SBJ College: Search Party

Mark Emmert’s important “State of the NCAA” speech tonight unfortunately comes after our deadline. Catch all of the news and analysis tomorrow in The Daily.

Here's what's cooking on campus.

SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO TURN TO SEARCH FIRMS ON FOOTBALL HIRES

• The trend of ADs using a search firm to assist in hiring a football coach continues to gain momentum. Since the 2019 season, there have been 21 head coaches hired at FBS schools and 12 of them used a search firm. Of the nine schools that didn’t use a firm, five promoted an assistant to head coach, meaning there really wasn’t a search.
  
  
• There have been just four schools to conduct a search without an assist from a headhunter -- Arkansas, Boston College, Colorado State and USF. Colorado State had former coach Urban Meyer consult on the hiring process, which produced Steve Addazio as the new coach in Fort Collins. Addazio worked with Meyer at Florida.
  
  
• Boston College featured another unique situation. The Eagles’ AD, Martin Jarmond, previously was a longtime assistant AD for Gene Smith at Ohio State, which made him extremely familiar with the Buckeyes’ coaching staff. It came as no surprise that Jarmond, without using a search firm, plucked Jeff Hafley off the staff in Columbus.
  
  
• Each season seems to bring its own set of curious cases. Missouri, using Parker Executive Search, hired Eli Drinkwitz from Appalachian State. Only a year ago, Parker helped place Drinkwitz at App State in his first head coaching job. That’s why they call it the coaching carousel.

Download the Recent FBS Coaching Hires

MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE OF CHANGE

• Malcolm Turner will celebrate his one-year anniversary at Vanderbilt on Feb. 1. The transition from running the NBA G League in New York to the AD’s chair in Nashville has been as challenging as you’d imagine. For starters, Turner now owns a vehicle -- something he never had during his decade of living and working in Manhattan, where he also had a stint running Wasserman’s golf business. The other major distinction is that now he goes to the grocery store, something he rarely did in New York, where he ordered groceries online and had them delivered.
  
  
• I caught up with Turner today over lunch at J Alexander’s on Nashville’s West End, just a short walk from his office and within view of Vanderbilt Stadium. It’s clear that Turner is enjoying the challenge of identifying what is special about the Commodores and activating it, just as he did for corporate clients at Wasserman, like American Express. In a conference as deep as the SEC, turning around Vandy’s fortunes will take all of his problem-solving powers.
  
  
• He’s already made enough major decisions in his first year to qualify as a veteran AD. Turner decided to keep his football coach, Derek Mason, after a 3-9 season, and changed his basketball coach, hiring Jerry Stackhouse, who, like Turner, had no college experience. Turner has a badly needed master plan for facilities in the works and he’s navigating the changing tides on campus with Vandy’s third chancellor since he arrived.
  
  
• Then again, in the 12 years I’ve known him, Turner has never been one to maintain. He was attracted to Vandy because of its untapped potential, and if no one else sees it, that’s OK. He does.

SPEED READS 

• The Senior Bowl is back in Mobile this week, and Executive Director Jim Nagy told ESPN’s Kevin Negandhi he is "trying to structure" the college showcase game’s staff as the NFL's 33rd personnel department. Nagy, a former scout, said: “I really tried to duplicate what we were doing at the league level. That was hiring a staff of scouts. We have them all around the country watching tape on a daily basis. During the fall, we’re out at games.” Out of the 118 players scheduled to play in Saturday’s game, Nagy’s staff saw 115 in game action this season.
  
  
• Oklahoma State football attendance was up 2% this past season compared to 2018, but the program is going further in its efforts to get more people into the building in 2020. OSU football tweeted today: "For more than 12,000 seats in Boone Pickens Stadium, the price of a season ticket is coming down, including many at the 50-yard line. ... #WeGetIt." The program's best figure over the last decade was in 2013, when the Cowboys averaged 59,126 per game.
  
  
• The late Mike Slive's legacy lives on this weekend with the Big 12/SEC Challenge games on Saturday. Both coaches and support staffs will wear a Mike Slive Foundation lapel pin to raise awareness for the foundation's fight against prostate cancer. Slive's daughter, Anna Slive Harwood, took over leadership of the foundation in September of last year after her father died of the disease in 2018. 
  
  
• Rutgers men's hoops this week ended the longest AP drought in major conference history, cracking the top 25 for the first time in nearly 41 years. CBS Sports' Matt Norlander provided some fun context around the Scarlet Knights' milestone. "Last time Rutgers was ranked was March 13, 1979. No. 1 song in America: Gloria Gaynor’s 'I Will Survive.' No. 1 album in America: Bee Gees’ 'Spirits Having Flown.' No. 1 movie in America: The Deer Hunter."
  
  
• In college baseball news this afternoon, the NCAA said that host schools for the Super Regional round will be on the hook for the costs of providing replay -- about $6,900 for personnel and equipment.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

• On this week in 2015, reps from Power Five schools voted 79-1 at the NCAA Convention to approve cost-of-attendance measures, which redefined athletic scholarships to cover not only tuition, room, board, books and fees, but also incidental costs of attending college like transportation and miscellaneous personal expenses. Many predicted cost-of-attendance would put too much financial stress on athletic departments, but that hasn’t been the case -- at least at the P5 level. This week’s NCAA Convention again will be the stage for debate on more groundbreaking developments -- this time with a big test around name, image and likeness.

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Something on the College beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).