Coaching searches and how they are covered have evolved over time. The first notable one in the era of high-volume Internet coverage for NC State came in 2006 when Herb Sendek left the Wolfpack for Arizona State.
In the month that followed, we chased every lead known to mankind, from Rick Barnes to John Calipari to Steve Lavin to John Beilein before the search finally ended with Sidney Lowe.
The Tom O'Brien hire in football in 2007 was a late-breaking development. While we were focused on Paul Johnson and Jimbo Fisher, O'Brien's name did not surface until others began breaking it the morning of his hire. We reached out to Mike Farrell of the Rivals network, who was close to the Boston College staff with O'Brien at that time, and the word he got back was contradicting to what would eventually happen. Those on O'Brien's own staff were caught off guard.
Through time, The Wolfpacker has developed a good network of sources that began to prove its worth during the search for Lowe’s replacement. We strayed once during that period from them to chase a rumor that Barnes was in Raleigh. Turned out, if he was, it was unrelated to NC State. From then on, we have stayed true to our sources.
That was how we were able to accurately paint a picture of the field that included Shaka Smart, Gregg Marshall and Mick Cronin in 2011, the latter-most a new name off the radar before we reported it. Of course, NCSU ended up shocking everyone, us included, with Mark Gottfried.
In December 2012, when football coach Tom O’Brien was fired, the first word we got was to watch for Northern Illinois head coach Dave Doeren. While many of the outside rumors we were given centered around Louisiana Tech head coach Sonny Dykes, we stayed true to our initial reporting: watch for Doeren.
In about a week’s time, Doeren was hired.
We have gotten better at this coaching search coverage business, and we like to think it showed again this time.
•••
When WTVD’s Mark Armstrong dropped the bombshell during the 6 p.m., newscast on Feb. 13 that Gottfried was going to be fired at the end of the season and feelers were sent to Dayton’s Archie Miller, he may have been premature in some aspects and wrong in others (see: the Miller part), but he was on the right track to a degree.
Armstrong’s report came two days after yet another humbling loss, this time by 30 points at Wake Forest during which his team showed little fight. In hindsight, that game was the final nail in Gottfried’s coffin, but the intention was to let him coach out the season.
With UNC coming to town, maybe the team would respond to the rivalry game in one last, desperate chance to turn it around before the ACC Tournament. The schedule appeared doable down the stretch if the Pack could upset the Heels.
Reality set in after a 25-point loss to Chapel Hill. Whether it was Armstrong’s report earlier in the week that created an unworkable atmosphere or a desire to get out ahead in the search, the decision was made the next morning to move on immediately, but still let Gottfried coach.
Right away, two names were rolling off the tongues of Wolfpack fans: Miller and Marshall, and why not? Miller was a blueprint of the ideal leading candidate. Indeed, the word “coronation” was once used to describe a potential search and hire of Miller. He’s an alum, a well-groomed head coach who worked for three prominent head coaches (Sendek, Sean Miller and Thad Matta) and a proven success in six years at Dayton with an Elite Eight under his belt.
Marshall was the textbook grand slam. He coached with that ultimate edge that Pack fans want and has been a supreme winner at Winthrop and Wichita State, leading the latter to an improbable Final Four and later an undefeated regular season that earned a No. 1 seed into the NCAA Tournament. He was also an East Coast guy who spent practically his entire life before Wichita State in the region from Virginia to South Carolina.
The word was that Marshall was interested despite turning down the job six years ago. One source with a tie to the coach said that Marshall had expressed a desire to get back to the East Coast. Another that spent time with Marshall in February said that the coach would be receptive, but he had to be pursued and treated as the clear front-runner for the job (perhaps a nod to the previous search when he interviewed during the Final Four weekend but had to wait until Smart turned it down).
Yet our sources never saw Marshall as a serious candidate, especially after NC State did its research. He has a loaded team (as evidenced by a strong performance in the NCAA Tournament) that could be his best yet next season, plus a daughter who will be a senior next year in high school. On top of all that, the supposed price tag to get Marshall to listen: $5 million. That is money NC State did not have.
