It would seem every assistant football coach in the country would be interested in the Arkansas State head football coaching job, and definitely those who want to be a head coach at a tier one school.
That isn’t a slap at ASU.
It is a very good school in a good football league, the Sun Belt, but the argument in that league is who is going to the New Orleans Bowl or the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, Ala. The schools are never mentioned in the same breath with the BCS National Championship Game, and there is no reason to believe that will change in the near future when college football goes to a four-team playoff.
ASU has been the springboard for Hugh Freeze to go to Mississippi, where he makes more than $3 million a year and is slowly turning the Rebels into a true SEC force. It has been the springboard for Gus Malzahn to go to Auburn, where he now makes more than $3 million a year and will face Florida State in the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 6. It also led to Bryan Harsin getting an opportunity at Boise State, where he more than doubled his salary by going to a school that has played in BCS games.
What the Red Wolves need right now in a head coach is someone who will stay three or four years and do some serious recruiting, because that’s what Steve Roberts did before being fired by ASU.
Freeze and Malzahn inherited good teams that Roberts recruited. Harsin did, too, but without a proven quarterback.
Now Roberts, the athletic director at Cabot High School, is in the mix for the opening at the University of Central Arkansas, where Clint Conque recently announced he was making an almost lateral move by going to Stephen F. Austin, which like UCA is a member of the Southland Conference.
Why Conque would make that move when he had the full support of UCA Athletic Director Brad Teague is a bit odd. Surely money had something to do with it. UCA will be all out to pay $200,000, and that would have to be a pretty big name.
Teague showed he likes to win news conferences when he hired Corliss Williamson as the school’s men’s basketball coach.
It was reported that Conque did not jump ship because a couple of UCA athletes failed drug tests, or because of ace Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Debra Hale-Shelton, whose reporting has shaken up but also straightened up some things at UCA.
UCA should be a sleeping giant, but then everyone has been saying that for three decades. It has a great location, a beautiful campus and is very strong academically. President Tom Courtway has done a great job of getting everyone back on the same page.
Names like Roberts, Tim Horton and Henderson State Coach Scott Maxfield are good ones, but Horton probably deserves an interview at ASU as well. He’s a guy who really might plant some oak trees in Jonesboro.
It seems Rhett Lashlee, offensive coordinator for Auburn and a Broyles Award finalist, also might be a good one to consider. He is like Gus Malzahn II, having played for him and coached under him.
This will be a big hire for ASU Athletic Director Terry Mohajir because he knows the fan base is ready for some stability in its head coach.
The Red Wolves Nation is nowhere as plentiful or as strong as the Razorbacks Nation, but ASU has a solid backing. It has been so supportive that ASU was chosen for the GoDaddy Bowl over Western Kentucky, which beat the Red Wolves in the final game of the season.
ASU fans need to buy tickets and attend again this year, especially since it may be a couple of years before they get back to a bowl unless Mohajir has some magic up his sleeve.
ASU and UCA are really good schools that have developed a tradition in football that should interest a lot of coaches.
Hopefully, it will be guys who want to play each other every season at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
Sports, Pages 19 on 12/18/2013