[Updated at 4:54 p.m.: Tom Dienhart of Rivals.com tweeted that Norm Chow is headed to Utah to be the offensive coordinator.
Utah football spokesperson Liz Abel could not confirm anything regarding Chow and said that coach Kyle Whittingham had not mentioned making any coaching changes as recently as this morning.
Utah currently has two co-offensive coordinators in Aaron Roderick and Dave Schramm.]
The UCLA football team started the day without a defensive coordinator. Now it may have two offensive coordinators.
An unconfirmed report surfaced Wednesday afternoon that UCLA has reached an agreement with Mike Johnson, the San Fransisco 49ers current offensive coordinator, to be the new offensive coordinator for the Bruins.
UCLA football spokesperson Marc Dellins said that there was “nothing official to announce.”
Two UCLA players, freshman safety Dietrich Riley and junior wide receiver Nelson Rosario, referenced the hiring on Twitter.
“(C)ongrats to Coach Mike Johnson for joining the UCLA program and becoming our Offensive Coordinator,” Riley said, though the Tweet was later deleted.
This leaves UCLA’s current offensive coordinator, Norm Chow, in a precarious situation. Message boards and Twitter rumors hypothesized that UCLA is giving Chow time to find another job before making the Johnson announcement to avoid a buyout situation.
Chow’s contract was renewed last season, but coach Rick Neuheisel has been silent on what he was going to do with respect to new hires after he fired defensive coordinator Chuck Bullough and wide receiver coach Reggie Moore.
Johnson has coached in the NFL since 2000, serving on four different team’s coaching staffs. Neuheisel and Johnson coached together in 2006 and 2007 with the Baltimore Ravens, Johnson as the wide receivers coach and Neuheisel as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
The search for a defensive coordinator appears to be ongoing.