Jan. 31, 2008

By Brian Curtis

Senior Writer, CSTV.com

BRIAN CURTIS
Curtis is CSTV.com's Senior Writer and CSTV's football and basketball insider.
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        ---   Column Archive   --- M. BASKETBALL 4/11: Fits Like A Glove...Or Not 3/30: First Final Four Thoughts 3/28: The Other Four 3/20: Loser's Lament 3/17: RPI Becoming After Thought For Selection Committee 3/16: Quick Look Ahead 3/10: Mediocre Make-Or-Break 3/5: All Over The Map 2/26: Don't Count Out Kentucky Yet 2/19: Notre Dame Looking To Play In March Again 1/28: On The Rebound 1/20: Dropping Like Flies 7/26: Prosser Respected By All 6/29: Odds & Ends 6/1: Donovan - Good For Him 4/25: Wednesday Thoughts 4/13: Afflalo's Journey Continues 4/6: Gillispie Good Fit For Kentucky 4/4: Final Final Four Thoughts 3/24: Intermission: Act III 3/22: Smith's Move To Big Ten, Surprising 3/17: Intermission 3/10: T-Minus 36 Hours 2/24: Bigger Isn't Better 2/17: The Commonwealth 2/2: Howland Liking His Bruins 1/28: What I'm Thinking 7/07: The ABCs of ABCD: Day Two 7/07: The ABCs of ABCD: Day Two 7/06: The ABCs of ABCD: Day One 4/26: And the Seatch Continues... 4/5: And So the Season Is Done 3/28: What You Need to Know... 3/27: Enough About the Parity 3/26: One of the Shockers of My Lifetime 3/24: Atlanta: The Day After 3/20: Tuesday Morning QB (Point Guard) 3/16: Nine Thoughts From Day One 3/13: Selection Afterthoughts 3/09: Thursday Nine-Point Shot 3/08: Wednesday Three-Point Shot 3/04: What I Am Hearing 2/28: The Tuesday Eight 2/21: Trials and Tribulations 2/15: In The Nation's Capitol 2/08: Holy War: On the Wildcat Trail 1/20: Hoops Blitz: Rocky Top Rivalry 1/14: The Jury Is Still Out FOOTBALL 2/12: LSU To Promote Two Assts. To Def. Coordinator 1/20: The Three C's 1/14: Assistants In The Spotlight 1/9: Tomey On Hawai'i Wish List 1/8: LSU Impresses Like Never Before 1/3: Source: Caravantes Loses Ruling 1/3: The Right Man For The Job 12/29: The Coordinator Carousel 12/29: Bruins Get Much Needed Bravado 12/28: No Formal Interview For Locksley 12/26: Three Schools Still Searching 12/19: Football News & Notes 12/14: Updating The Carousel 12/8: Heisman Voters Got It Right 12/8: Michigan Coaching Search A Mess 12/4: Sizing Up The BCS 12/1: Summing Up The Searches 11/24: Black Saturday 11/19: Out With Carr, In With Miles? 11/18: Falling Down, Rising Up 11/11: When An Upset's Not An Upset 11/4: Where's The Outrage? 10/27: Coach Speak 10/21: What You're Not Hearing 10/14: Assume Nothing 10/7: Down On The Bayou 9/30: A Quick Read On Wild Week 5 9/23: The Heroes and Zeros of the Zeros 9/19: Crystal Ball Blitz 9/16: Sunday Morning Thoughts 9/9: Still No Answers 9/1: Some Things You Just Can't Explain 8/24: USC's Plethora of RBs Dwindling 8/14: Maryland, Illinois May Surprise Some 8/08: College Football News And Notes 7/30: Remembering Bill Walsh 07/15: Sooners, Carr and More 01/09: The Day After 01/03: Unbelievable 11/26: They Get It Right 11/3: An Unexpected Reaction 10/30: A Legacy Like No Other 9/30: Quick Replay 9/24: Will We Have Any Unbeatens? 9/10: The Rest of the Story 9/4: Lessons Learned From Week 1 8/28: The Insider 8/13: College Football Kicks Off 1/6: A Rose By Any Other Game 1/3: Home Game Feel For USC 1/3: Point/Counterpoint - Round 14 1/2: The Rose Bowl Blitz 1/1: The Making of Pete Carroll BASEBALL 6/4: Time's Ticking For Porcello KINGMAKERS 1/29: The West Virginia Saga 1/30: The Agents 1/30: The Donors

As the business of college football has grown, so too have the pressures of finding and hiring football coaches. CSTV.com examines this trend by looking at the new "kingmakers" in college football, in an exclusive seven part series, from agents to donors to administrators to search consultants to the media; they all play a role in determining who the next man ruling the sidelines on Saturday will be.

