UPDATED AT 2:43
Have some information I actually trust to be accurate for a change. So that's nice.
First off, I've confirmed this round of interviews is being done in Atlanta as we originally reported. We thought Sterk was probably still there and we've confirmed now that's accurate.
We said this morning that we believe Will Healy has talked to Missouri in some regard. I can't say for sure if that was a formal interview, but he's at least received interest. I've got multiple people telling me that.
I also believe Bryan Harsin is still on the list and at least has gotten some interest. I do not know if Missouri has actually met with him at this point. He's the toughest guy to get on the list because he's a Boise native and many in college football don't believe he's leaving Boise for anything other than the PAC 12 or one of the elite jobs.
I can confirm that Willie Fritz is a person of interest for Missouri and I believe he has interviewed with Mizzou officials as well.
I'm now hearing that Missouri is looking to interview Central Michigan coach Jim McElwain. Another coach I'm confident is getting an in person interview is Troy Calhoun at Air Force.
There are more. I don't have them at this point. I believe the list to be 8-10 people. I'm relatively confident that interviews are still ongoing, which would shoot down the idea that Missouri has hired a coach unless they've already made a decision and they're just continuing to interview people because they were already scheduled. But I'd think if that was the case you'd cancel interviews and tell everyone else on the list, "Thanks for your consideration, but there's no point in you flying to Atlanta and taking a full day out of your calendar."
At this point, I don't believe Lane Kiffin is on that list of interviews. Honestly, I'm not sure he was ever even a consideration.
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So let me start out by saying there really wasn’t any news last night. But there were rumors. Oh, Lord were there rumors.
I’m going to preface this by saying I don’t really know how much of it is true. In fact, I’m not sure any of it is true. Honestly, when the media doesn’t know anything, that’s the sign of a pretty good search. It means it’s being run quietly and there aren’t leaks. But in the absence of leaks, there is speculation, which leads to people assuming the worst, which is what yesterday was when everyone decided Missouri was not going to hire a coach and might just shut down the program.
BREAKING: Missouri is going to hire a coach. I don’t know exactly who and I don’t know exactly when, but they’re hiring one.
So let’s go through the things I heard on Monday night. First, I heard that Missouri had found its guy. This came from someone I trust. There was no name attached. But this isn’t someone who just makes something up. It came a couple hours after the job was officially posted, so it’s certainly possible.
About 20 minutes after that I got a message: They’re down to two. The two named were Jeff Monken and Bryan Harsin. This is someone I trust who has been right many times before. (Just a note here, this is not connected to the rumor about Mizzou finding its guy...in other words, the people telling me Mizzou found its guy aren't telling me it's Monken or Harsin)
While checking these things with a couple of sources who know things, I was told Missouri is interviewing between 8 and 10 people between Sunday and Tuesday.
So Missouri either has found its coach, has it narrowed to two or is in the middle of double digit interviews. Coaching searches are awesome. In some ways, I never want this to end. I want to stress again, I do not know if any of the three previous things are true. One of them may be. Maybe not.
The name of the day late Monday seemed to be Will Healy. I did manage to confirm through a friend of a friend that Missouri has reached out to Healy. I cannot tell you whether it was a face to face interview. All I know i that Missouri has reached out. My source was unable to verify how serious the talks were, but did confirm there’s interest. I had another source tell me Missouri talked in person to Healy yesterday, but one person told him it was in Atlanta and one said it was in St. Louis, so...
Speaking of interest, I found this interesting:
I talked to Reed and Healy has a commitment from a Trinity kid. He’s recruiting St. Louis since he was at Austin Peay and continued to do so in Charlotte. This was a previously scheduled trip. Quite a coincidence but that’s all it was.
Anyway I clicked on Healy’s profile and figured, hey, I might as well follow this guy cause there’s some buzz around him and I know Missouri is talking to him…and Will Healy already follows me on Twitter. Which I find…odd. He's not following a lot of local media people outside of Charlotte. And I don't know why he follows me. Maybe it means nothing. But maybe it doesn't.
I’ve gotten some messages from some people that believe Will Healy is Missouri’s guy. I cannot verify that yet. I don’t know. But he’s definitely the guy with the most smoke around him right now…which could very well mean he will not be tomorrow.
