Prep Football: Former Tulsa coach Blankenship hired at Fayetteville

FAYETTEVILLE -- Bill Blankenship was officially hired as the head football coach at Fayetteville on Wednesday during a special school board meeting.

"When the resignation (of Daryl Patton) went down, I wasn't even aware," Blankenship, the former University of Tulsa head football coach, said. "I got about eight to 10 text messages from all different walks of life saying, 'Did you see the Fayetteville job was open?' And it didn't really float my boat.

"Then I had a couple of friends who know this place really well who called and said, 'Look, this is the best job in Arkansas, and you ought to check it out.' So little by little, we got in and (athletic director) Steve Janski did an excellent job of selling this community and this program. The football speaks for itself here, but the rest of it is what sold us."

Blankenship, 59, was head coach at Tulsa from 2011-14 where he compiled a 24-27 overall record, including an 11-3 record in 2012 with a Conference USA championship and a Liberty Bowl win.

He became a household name in high school coaching in Oklahoma during his time at Tulsa Union from 1992-2005, where he won state championships in 2002, 2004 and 2005 and compiled a 56-game home win streak between 1997-2005.

Blankenship, who was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2009, was 154-26 at Union and also coached at Tulsa Eastwood Baptist, Spiro (Okla.), Edmond (Okla.) Memorial and was an assistant at Tulsa from 2007-10 before being elevated to head coach.

He spent the 2015 football season as an offensive analyst and special teams coordinator on Justin Fuente's staff at Memphis. This spring, Blankenship got an itch to return to high school coaching when he served as a volunteer assistant at Tulsa's Booker T. Washington High School.

"A lot of college coaches don't want to say this, but football is football," Blankenship said. "Football didn't change for me when I moved from high school to college. The stadiums are a little bigger, and there are different problems with recruiting instead of getting recruited. But I just think if you take the experiences we had in high school and add what we got in the college world for a while, I didn't really care which domain. I just wanted it to be the right fit. And I wanted to it to feel like home for us, and we could invest and spend the last part of our career."

Blankenship replaces Daryl Patton, who compiled a 116-43-2 record in 13 seasons and won Class 7A state championships in 2007, 2011, 2012 and 2015. Patton resigned May 12, citing personal reasons and was hired as head coach at Bauxite on May 26.

Benji Mahan, Fayetteville's offensive coordinator, served as interim head coach following Patton's resignation.

A search committee, consisting of Janski, high school principal Chad Scott, assistant superintendent John L. Colbert, football booster club president Neil Shipley, Fayetteville alum Michael Brisiel and faculty representative Liz Caudle was formed and selected Blankenship to lead the football program.

"During this process, we have been extremely pleased with the impressive list of applicants," Janski said. "But then beyond that, one stood out among the rest."

The Blankenship hire drew praise from across the coaching landscape. Gus Malzahn, who coached with Blankenship at Tulsa when both were assistants on Todd Graham's staff in 2007-08, lauded the move by Fayetteville.

"Bill Blankenship is a great coach, a true professional and a man of character," Malzahn said. "If I had a son, he is the type of coach I would want him playing for. I am happy for Bill and his wife, Angie, and look forward to great things for Fayetteville High School."

Blankenship will be paid an annual salary of $91,447, in contract terms released to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through a Freedom of Information request. With Fayetteville almost ready to begin its summer 7-on-7 passing tournament schedule -- beginning with the Arkansas Classic this weekend at Little Rock Christian -- Blankenship said he'll get right to work.

"I think we're leaving for Little Rock at 8:30 in the morning (today)," Blankenship said. "I think I'll be a glorified fan, and the biggest challenge for me now is to get to know our staff and our players. I've used the analogy it's like drinking from a fire hose. I want to get all I want this summer.

"The timing is awful in certain ways. But by the same token, it's also nice because you can only jump in with both feet and get going. You don't have a lot of time to think about it, nor should we. We have a great staff in place and a program that's moving in the right direction. And hopefully we're going to join in and get our fingerprints on it as we move forward."

Sports on 06/09/2016