McElwain has inside track at EWU
Fresno State offensive coordinator Jim McElwain appears to be the leading candidate to replace Paul Wulff as Eastern Washington University’s next head football coach.
McElwain, reached by telephone in the Seattle airport Wednesday morning, said he was on his way to Cheney, where he was expected to interview for a second time with first-year EWU athletic director Bill Chaves and meet with Eastern president Dr. Rodolfo Arevalo.
McElwain, who capped his first season at Fresno by helping lead the Bulldogs to a 40-28 win over Georgia Tech in Monday’s Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, would not say whether a job offer has been officially extended. But he confirmed he went through a three-hour interview with Chaves in Fresno late last month and sounded like he would attempt to finalize contract details during this stay in Cheney.
“I don’t want to say I do,” McElwain said when asked if he had a job offer in hand. “And I still don’t know if I can make it work, financially.”
The 45-year-old McElwain, who was a backup quarterback at Eastern from 1980-83 and also served as an Eagles assistant from 1985-94, said he is happy at Fresno, but added he has always has a “deep desire” to return to his alma mater.
“I’ve just got this internal burn for the place,” he said, adding he still has to have some questions answered about the school’s financial commitment, not only to himself, but to his assistant coaches and the entire football program, as well.
“Otherwise, things are in place there,” he said, noting how many experienced players will return from last year’s team that finished 9-4 under Wulff and made it to the second round of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs before losing to eventual champion Appalachian State. “You can obviously get good players, and I know there has been stability on the coaching staff.”
According to sources from within and close to the Eastern athletic department, Chaves has talked to at least six other candidates – including former Eagles offensive coordinators Timm Rosenbach and Beau Baldwin – about the school’s coaching vacancy.
Among the others who have reportedly interviewed for the job are Eagles assistant Joe Wade, Idaho assistant and Eastern alumnus Luther Carr, former EWU quarterback and Toronto Argonauts assistant Bill Diedrick, and former Idaho standout Kasey Dunn, who was special teams coordinator at Baylor while Chaves was an associate athletics director there.
Baldwin, who spent four seasons as Wulff’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Eastern before taking over as the head coach at Central Washington University last fall, and Wade, who has spent the last eight years as an Eagles assistant, said on Wednesday that they have not heard back from Chaves.
Rosenbach and Carr did not return phone calls, and Diedrick and Dunn could not be reached for comment.
In Monday’s bowl win over a Georgia Tech team that was leading the country in sacks and boasted one of the stingiest defenses in the Atlantic Coast Conference, McElwain’s FSU offense amassed 571 yards and scored 27 consecutive points after Tech jumped ahead 7-0.
Prior to being hired by head coach Pat Hill at Fresno State, McElwain spent a year coaching quarterbacks for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders. Before that, he served three years as assistant head coach, receivers coach and special teams coach under John L. Smith at Michigan State.
From 1995-99, McElwain was the offensive coordinator and also coached quarterbacks and wide receivers at Montana State.
As a player at Eastern, McElwain opted to forego his senior season to become a student assistant for Eagles coach Dick Zornes. He spent the next 10 years on Zornes’ staff and served as an Eastern assistant under Mike Kramer in 1994.