By
Denny O'Brien
©2010 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.
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RICK STOCKSTILL |
(Photo: MTSU SID) |
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Of all the names connected
to the search to replace departed East Carolina football coach Skip
Holtz, it’s hard to ignore Rick Stockstill.
If you were to evaluate
the candidates solely by the criteria that athletics director Terry
Holland said he will use to name Holtz’s successor, Stockstill seems to
be the most prepared to lead the ECU program.
Especially when you
compare the résumés.
His work at Middle
Tennessee State alone speaks volumes about his credentials. All he has
done is take a program with zero tradition in the Football Bowl
Subdivision and guide it to the only two bowls it has attended in school
history.
That makes him a builder.
When you can recruit like
Stockstill, how can you not be a builder? Ask any guru who is paid to
closely follow recruiting and you’ll quickly learn that Stockstill is
widely recognized as an elite recruiter who is challenged by few in the
Southeast.
When your program resides
in a state with four schools in BCS automatic qualifier conferences that
are run by decorated head coaches, that’s an important trait to have. In
most of the head-to-head battles with the Triangle Two, Holtz didn’t win
too many in the recruiting war.
Stockstill would give the
Pirates a fighting chance. Though he certainly wouldn’t win them all,
you can rest assured he would get his share. It’s hardly a stretch to
suggest that ECU would attract and sign a different caliber of athlete
under Stockstill’s watch than it did while Holtz was the chief salesman.
That’s not an indictment
on Holtz’s ability to recruit. It’s just that Stockstill is on a
completely different level when it comes to closing the deal.
Perhaps an even bigger
selling point with Stockstill is his ability to assemble a staff. When
you consider Middle Tennessee's relative lack of resources, it’s
downright amazing the caliber of assistants he lured to Murfreesboro.
It starts with offensive
coordinator Tony Franklin, one of the more acclaimed architects of the
spread offense around. There also is Les Herrin, who served on Art
Baker’s staff at East Carolina, and a roster of assistants who have
spent time at Clemson, Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, and
others.
He also has worked with
current ECU assistants Phil Petty and Steve Shankweiler, so the
possibility of retaining members of Holtz’s staff exists. That certainly
wouldn’t hurt continuity, and would help ease the transition.
Then there are the
relationships he built at both Clemson and South Carolina, where Woody
McCorvey and Rick Minter immediately come to mind. It wouldn’t be out of
the question that either might join his staff if hired by ECU.
If there is one negative
detail about Stockstill’s career, it’s that he spent a year as the
offensive coordinator at East Carolina during John Thompson’s first
season. The offense sputtered — that’s putting it nicely — but you can’t
pin too much of the Pirates’ offensive troubles on him when you consider
his working conditions.
Stockstill was instructed
by Thompson to implement an offense that focused on power running and
deep passing. He was asked to do this using personnel from the Logan era
that was geared more towards a modified West Coast system.
There aren’t too many
offensive coordinators, if any, who would be successful given those
parameters. Not when you’re asking Marvin Townes to be a physical runner
between the tackles, or when Desmond Robinson is your starting
quarterback.
Yet there are some who are
convinced that this one season was more reflective of his abilities than
the four he has spent as a head coach or the 22 others he spent as an
assistant. Subtract that one year from his career, and you have the
overwhelming fan favorite for the job.
It’s tough to gauge
exactly which direction Holland will turn or when he will name Holtz’s
successor. All we can do is speculate and make any confirmation that we
can on the candidates.
It’s clear that Stockstill
is one of them. And he certainly seems like a good choice to lead ECU.