Blog matters
A sampling from the past week of entries in The Spokesman-Review blog, Sportslink at spokesman.com/ sportslink.
3: Jim Meehan
Jacob Thorpe
Covering a coaching search can be like playing in a national game of Telephone.
You hear some names of prospective candidates that make no sense and some that make a lot of sense, and just when you think you’ve zeroed in on the candidate somebody completely new will get the job. Just take Thursday morning’s announcement that Oregon State’s Mike Riley will take over at Nebraska when everyone thought the job belonged to Scott Frost, for example.
It’s entirely possible that the names you hear associated with vacant jobs were never even contacted by the schools doing the searching. Still, it’s fun for everyone to try and guess who will be hired and so we’ll pass along some names we’re hearing more often than others for the job of Washington State’s defensive coordinator:
• Manny Diaz, currently the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Louisiana Tech and spent 2011-2013 serving the same roles at Texas under Mack Brown, but was removed after the UT defense gave up 550 rushing yards to BYU.
• Todd Orlando is the defensive coordinator at Utah State, where he is wrapping up his second year with the Aggies. In 2013, USU ranked No. 8 nationally in rush defense and No. 12 in overall defense.
• Clancy Pendergast is currently looking for work and is no stranger to the Pac-12, having served as the defensive coordinator at both California and USC.
• Barry Odom is in his third year as the defensive coordinator at Memphis and was considered to be a strong candidate to take the same position at Arkansas last season.
• John Papuchis, 36, is an up-and-comer in the coaching world who is currently on the market now that Bo Pelini has been dismissed at Nebraska. When Pelini was at LSU, Papuchis was an intern/graduate assistant and Pelini was impressed enough to bring him along as a full-time coach when he went to Nebraska in 2008. In 2012, Papuchis was promoted to defensive coordinator.