Update on La. Tech

[Harry]

Tech search wide open

December 4, 2006

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By Scott Ferrell

sferrell@gannett.com

Louisiana Tech's search for a new head football coach figures to be wide open.

The school is using Chuck Neinas, a national football consultant, in the search process. Neinas is also currently involved in searches at the University of Alabama and the University of Miami.

"It's incumbent upon us to make another good hire," Louisiana Tech athletic director Jim Oakes said. "Judging by the response already today, we believe that there will be a lot of interest in the position."

If Tech chooses to promote from within the current staff then assistant head coach Ed Jackson, offensive coordinator Conroy Hines or offensive line coach Pete Perot would be the likely candidates.

If Tech goes outside of the current staff, then there are some intriguing possibilities.

Two coaches who were considered in previous coaching searches, Art Kaufman and Keith Burns, could be interested again. Kaufman is coaching linebackers at Middle Tennessee and Burns is coaching cornerbacks and special teams at San Jose State.

Former Louisiana Tech assistant Clint Conque is currently the head coach at Central Arkansas and could have an interest in the job.

Tech will likely have to boost the salary of the head coach to attract a current Division I-A

head coach. Former coach Jack Bicknell made $208,500 total package last year, only nine Division I-A head coaches made less in total package.

[Harry]

Interesting to note that Chuck Neinas was the consultant that CUSA hired to evaluate potential new members back in 2002-03.

[MeanGreenBuzz]

If our list of potential coaches looked like theirs I would be breaking down RVs door.

[NT80]

Interesting to note that Chuck Neinas was the consultant that CUSA hired to evaluate potential new members back in 2002-03.

←

humm... a little "I'll hire you now, you remember us later" thing going on there??

[NT03]

Damn ,I thought his WIN over us would save his JOB.

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Neinas also helped OU in the search that brought them Bob Stoops. Article on Neinas from last year:

Need a college coach or A.D.? Call this guy

Neinas specializes in helping schools fulfill high-profile roles

Updated: 1:15 a.m. CT July 30, 2005

BOULDER, Colo. - His Rolodex is impressive. His reputation is impeccable.

Often, when big schools such as Georgia or Florida or Colorado begin the delicate task of finding a new football coach or athletic director, one of their first calls isn’t to a candidate, but to Chuck Neinas.

With 45 years of experience at the highest levels of college sports, Neinas is one of the best-connected people in the business. Working from his small office in Boulder, Neinas uses his connections to undertake the job of finding out who might be available and who isn’t, all while keeping the process under the radar.

“I have a file,” Neinas said of the voluminous number of contacts he’s made over the years. “But the thing I also have is I have a network of contacts who are pretty trustworthy. Very trustworthy.”

His is, indeed, a high-stakes game, and much of it is played out well before a vacancy ever develops.

Neinas (pronounced NI-nes) spends lots of time on the phone with coaches and athletic directors, talking, probing, finding out if they’re happy with their job and, even if they are, if there is any other job they might leave their current one to take.

When a university hires him to help look for a new football coach, the process usually begins with the athletic director filling out a long questionnaire filled with obvious topics, such as the school budget and scheduling, and the not-so-obvious, such as whether the school would be willing to pay for a house-hunting trip for the coach’s wife.

Beyond that, Neinas says, no two searches are alike.

Some involve schools that already have a list of candidates and want Neinas to augment the list from the long scroll of head coaches and top assistants with whom he keeps in touch. Others seek Neinas only as a go-between for an athletic director and one specific coach.

“He does a thorough job,” said Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley, who hired Urban Meyer in December, a negotiation made complex because Meyer was under contract at Utah and also considered a candidate at Notre Dame.

“He helps you find out information on the front end that helps,” Foley said. “You find out who’s interested, who’s not interested. He’s responsive. If you call him, he calls you back. If you ask him to find something out, he finds it out.”

And most of all, Foley said, “he doesn’t talk to anybody” in the media, or anywhere else that could turn a search into an embarrassing situation, a more likely possibility now than it was 20 years ago, before reporters and the Internet turned up the spotlight on seemingly every search.

Neinas tells of one situation — no names, please — in which a school hired the coach that was really its third choice.

“The third guy was highly successful, but they don’t want to know they’re third,” Neinas said. “It can be embarrassing for a sitting head football coach to have his name out there and not wind up with the position. It’s basically to protect all the parties involved from having an embarrassing situation. You can’t always control that because there are leaks. But it won’t come from me.”

Neinas has built his contacts over four decades of work in college sports.

He began in the 1960s as an administrator for the NCAA, where one of his assignments was to organize national championship competition; he oversaw the beginning of the huge growth of what is now known as March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament.

From 1971-80, he was commissioner of the Big Eight. Then he headed the College Football Association. That group is best known for giving college football the expanded TV exposure it had long lacked, but it also played a huge role in setting standards for recruiting and academic eligibility.

It was at the CFA that Neinas worked with Mike Bohn, the new athletic director at Colorado — a search Neinas had a role in.

Neinas said searches for athletic directors are almost always more complex than those for coaches, simply because there are more issues to deal with and more administrators who have a role in the decision.

“He helps with searches,” Bohn said. “But I think many people underestimate his ability to help people understand other issues around intercollegiate athletics. It’s not just the hiring process. He has a keen insight into a lot of other nuances associated with the business.”

In all, Neinas has a list of 51 institutions he has helped in searches for a new coach or administrator.

About half the Southeastern Conference is on the list — Meyer at Florida, Mark Richt at Georgia, Bobby Johnson at Vanderbilt, Les Miles at LSU — as are Arizona State, Michigan, Kansas and Neinas’ own alma mater, Wisconsin.

He makes it clear that he’s not a decision maker, “only a conduit” for schools in search of a good fit.

It’s a high-pressure world he works in, but Neinas says the pressure never gets to him.

“I just enjoy it,” he said. “This may be misplaced, but I feel like I’m helping institutions, and that’s what I like to do.”