re: Why Carolina hired Muschamp instead of Herman and how the search failed.

Has there ever been a great college football head coaching hire that came from a search firm? All the search firm hires I remember were terrible and I'm vehemently opposed to them.

Honestly I'm not familiar with college football search firms or that industry. I wish I was.

Good recruiters specialize in certain industries. I'd give myself away if I named my industry with my username here.

I'd love to marry my two passions - just don't know who the firms are in CFB.

Have no clue what you mean.

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The proper use of a search firm in major college football -- or any profession where the candidates mostly have their own wiki pages already -- is to vet for potential problems that haven't already made it into the press. At most, a firm might be useful in bringing the attention of their employer to a lesser-known commodity that looks to be on the rise. But any FBS program should already know most of the names they want to aim for.

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I'm sure they're fine for many occupations. The problem with college head coaches is that they try to match them with schools in a hierarchical fashion, so they won't even consider every possibility. I'm assuming that South Carolina didn't use a search firm when they hired Spurrier or Holtz and they probably wouldn't have got them if they had.

Not trying to be ugly but i will file this all in no shite sherlock category.

But here is a little problem with all of that, how many coaches / agents are honest when using somebody like tanner for leverage? You make it sound like hermans agent would have said to tanner, "gee whiz, we really have no interested in coming to SC, but we do love the leverage that flirting with you provides" if he were only asked the "right questions".

If i recall correctly Jimmy Sexton is Herman's agent. Home skillet has been to a couple of these rodeos. Tanner has not. It is what it is.

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Not trying to be ugly but i will file this all in no shite sherlock category.

But here is a little problem with all of that, how many coaches / agents are honest when using somebody like tanner for leverage? You make it sound like hermans agent would have said to tanner, "gee whiz, we really have not interested in coming to SC, but we do love the leverage that flirting with you provides" if he were only asked the "right questions".

If i recall correctly Jimmy Sexton is Herman's agent. Home skillet has been to a couple of these rodeos. Tanner has not. It is what it is.

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Herman's agent is the same as Urban Meyer. Meyer's agent was Trace Armstrong when he was hired at Ohio State.

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Herman's agent is the same as Urban Meyer. Meyer's agent was Trace Armstrong when he was hired at Ohio State.

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My mistake. I still stand my point, that agent is probably way more savvy than our AD.

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Has there ever been a great college football head coaching hire that came from a search firm? All the search firm hires I remember were terrible and I'm vehemently opposed to them.

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Successful? Well, that's a matter of opinion.

Technically, if the hire is made, it was "successful" because both parties came to a mutual agreement. Of course, no recruiter can guarantee performance or intangibles after the hire.

As previously noted, though, the real value is not necessarily in working directly to find and present viable candidates although that certainly does happen. At the upper levels, the search firms provide a method for vetting potential problems, head off deal killers, handle small nitpicky details before they become problems, and just as in the case of agents... sometimes, plausible deniability.

Executive search firms in the sports arena will typically charge between $50-75K, more or less depending on the school and visibility of the position. Some are retained searches as Beantown mentioned, that is they are paid up front to help candidates meet the parameters of the job, not based on "commission" of salary. Also, keep in mind that search firms are used not only for football coaches but other coaches and athletic administrative positions as well. If your Athletic department clears a few million/yr in profit from sports, and you have a job opening... that's cheap money to make sure the process goes smoothly and quickly without hiccups.

I certainly know Bama has relied on the AD alone in the past with very mixed results. But this is the way things are going in major NCAA sports for all the advantages listed above. Very few openings these days do NOT go through an agent/search firm combination even if they know who they want from the start.

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Actually no.

That would be a retained search.
South Carolina would retain me with upfront money to work specifically for them. I wouldn't work for any other school.

So the coach has an agent and I become kinda like the schools agent. I wouldn't hold anything back from them. I would want them to hire the best at the most money. My compensation would be directly tied to a large salary. If i could bring them Saban @$40 million a year I'd do it in a second.

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That's not my understanding of how it works for college coaching. A school can hire a firm and that same firm can also be working for their rival.

Arkansas used a firm when we hired Pelphrey as our basketball coach. The same firm was also representing Kentucky. Pelphrey may have been the most underwhelming hire I ever remember at Arkansas.

I don't know that much about them, but that makes sense. We hired Parker Executive Search out of Atlanta and I'm not sure they work that way, though. We paid the highest fee they have and I don't think it was a good decision in hindsight.

I'm not saying there is no place for firms in head coaching searches, but a good AD shouldn't need a firm, imo. Finding new coaches is a big part of their job, and if they're using search firms to do it, then they're not doing their job very well.