For those who will say “What the hell are we doing thinking about hiring the guy from Charlotte?” consider this:
Healy went 0-11 in his first year at Austin Peay. The team had at that point lost 29 consecutive games. It had won once in four years. He went 8-4 and almost made the FCS playoffs in year two. Following a 5-6 season in his third year, Healy was hired at Charlotte. Charlotte brought football back in 2013 after a 65 year absence. Brad Lambert went 22-48 in six seasons. Healy just went 7-5 and took the team to its first bowl game. He is 34. He is the second youngest coach in Division One football. And he is pretty f—-ing cool in a PJ Fleck kind of way
This wouldn’t be a hire that might wow the casual fan. But I think it might be pretty good. At the start of this search I said, “Do something daring and hire Joe Brady.” This isn’t exactly that, but it’s not far off. If this is where Missouri goes, I’m intrigued. If you're Missouri, you've got to be different. You can't hire a great coach. You have to hire a coach you think will be great. If they think that's Healy, I'm on board.
Also, if it’s Healy, it would make some sense why a move was made now. He grew up a Vanderbilt fan. His uncle was an all-American at Vanderbilt. Vandy fans love him and would love him to be the coach. But Vandy brought back Derek Mason. If Missouri hires him, he isn’t going to Vandy. So if he’s truly the top guy and was the top guy at the start, maybe there’s a reason they started the search now.
But be warned, this thing started with Mike Norvell being the hot name and we’ve confirmed he is out. The next hot name was Lane Kiffin and that now appear to be significantly overblown (At this point, I think I misinterpreted signals and read into things more than I should have and took people who wanted Kiffin meaning that Kiffin was a serious candidate; as of this morning I'm not at all sure he is). So by tomorrow, maybe Will Healy isn’t even a thought. But he’s a thought right now. Read a bit more about him here:
https://amp.theleafchronicle.com/amp/893588001?__twitter_impression=true
As I said, I’ve been told Mizzou is interviewing eight to ten guys this week. If I can find out who more of them are, I’ll let you know. Still remain confident Harsin, Monken and Willie Fritz are among considerations. Still think, but am not sure, that Skip Holtz and Jeff Scott are. We’ll keep working to do the best we can to keep you all semi-informed.
Have some information I actually trust to be accurate for a change. So that's nice.
First off, I've confirmed this round of interviews is being done in Atlanta as we originally reported. We thought Sterk was probably still there and we've confirmed now that's accurate.
We said this morning that we believe Will Healy has talked to Missouri in some regard. I can't say for sure if that was a formal interview, but he's at least received interest. I've got multiple people telling me that.
I also believe Bryan Harsin is still on the list and at least has gotten some interest. I do not know if Missouri has actually met with him at this point. He's the toughest guy to get on the list because he's a Boise native and many in college football don't believe he's leaving Boise for anything other than the PAC 12 or one of the elite jobs.
I can confirm that Willie Fritz is a person of interest for Missouri and I believe he has interviewed with Mizzou officials as well.
I'm now hearing that Missouri is looking to interview Central Michigan coach Jim McElwain. Another coach I'm confident is getting an in person interview is Troy Calhoun at Air Force.
There are more. I don't have them at this point. I believe the list to be 8-10 people. I'm relatively confident that interviews are still ongoing, which would shoot down the idea that Missouri has hired a coach unless they've already made a decision and they're just continuing to interview people because they were already scheduled. But I'd think if that was the case you'd cancel interviews and tell everyone else on the list, "Thanks for your consideration, but there's no point in you flying to Atlanta and taking a full day out of your calendar."
At this point, I don't believe Lane Kiffin is on that list of interviews. Honestly, I'm not sure he was ever even a consideration.
--------------------
So let me start out by saying there really wasn’t any news last night. But there were rumors. Oh, Lord were there rumors.
I’m going to preface this by saying I don’t really know how much of it is true. In fact, I’m not sure any of it is true. Honestly, when the media doesn’t know anything, that’s the sign of a pretty good search. It means it’s being run quietly and there aren’t leaks. But in the absence of leaks, there is speculation, which leads to people assuming the worst, which is what yesterday was when everyone decided Missouri was not going to hire a coach and might just shut down the program.
BREAKING: Missouri is going to hire a coach. I don’t know exactly who and I don’t know exactly when, but they’re hiring one.
