What's An Athletic Director For? A Search Firm Found Chizik For Pollard, Now Minnesota Spends $80,000 To Look For Football and Basketball Coaches

Iowa State fans will be happy to know that athletic director Jamie Pollard used a search firm to find his new football coach.

Actually, I'm being facetious.

I know some Cyclone boosters who won't be happy that Pollard needed outside help -- at a fee -- to find Gene Chizik.

Pollard, who's done plenty of firing and hiring so far in his short time as Iowa State's athletic department CEO, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he used a search firm to attract Chizik to the football coaching job

But he didn't use one to land Greg McDermott for the Cyclones' basketball job.

The newspaper did some research after it learned that the University of Minnesota will spend more than $80,000 to fill basketball and football coaching vacanties.

Baker-Parker and Associates of Atlanta have been retained through June 30 to help fill the two Minnesota vacancites. The firm will receive $80,000 plus expenses that include such items as travel, background investigations, research and long-distance telephone calls.

Dennis Brackin of the Star Tribune said his newspaper did an e-mail survey of five collegiate athletic directors who recently hired football coaches. Alabama, Miami [Fla.], Michigan State and Iowa State used search firms, Arizona State didn't.

"I believe search firms can add a lot of value in certain situations, and they clearly added tremendous value to our recent football search," Pollard told the paper.

Chizik, a Texas assistant, was hired to replace Dan McCarney, who was convinced by Pollard that he wasn't the right guy to coach the Cyclones.

I guess I've been naive in thinking an athletic director in today's collegiate marketplace should be able to find and hire his own coach.

I always thought an athletic director should always have five names in his pocket of folks he might want to hire should one of his coaches either quit or get fired.

I thought that was an athletic director's job. Shows you what I know. Shows you how the landscape has changed.

This scenario reminds me of what's going on with the State Board of Regents and its never-ending search for a president at the University of Iowa.

The incompetent regents didn't think they could find a new president by themselves, so they hired an agency. All in all, it's been the most screwed-up search in the history of education.

But that's a column for another day.

At least Pollard says he didn't help from an employment agency to hire McDermott, the former Northern Iowa basketball coach who I think will do a fine job at Iowa State.

The way I hear it, Pollard originally wanted Rob Jeter of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to replace the fired Wayne Morgan as Iowa State's basketball coach.

But then McDermott -- or someone who knows him well -- made it clear to Iowa State that he'd be interested in the job.

So at least Iowa State didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to get a guy working a couple of hours away, who seems to know what he's doing.

The jury is out on whether Chizik will be worth the money spent on a search firm to find him.

* * *

The photo of Gene Chizik [left], Iowa State's new football coach, and university president Gregory Geoffroy [right] courtesy of Google.