Report: Vanderbilt will hire Louisiana Tech’s Todd Fitch as offensive coordinator

It’s been rumored since, well, Derek Mason fired offensive coordinator Gerry Gdowski on Saturday, but on Monday Yahoo’s Pete Thamel reported that Louisiana Tech offensive coordinator Todd Fitch will be the next offensive coordinator at Vanderbilt.

Fitch has worked for Skip Holtz for a long time; in fact, for (by my count) 20 of the last 26 years, he’s either worked for or alongside Skip at UConn, South Carolina, East Carolina, South Florida, and Louisiana Tech. The only exceptions were a three-year stint at Iowa State in the mid-2000s, and a three-year stint at Boston College from 2013-15.

Want to talk yourself into this hire? Fitch’s offenses at Louisiana Tech have been pretty good, including a 2016 team that averaged 44.3 ppg. If you want to talk yourself out of this? Well, Louisiana Tech message boards seem to be convinced that Skip Holtz is actually calling the plays himself even if Fitch had the title of offensive coordinator, and the last offense he fielded at Boston College in 2015 — when he wasn’t working for Holtz — averaged an abysmal 17.2 ppg. (That team, by the way, played two FCS teams and scored 100 points in those games. In ten games against FBS competition, Boston College averaged 10.6 ppg. That’s Dowhower-level awful. With that said, that BC team was led in passing attempts by a freshman quarterback who would later move to wide receiver.)

Anyway, there’s your new offensive coordinator. You have reasons to be both excited and terrified.