Utah Utes Football: Billy Gonzales Might Be The Guy *NOT*

*EDITORS NOTE- Football Scoop says this isn’t happening.  Also my original source still swears it’s Dennis Erickson.  So we’ll see.

I reported a couple of days ago the new Utah Utes Football Offensive Hire was going to be Dennis Erickson.  Looks like I and the source who told me that was wrong.  It happens.

According to a tweet, Billy Gonzales is leaving the Illinois coaching staff and other tweets put him as the new Offensive staff member at Utah, duties likely to include CO-Offensive Coordinator/mentor to Brian Johnson.

If you don’t recall Billy, he’s had some connection to Utah for much of his career.  He played at Colorado State under Earl Bruce and  his position coach was Urban Meyer.  During his two years at Utah under Meyer he was Wide Receiver coach and Special Teams coordinator.  He then went to Florida with Urban where he had seven all-SEC wide outs.

Billy was then hired by LSU as passing game coordinator, where he helped LSU to the national title game.  He was named CO-Offensive Coordinator at Illinois in 2012.

I don’t think we can go wrong with hiring Billy Gonzales.  But it’s not an exciting hire and it feels like that Utah could use a shot of adrenaline that Dennis Erickson would bring.

But Billy is a solid coach, he’ll be a great addition to the offense and to Brian Johnson.

And I welcome him.