If you’re Duke athletics director Joe Alleva, the one good thing about the rash of recent firings in college football is that there are a lot of good coaches without jobs.
Alleva is looking for a coach with Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) experience. One such coach with extensive ACC experience became available at the same time as Alleva was holding his news conference Monday to announce Duke had fired Ted Roof.
Georgia Tech’s Chan Gailey won at least seven games in each of his six seasons at a school that also has to be academically selective in recruiting its players. Gailey held weekly, hourlong leadership discussions with his freshmen, letting the players decide which leaders they admired and wanted to study. Gailey’s only failure was an 0-6 record against rival Georgia.
Gailey is a high-character, winning coach who could upgrade Duke’s program, but hiring a coach who was just cast off by another ACC school might be an unpopular move for Alleva. But Alleva’s problem is that today’s Knute Rocknes and Bear Bryants aren’t going to be banging down his door to interview.
It’s a challenge to recruit talented football players who meet Duke’s academic criteria when you bring them to campus and show them the sad condition of Wallace Wade Stadium.
And if you’re Alleva, the bad thing about the rash of recent firings is that there are plenty of jobs better than Duke’s open for successful coaches looking to move up.
– Ken Tysiac
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Gailey a good fit for Duke?
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2 comments:
Duke can add to its reputation as a fine academic institution by picking up Coach Gailey. He is a fine gentleman, and he led Tech through years of reduced scholarships (from his predecessor's sins) to the ACC title game and six straight winning seasons. While we never beat UGA, it is easy to find a number of programs who would very much have liked to have six straight winning seasons and six straight bowl trips. His recruiting improved every year.
With Butch Davis loading up the talent down the road from Durham, Coach Gailey will be a great choice.
Gailey wouldn't be a bad hire. His biggest weakness is that he doesn't have a great personality (he's bland). The personality issue wouldn't matter at Duke -- that's only a problem for big time programs (where fund raising is as high a priority as coaching). Duke would consider it a huge upgrade to have a team that could pull off some nice upsets and had a decent team every few years when an occasional strong recruiting class matures.
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