Dan Radakovich faced a dilemma. The athletic director at Georgia Tech had been on the job just 20 months when the football program completed a 7-5 season under coach Chan Gailey, who had been at Tech for six years. Tech lost at least five games in all six seasons and, despite appearing in the ACC Championship Game in 2006, it appeared Tech couldn't "get over the hump." 

Along with university president Wayne Clough, senior associate athletic director Paul Griffin and associate athletic director Wayne Hogan (both former ADs themselves), Radakovich decided to release Gailey, giving him the $4 million owed him in his contract to move on. 

But now what?

His first call was to Dan Parker, the President of Parker Executive Search in Atlanta. Parker has quickly become one of the go-to guys for college searches. On the football side, he helped Nebraska, Northern Illinois and Georgia Tech this fall. In college hoops, he helped Minnesota lure Tubby Smith and Kentucky grab Billy Gillispie. Parker and his firm have changed the headhunting landscape in recent years by introducing a proprietary database of coaches that has helped unknown and minority candidates. 

After calling Parker, Radakovich informed the public relations staff at Georgia Tech of the decision and instructed them to organize a "news event." On Monday morning, November 26, Radakovich informed Gailey of his decision and attempted to meet with as many of Gailey's assistants as possible, letting them know that they would still have responsibilities to the school while the search was ongoing. He took the rest of that Monday and Tuesday finalizing a screening committee and while Clough didn't want to be an active part of the search, his AD kept him abreast of developments. Georgia Tech formed an informal committee on campus comprised of faculty members, a former player, the faculty athletic representative and members of Radakovich's staff.

"A headhunter served two purposes," Radakovich offered after hiring Navy's Paul Johnson. "First, they kept the process as quiet as possible. Second, they helped us determine mutual interest as we moved forward." 

That meant reaching out to coaches or their agents very discreetly to gauge interest. It also meant gathering information on candidates' current contracts to know the parameters and to help Georgia Tech narrow down the candidate list to just seven. The search committee, which interviewed all seven candidates in Atlanta, reached out to various constituency groups to make sure that candidates would be acceptable to all, such as donors and faculty members.

"I made a recommendation to the President, really, on just one candidate," Radakovich says. According to the AD, the process never would have been so quiet, or taken just 11 days, had Parker's team not been working alongside the Yellow Jackets.

In the new millennium, a majority of schools hire outside headhunters, consultants or search firms to help with major coaching searches. Parker estimates that 80 percent of BCS schools now use some outside consulting. And the process has a trickle-down effect, as Parker Executive Search recently conducted searches for Division II and III schools.

In addition to Parker, Bob Beaudine of Eastman & Beaudine has consulted on coaching and athletic director hires at SMU, Duke, Louisville, Virginia and Oklahoma. Chuck Neinas is one of the premier football search consultants with a vast Rolodex. Bill Carr and the global powerhouse Heidrick & Struggles both built sports search businesses, either as part of a larger executive search firm or specific to the company.   

In recent years, more and more search firms have sprung up specializing in collegiate athletics. It used to be that executive search firms were used quite often by universities to find presidents, provosts and deans. But then presidents realized that the position of athletic director was simply too important, and the smart ones knew they didn't have a big enough pool of good candidates on their own.

The past executive director of the College Football Association, Neinas is on speed dial for ADs around the country. Alabama, Texas, Florida, Notre Dame, Colorado, Oklahoma, Georgia, LSU and North Carolina are among the schools that have hired Neinas to help find coaches.

Neinas, like his competitors, believes his role is to simply "assist, not select" and says that "it's all about relationships. Because of my long involvement in football, and people I have worked with in the past, I get a lot of repeat customers."

For their consulting services, which typically include gauging candidate interest, presenting candidates to decision-makers, performing background checks and setting up interviews, headhunters receive anywhere from $9,000 to $100,000. Because of the tremendous amount of media coverage for most searches, some headhunters, like Neinas, keep no paper trail of their contacts--no e-mails, no letters, etc., to protect the process from Freedom of Information Act requests from the media.