksley is also known for strong recruiting skills. He was listed as a top-25 recruiter in the nation three different times (2003, 2005, 2006) and was a finalist for 2007 recruiter of the year by Rivals.com. He also engineered top-10 recruiting classes during each of his two seasons (2003-04) as running backs coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of Florida. This is just the guy Temple needs to overtake Houston recruiting next year in the AAC.