Case Keenum spent six years at the University of Houston and helped two coaches get lucrative jobs in the Big 12 Conference. Art Briles moved to Baylor at the end of the regular season in 2007, and Kevin Sumlin moved to Texas A&M at the end of the 2011 regular season.
Briles rapidly built Baylor into a national power and then it came crashing down just as rapidly in an outrageous level of scandal. Sumlin rapidly turned A&M into a national power with Johnny Manziel as his quarterback, and then his tenure ended with his recent firing by the always delusion-driven Aggies.
Keenum also was indirectly responsible for a firing at Houston — that of Tony Levine, the head coach for the final game of Case's record-setting career for the Cougars.
"There's a lot of truth to that," said Levine, laughing slightly during a phone conversation this week.
The problem was perception: Keenum ran the Cougars' explosive, no-huddle offense with such precision that people started to believe it was the system more than the quarterback.
And when Levine did not win as often as the Cougars had with Keenum, 21-17 in three seasons, he was fired at the end of the 2014 regular season. Sophomore Greg Ward Jr. had taken over for John O'Korn halfway through that season, and Tom Herman (now well paid at Texas) was the coach who benefited most from Ward's emergence as a star in 2015.
Levine went back to coaching for Jeff Brohm at Western Kentucky in 2016, and moved with him to Purdue for this season as co-offensive coordinator. He started this week recruiting in Texas and was on his way to Florida.
He's a St. Paul guy and a Vikings fan for life, and is enjoying from a distance the emergence of Keenum as the leader of a team that in two months could be playing the Super Bowl in its new $1.15 billion home stadium.