The Charleston Daily Mail Wrote:Huggins added to WVU AD watch list
Rumors swirling about Mountaineer basketball coach taking on boss' job
by Jack Bogaczyk
Daily Mail Sports Editor
Friday June 4, 2010


WVU Coach Bob Huggins speaks at Berry Hills Country Club.
Brad Davis

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The WVU Classic's two-day stay in the state's capital is a major fundraiser for the Mountaineer Athletic Club. It is a fashion show, golf and tennis tournaments and reception.

It also is pretty much window dressing (Thursday and today) for a subject that is consuming West Virginia athletics these days.

Who's going to be the next WVU athletic director?

I don't know; you don't know. What's numbing many Mountaineers who usually are able to pry what's really up from loose lips is that WVU President Jim Clements seems to have this search pretty much buttoned up.

If there's a "Deep Throat" lurking among the ghosts in Stansbury Hall (well, besides Jay Jacobs), he isn't talking ... and a lot of us Woodwards and Bernsteins have been listening.

"They're all used up there to somebody knowing something," said someone who usually knows what everyone wants to know in WVU athletics. "It's driving people crazy that they don't know ... I don't think even the governor knows."

Clements, hired from Towson University, is still something of an "outsider" doing his own deal. He seems to have the usual inner circle at WVU climbing the walls.

And there's this about this momentous hire:

Clements has to get it right, because WVU (with Pac-10 and Big Ten expansion looming and the Big East seemingly in peril) has to make sure it has a strong and connected person in the AD chair very soon who can facilitate a smooth landing for the Mountaineer program ... wherever that might be.

Speaking of window dressing, that's what the screening committee named by Clements in late April really is. It's an exercise in political correctness. Clements knows who the "real" candidates are, and probably did before it was announced that 21-year AD Ed Pastilong wasn't going to stay in the job.

There are no names known that haven't been out there in the media - well, except one.

That's Bob Huggins.

There's been something louder than a rumored whisper about adding "AD" to Huggins' very large responsibilities as men's basketball coach. He'd get the big title, and WVU would hire something like a "senior associate AD" to run the day-to-day operations.

Does Huggs want to be the AD at his alma mater?

"I don't know," Huggins said, with a bit of a laugh, while "hanging out" at Berry Hills Country Club on Thursday. "I don't really want to talk about it ... Jack, I'll discuss it with you at a later date."

I don't see WVU going that route. It goes against most everything in major college athletics operations these days. Huggins is a sharp guy, but he has enough to do to win basketball games, recruit the country and spend his spring running all over the state and beyond pressing the flesh with donors and fans.

Of the other four other most prominent "media-mentioned candidates" - former WVU quarterback and current Board of Governor's member Oliver Luck, Jim Schaus of Ohio U., Missouri's Whit Babcock and Kentucky's Rob Mullens - Luck has gotten the most attention.

There's a notion emanating from the Morgantown campus and the WVU Coliseum that perhaps Clements put most of his eggs in Luck's basket and tried to persuade the Houston sports business executive to take the job (thereby exiting the BOG).

After all, Luck isn't quite Jerry West, but is very high on the "favorite sons" list. That surely matters, so maybe Luck was given a while to decide as Clements and his inner circle kept their fingers crossed.

If that were the case, it may have dragged out an abnormally long process - with Clements as a rookie at this kind of hire, anyway - as Luck was given an extended period to decide. Luck said no, and so the process is just now moving on.

There's another school of thought that Luck wants the AD job - just not now, as he still has two sons in high school. A couple of years down the road, he may see himself in the job. If that's the case, and Clements knew that, he could have gotten Luck as AD in 2012, and left Pastilong in the job for two more years.

As AD searches go, this one's a long one. Pastilong, who really wanted to more years in the job but didn't campaign too strongly for it, became a lame duck on March 3. That's three months ago. Most of these kind of searches last a month to six weeks, top.

Clements may reach his goal of naming a new AD by June 30, but no one's going to be in place by then. No way ... and that's really not a big deal.

It's never been the case that Pastilong was taking a hike no matter what on July 1. Pastilong's "retirement" doesn't begin until the new AD takes over, whenever that can happen.

The newest Directors' Cup rankings (out Tuesday) have West Virginia at No. 26 (and the next Big East football school is Louisville, at No. 49). The program's in the black, despite the fact the Mountaineers get no tuition waivers for athletic grants-in-aid from the university.

A basketball practice facility is on the rise. It's a program that has an entire state's attention.

Whether it's Oliver, "Huggs," Whit, Rob, Jim or some other Tom, Dick or Harriet, it's going to be a tough job and difficult act to follow.

And if Clements is already doing substantive interviews, it isn't going to be with the media.

Contact Sports Editor Jack Bogaczyk at jackb@dailymail.com or 304-348-7949.