So let’s go through the things I heard on Monday night. First, I heard that Missouri had found its guy. This came from someone I trust. There was no name attached. But this isn’t someone who just makes something up. It came a couple hours after the job was officially posted, so it’s certainly possible.
About 20 minutes after that I got a message: They’re down to two. The two named were Jeff Monken and Bryan Harsin. This is someone I trust who has been right many times before. (Just a note here, this is not connected to the rumor about Mizzou finding its guy...in other words, the people telling me Mizzou found its guy aren't telling me it's Monken or Harsin)
While checking these things with a couple of sources who know things, I was told Missouri is interviewing between 8 and 10 people between Sunday and Tuesday.
So Missouri either has found its coach, has it narrowed to two or is in the middle of double digit interviews. Coaching searches are awesome. In some ways, I never want this to end. I want to stress again, I do not know if any of the three previous things are true. One of them may be. Maybe not.
The name of the day late Monday seemed to be Will Healy. I did manage to confirm through a friend of a friend that Missouri has reached out to Healy. I cannot tell you whether it was a face to face interview. All I know i that Missouri has reached out. My source was unable to verify how serious the talks were, but did confirm there’s interest. I had another source tell me Missouri talked in person to Healy yesterday, but one person told him it was in Atlanta and one said it was in St. Louis, so...
Speaking of interest, I found this interesting:
I talked to Reed and Healy has a commitment from a Trinity kid. He’s recruiting St. Louis since he was at Austin Peay and continued to do so in Charlotte. This was a previously scheduled trip. Quite a coincidence but that’s all it was.
Anyway I clicked on Healy’s profile and figured, hey, I might as well follow this guy cause there’s some buzz around him and I know Missouri is talking to him…and Will Healy already follows me on Twitter. Which I find…odd. He's not following a lot of local media people outside of Charlotte. And I don't know why he follows me. Maybe it means nothing. But maybe it doesn't.
I’ve gotten some messages from some people that believe Will Healy is Missouri’s guy. I cannot verify that yet. I don’t know. But he’s definitely the guy with the most smoke around him right now…which could very well mean he will not be tomorrow.
For those who will say “What the hell are we doing thinking about hiring the guy from Charlotte?” consider this:
Healy went 0-11 in his first year at Austin Peay. The team had at that point lost 29 consecutive games. It had won once in four years. He went 8-4 and almost made the FCS playoffs in year two. Following a 5-6 season in his third year, Healy was hired at Charlotte. Charlotte brought football back in 2013 after a 65 year absence. Brad Lambert went 22-48 in six seasons. Healy just went 7-5 and took the team to its first bowl game. He is 34. He is the second youngest coach in Division One football. And he is pretty f—-ing cool in a PJ Fleck kind of way
This wouldn’t be a hire that might wow the casual fan. But I think it might be pretty good. At the start of this search I said, “Do something daring and hire Joe Brady.” This isn’t exactly that, but it’s not far off. If this is where Missouri goes, I’m intrigued. If you're Missouri, you've got to be different. You can't hire a great coach. You have to hire a coach you think will be great. If they think that's Healy, I'm on board.
Also, if it’s Healy, it would make some sense why a move was made now. He grew up a Vanderbilt fan. His uncle was an all-American at Vanderbilt. Vandy fans love him and would love him to be the coach. But Vandy brought back Derek Mason. If Missouri hires him, he isn’t going to Vandy. So if he’s truly the top guy and was the top guy at the start, maybe there’s a reason they started the search now.
But be warned, this thing started with Mike Norvell being the hot name and we’ve confirmed he is out. The next hot name was Lane Kiffin and that now appear to be significantly overblown (At this point, I think I misinterpreted signals and read into things more than I should have and took people who wanted Kiffin meaning that Kiffin was a serious candidate; as of this morning I'm not at all sure he is). So by tomorrow, maybe Will Healy isn’t even a thought. But he’s a thought right now. Read a bit more about him here:
https://amp.theleafchronicle.com/amp/893588001?__twitter_impression=true
As I said, I’ve been told Mizzou is interviewing eight to ten guys this week. If I can find out who more of them are, I’ll let you know. Still remain confident Harsin, Monken and Willie Fritz are among considerations. Still think, but am not sure, that Skip Holtz and Jeff Scott are. We’ll keep working to do the best we can to keep you all semi-informed.
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