With Dave Doeren‘s Northern Illinois Huskies dropping Darrell Hazell‘s Kent State Golden Flashes in the MAC championship game last night, that outcome likely cost the conferences millions of dollars in BcS money.
The situation now, though, becomes whether either or both of those coaches will be making personal millions at another school next season.
Wednesday, North Carolina State reportedly interviewed Louisiana Tech head coach Sonny Dykes and Clemson offensive coordinator Chad Morris for the vacancy created by Tom O’Brien‘s firing earlier this month. The search has taken a bit of a “break,” as the Fayetteville Observer described it, due to the next round of targets’ -- Doeren and Hazell -- involvement in the conference title game.
Interviews with the two MAC coaches, if they indeed come to fruition, are not expected to take place until Sunday at the earliest. A decision on a new head coach likely won’t come until the middle of this coming week, if then.
NCSU and athletic director Debbie Yow are utilizing a search firm in their hunt for a new head football coach, and the Charlotte Observer notes a connection that may or may not hint to the course this may take: “Yow hired Parker Executive Search, for $90,000, to vet candidates. The Parker firm helped Northern Illinois hire Doeren from Wisconsin in Dec. 2010.”
That said, it’s reached the point that, barring Doeren, Hazell or any other candidate fingered by the search firm blowing the doors off their interviews, Dykes failing to land the Wolfpack job would be viewed as a substantial upset.