Dennis Slutak to join Washington State as Director of Football Operations

Dennis Slutak, a former special teams coach at USC under Pete Carroll who has extensive experience in athletic administration, will join Mike Leach’s Washington State staff as the new Director of Football Operations, the school announced Tuesday.

WSU announced Slutak’s hire in conjunction with the addition of new inside linebackers coach Roc Bellantoni.

“Dennis has a reputation of being one of the best football operations people in the country,” Leach said in a press release. “He has a tremendous amount of experience in the Pac-12 Conference and is incredibly organized and efficient in his methods. We are excited to have Dennis on staff here at WSU.”

Slutak replaces Antonio Huffman, a longtime Leach pupil who elected to return to his alma mater Texas Tech in December to become the Red Raiders’ Chief of Staff.

Most recently, Slutak served as the Director of Football Operations at UNLV for the last four seasons. He was also a DFO for Bowling Green during the 2013 football season and oversaw the Falcon’s run to the Little Caesars Bowl.

But Slutak also brings a wealth of Pac-12 experience with him to Pullman.

Before his stint at Bowling Green, Slutak was an Assistant AD for Football Operations at Washington from 2009-11 and before that spent four years at USC, from 2005-08, as the DFO.

Prior to his work in athletic administration, Slutak was an asistant coach in the Pac-10, serving as a special teams coach for Carroll’s national championship winning USC teams in 2003 and ’04. A former punter at Florida State, Slutak also had coaching stops at Ole Miss, North Carolina State and Lehigh University.