Yow would have walked a fine line if she had taken the route to pursue Marshall, trusting that the interest was sincere despite his personal and professional ties that would lead one to believe he would want to stay at Wichita State for at least one more season. It would have also required she was confident that he was not using NC State for a raise at a time where Wichita State is widely expected to establish a FBS football program.
Thus Marshall never proved a likely candidate.
•••
Miller was a different story. He had the potential to be THE candidate, except there was one issue: was he interested?
Recruiting analysts, and travel squad coaches and directors who spend their summers on the road mingling with college coaches often times represent some of the best sources of information on a candidate.
Long before Gottfried was fired, many were already privately saying that Miller was not going to take the NC State job. The first contact we reached out to that knew Miller well had a simple text response: “Not. Gonna. Happen.”
Almost without fail, from N.C.-based radio host David Glenn (who does have some contacts in these situations) to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman to those behind the scenes were all in agreement: Miller was not going to be interested.
But every so often there were glimmers of hope: Gregg Doyel’s tweet about NC State being a dream job for Miller, and the lack of a public denial of interest from the Miller clan, such as the one that came when older brother Sean’s name was mentioned as a possible Lowe successor.
There were also those who were picking up a vibe that Miller wanted no distractions, and that privately he would be willing to meet (some credit his wife for being the driving force behind that).
However, the morning of the day Kevin Keatts was hired, a source told us that no one from the Miller side ever reached back and responded to NC State about setting up a meeting when the season was over, unlike other candidates.
It could have been because Sean is angling for the UNC job, a well-known secret. Or that Archie is holding out hope for the Ohio State job, another well-known secret. Perhaps Archie was being sincere when he said that he would be focused solely on Dayton till its season’s end.
But we did hear this story early in the search: there is a prospective assistant coach that would have liked to take a step up in the ladder in the business and land a job on the new State staff. With that in mind, and having been connected to Miller in the past, he reached out to Miller. Days later, that prospective assistant coach had moved on to talking with VCU’s Will Wade about a potential such move.
In the month that followed, we chased every lead known to mankind, from Rick Barnes to John Calipari to Steve Lavin to John Beilein before the search finally ended with Sidney Lowe.
The Tom O'Brien hire in football in 2007 was a late-breaking development. While we were focused on Paul Johnson and Jimbo Fisher, O'Brien's name did not surface until others began breaking it the morning of his hire. We reached out to Mike Farrell of the Rivals network, who was close to the Boston College staff with O'Brien at that time, and the word he got back was contradicting to what would eventually happen. Those on O'Brien's own staff were caught off guard.
Through time, The Wolfpacker has developed a good network of sources that began to prove its worth during the search for Lowe’s replacement. We strayed once during that period from them to chase a rumor that Barnes was in Raleigh. Turned out, if he was, it was unrelated to NC State. From then on, we have stayed true to our sources.
That was how we were able to accurately paint a picture of the field that included Shaka Smart, Gregg Marshall and Mick Cronin in 2011, the latter-most a new name off the radar before we reported it. Of course, NCSU ended up shocking everyone, us included, with Mark Gottfried.
In December 2012, when football coach Tom O’Brien was fired, the first word we got was to watch for Northern Illinois head coach Dave Doeren. While many of the outside rumors we were given centered around Louisiana Tech head coach Sonny Dykes, we stayed true to our initial reporting: watch for Doeren.
In about a week’s time, Doeren was hired.
We have gotten better at this coaching search coverage business, and we like to think it showed again this time.
•••
When WTVD’s Mark Armstrong dropped the bombshell during the 6 p.m., newscast on Feb. 13 that Gottfried was going to be fired at the end of the season and feelers were sent to Dayton’s Archie Miller, he may have been premature in some aspects and wrong in others (see: the Miller part), but he was on the right track to a degree.
Armstrong’s report came two days after yet another humbling loss, this time by 30 points at Wake Forest during which his team showed little fight. In hindsight, that game was the final nail in Gottfried’s coffin, but the intention was to let him coach out the season.
