(12-01-2022 08:39 AM)Owlman49 Wrote:  “We will learn to recruit at an elite level,” he said. “I’d be lying if I told you I know how to recruit at an elite level. That would be crap. That would be a lie. I’ve never done it. But we’re about to get really good at it. I’ll hire people that have been great at it in the past.” - Trent Dilfer at his UAB HC job announcement presser.

I think back to Matt Rhule coming to Baylor from Temple. He was a Pennsylvania guy, with no ties to Texas. So among the first things he did were to hire David Wetzel, then president of the Texas HS coaches association, and Joey McGuire, who had just won multiple state championships at Cedar Hill. That gave him immediate credibility with those Texas HS coaches and he used it to advantage. This where I got the idea that if I were assembling a staff at Rice, I would keep 1 or 2 guys from the old staff (preferably those most involved in recruiting) for continuity, I would hire 3 coordinators (offense, defense, special teams) that I could trust to run their areas, and I would then fill out my staff with past presidents of the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma HS coaches associations and former Rice players. Anybody who could check two or more of those boxes would be a primary hire.

If Dilfer is smart enough to do something similar, he will be just fine.

In a similar vein, Auburn just hired Hugh Freeze as its head coach. Freeze went from a small Christian HS in Memphis (where he coached Michael Oher of The Blind Side fame) to two years on staff at Ole Miss to Lambuth as HC to Ole Miss as HC to Liberty as HC to Auburn. I watched a bit of Freeze's introductory speech and noted that 1) he made a special effort to retain Cadillac Williams on his staff as his first order of business and 2) he recognized Sean and Leigh Ann Tuohy (Oher's adopted parents) as being present and having been present at every one of his coaching introductory press conferences.

I compared Freeze's intro to that of Rhule's at Nebraska and noted one perhaps significant difference. Both took over from interim coaches with some sentiment for keeping them on. Freeze's embracing of Cadillac in his speech ("I don't remember if I begged him to stay or not, but I certainly would have if I had to") was a bit more emphatic than Rhule's commitment to Mickey Joseph, which surprised me a bit given Rhule's past with Wetzel and McGuire. Last night, Joseph was arrested and charged with domestic assault and has been placed on administrative leave by the university. I wonder how that will play out.