Temple University doesn’t have a football coach as of January 9th.

One guy, Geoff Collins, left after the regular season and his replacement, Manny Diaz, returned to Miami just two weeks after doing his introductory press conference in North Philadelphia.

It looks like the front-runner for the doubly-vacated gig is Northern Illinois head coach Rod Carey, according to The Inquirer’s Marc Narducci and Fox Sports college football guy Bruce Feldman:

Writes Narducci at Philly.com:

The scuttlebutt from the Football Coaches Convention is that Northern Illinois head coach Rod Carey is looked on extremely favorable by the administration as a candidate to be Temple’s next head football coach, according to a non-Temple source.

Several people told the source that Carey made a great impression and that they expected him to be the frontrunner.

Temple, according to the source, will be interviewing candidates in Philadelphia as early as today.

….

The Temple source reiterated what a different source told The Inquirer and Daily News on Tuesday, that the decision could come by the weekend if not sooner.

You might be familiar with Carey as the guy who coached 12-0 Northern Illinois in the 2013 Orange Bowl. He was an interim guy at the time, filling in for Dave Doeren, who turned his success into the head coaching gig at NC State.

Carey has been at the Huskies’ helm ever since, compiling a 52-29 record while going 38-10 in the Mid-American Conference.

His best season was his first season, when the 12-2 Huskies ran their conference slate but lost to Utah State in the Poinsettia Bowl. Carey won the MAC West on four occasions and the outright conference title twice, once in 2014 and also this past year. He’s won at least eight games in five of the six full seasons running that program, though he’s 0-6 in bowl games, including losses to Duke, UAB, Boise State, Florida State, and Marshall.

Previous roles at Northern Illinois include offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, and he held similar O-line roles at North Dakota and Illinois State. He’s a Wisconsin native and played four seasons as a center for the Indiana Hoosiers in the early 90s.

Feldman also mentioned Joe Rudolph as a candidate. He’s actually a former Eagle, a guy who played on the 1995 squad. Rudolph is Wisconsin’s assistant head coach and offensive coordinator and held similar roles at Pitt before following Paul Chryst to Madison. Rudolph is a Pittsburgh-area native who is certainly more familiar with Pennsylvania recruiting than Carey.

Both guys I think would do pretty well at Temple.