With UNC coming to town, maybe the team would respond to the rivalry game in one last, desperate chance to turn it around before the ACC Tournament. The schedule appeared doable down the stretch if the Pack could upset the Heels.
Reality set in after a 25-point loss to Chapel Hill. Whether it was Armstrong’s report earlier in the week that created an unworkable atmosphere or a desire to get out ahead in the search, the decision was made the next morning to move on immediately, but still let Gottfried coach.
Right away, two names were rolling off the tongues of Wolfpack fans: Miller and Marshall, and why not? Miller was a blueprint of the ideal leading candidate. Indeed, the word “coronation” was once used to describe a potential search and hire of Miller. He’s an alum, a well-groomed head coach who worked for three prominent head coaches (Sendek, Sean Miller and Thad Matta) and a proven success in six years at Dayton with an Elite Eight under his belt.
Marshall was the textbook grand slam. He coached with that ultimate edge that Pack fans want and has been a supreme winner at Winthrop and Wichita State, leading the latter to an improbable Final Four and later an undefeated regular season that earned a No. 1 seed into the NCAA Tournament. He was also an East Coast guy who spent practically his entire life before Wichita State in the region from Virginia to South Carolina.
The word was that Marshall was interested despite turning down the job six years ago. One source with a tie to the coach said that Marshall had expressed a desire to get back to the East Coast. Another that spent time with Marshall in February said that the coach would be receptive, but he had to be pursued and treated as the clear front-runner for the job (perhaps a nod to the previous search when he interviewed during the Final Four weekend but had to wait until Smart turned it down).
Yet our sources never saw Marshall as a serious candidate, especially after NC State did its research. He has a loaded team (as evidenced by a strong performance in the NCAA Tournament) that could be his best yet next season, plus a daughter who will be a senior next year in high school. On top of all that, the supposed price tag to get Marshall to listen: $5 million. That is money NC State did not have.
Yow would have walked a fine line if she had taken the route to pursue Marshall, trusting that the interest was sincere despite his personal and professional ties that would lead one to believe he would want to stay at Wichita State for at least one more season. It would have also required she was confident that he was not using NC State for a raise at a time where Wichita State is widely expected to establish a FBS football program.
Thus Marshall never proved a likely candidate.
•••
Miller was a different story. He had the potential to be THE candidate, except there was one issue: was he interested?
Recruiting analysts, and travel squad coaches and directors who spend their summers on the road mingling with college coaches often times represent some of the best sources of information on a candidate.
Long before Gottfried was fired, many were already privately saying that Miller was not going to take the NC State job. The first contact we reached out to that knew Miller well had a simple text response: “Not. Gonna. Happen.”
Almost without fail, from N.C.-based radio host David Glenn (who does have some contacts in these situations) to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman to those behind the scenes were all in agreement: Miller was not going to be interested.
But every so often there were glimmers of hope: Gregg Doyel’s tweet about NC State being a dream job for Miller, and the lack of a public denial of interest from the Miller clan, such as the one that came when older brother Sean’s name was mentioned as a possible Lowe successor.
There were also those who were picking up a vibe that Miller wanted no distractions, and that privately he would be willing to meet (some credit his wife for being the driving force behind that).
However, the morning of the day Kevin Keatts was hired, a source told us that no one from the Miller side ever reached back and responded to NC State about setting up a meeting when the season was over, unlike other candidates.
It could have been because Sean is angling for the UNC job, a well-known secret. Or that Archie is holding out hope for the Ohio State job, another well-known secret. Perhaps Archie was being sincere when he said that he would be focused solely on Dayton till its season’s end.
But we did hear this story early in the search: there is a prospective assistant coach that would have liked to take a step up in the ladder in the business and land a job on the new State staff. With that in mind, and having been connected to Miller in the past, he reached out to Miller. Days later, that prospective assistant coach had moved on to talking with VCU’s Will Wade about a potential such move.
