Kent Riddle replacement thoughts etc

Harry · January 2, 2013

I wish him well and will certainly miss his recruiting ability.

It's going to be interesting to see who Mac hires to replace him.

My hope is they will get a top notch recruiter who also coaches special teams.

Riddle was making $105,833 not bad money but to put it into perspective former UNT special teams guy Eric Russell was making $275K at Tennessee and dropped down to $225K when he went to Washington State...

So you are either going to get a guy who was caught up in a staff leaving (like Riddle at Colorado) who is looking for a safe place to land or you peg an up and comer at a smaller program like Justin Gaines who was a good recruiter for Montana State prior to taking the UNT gig. For instance, Jay Boulware the special teams coach at Auburn (who coaches at Iowa State) is likely not going to be retained under Mahlzan...downside is he was probably making 250K plus at a big budget school and do you want someone who is just hanging around for the next big paying job?

Another possibility is you reorganize the current staff to make room for the best available guy out there even if he is not a special teams guru... perhaps rearrange and move Quartaro over to special teams etc...

The other issue you will eventually have to address is the coaching salaries in C-USA are going to be higher than the Sun Belt. When Mac came on board a big bump in coaching compensation occurred across the entire staff which was sorely needed and put us at the top of the Belt. Next thing you know, the Belt blew up with Mahlzan making close to a million and now Petrino is making 800K? I certainly hope that we will try to be proactive about this heading into C-USA or it could bite us in the butt.

PlummMeanGreen · January 2, 2013

Find out who our "one" biggest recruiting nemises is, give him a fancy title, pay him for that title and turn him loose tomorrow!

GMG!

greenminer · January 2, 2013

I would be interested in a wishlist. Harry's top-5 candidates taking into account coaches who are most likely to come (not just, for example, the ST coach at Alabama or LSU)