Temple picks Northern Illinois' Rod Carey to be new football coach

Rod Carey, who won two Mid-American Conference championships in six seasons as head coach at Northern Illinois, will be named the head football coach at Temple.

On Thursday evening, the two sides were near completion of a deal, according to a source, but it hasn’t become official. The source said the deal is about 90 percent complete.

Temple is expected to make the announcement by Friday.

This has been a trying time for the Owls football program. Geoff Collins resigned on Dec. 7 after two seasons to take the Georgia Tech job. He was replaced on Dec. 12 by Miami defensive coordinator Manny Diaz. On Dec. 30, Diaz resigned to become the head coach at Miami.

The 47-year-old Carey took over at Northern Illinois before the Orange Bowl in the 2012 season.

In six full seasons as head coach he was 52-30. In addition to winning two championships, his Huskies appeared in the MAC title games four times.

This season, NIU beat Buffalo, 30-29, in the MAC title game and finished 8-6.

Carey is a 1993 graduate of Indiana, where he played center on the football team. He began his college coaching career as a graduate assistant at Minnesota from 1998-2000.

Carey was the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Wisconsin-Stout from 2000-06, then spent one season as offensive line coach at Illinois State, in 2007. He coached the offensive line at North Dakota from 2008-10 and came to Northern Illinois as the offensive line coach in 2011. He was promoted to offensive line coach/running game coordinator the next year.

Carey will be taking over a Temple team that went 8-5 and is coming off its fourth straight appearance in a bowl game. The Owls have a strong nucleus back next season.