Dodge: We will look outside first
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January 2010
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UNT head coach Todd Dodge said today that he will look outside first when it comes to replacing offensive coordinator Todd Ford, who is leaving the staff to become a head coach at the high school level. Ford's appointment will become official today. He is one of the last original members of Dodge's staff. "I am going to sit back and look outside first," Dodge said. "There are a few programs that I have looked at talking to their coaches. They have done great things with the spread and have been balanced. There is also an option to go within my staff. I am excited about going out and taking the time to get the best possible guy. We like what we do offensively, but there is room for improvement. I would be excited about brining in someone from a program like us." Dodge said he will not look at moving safeties coach Chuck Petersen to the offensive side of the ball. Petersen came to UNT from Air Force, where he coached on the offensive side of the ball. UNT's other offensive assistant coaches are Clayton George, Shelton Gandy and Spencer Leftwich. It could be tough for UNT to bring in an experienced college assistant considering the coaching staff is under pressure to win now after three tough seasons. If UNT goes outside, it seems likely the coach would be a position coach at a non-AQ school looking for a chance to make a splash or an offensive coordinator from a smaller school looking for a chance to establish himself on the major college level. Dodge said the switch won't affect UNT in the stretch run of the recruiting season. UNT already has some of its key targets wrapped up at this point and is looking to close on a few others. E-mail entry: |
Mike Leach
Ramon Flanigan
Leaving the sinking ship?
The door is open for the Mean Green to go after Lincoln Riley or Eric Russell. Either would be a great addition to the staff and recruiting efforts. How about the title of assistant head coach of the offense. Get them on board and shuffle them around to the best positions. What do you all think? $90-100k?
What would it take Salary wise to land Russell? He seems to be exactly what this staff needs.
I was one of the harsher critics of Ford, but I have a lot of respect for him resigning now. I think by any way you look at it he did not have a good season last year in his dual areas of responsibility and he probably should have been fired over it.
Dodge clearly saw a lot of himself in Ford and maybe because of that he could not be as critical as he should have been.
I prefer to look at this as Ford seeing some weaknesses in his work that needed to be improved upon and deciding not to get his co-workers fired while he dealt with that.
That's VERY respectable.
Plus by leaving today on his own terms he was able to land what sounds to be a pretty good job. If he had been fired next season he might not have been able to land that caliber of job.
That shows a lot of intelligence too.
Ford may not have been great as an offensive coordinator (or co-offensive coordinator) but maybe that is because he is a more natural head coach. He wouldn't be the first.
I hope Ford becomes the caliber of high school coach that Todd Dodge was. Good luck to you sir.
My preference by far is to get the special teams fixed, but if we are going to blow the money on a luxury of an offensive coordinator, I would push for someone from an offense that is a little more diverse and imaginitive than Dodge's.
The only points I see in bringing in someone from the outside is to have someone who has been on a staff that has actually run a certain play or someone who has called plays before.
It seems a huge waste of that money. I mean it isn't like the Dodge scheme doesn't move the ball.
If it has to be spent that way, I would have preferred Georgia Tech's Jeff Monken, but Georgia Southern hired him as their head coach. I wouldn't mind seeing someone off the Tulsa staff.
And I still like David Beatty, the former Kansas and Rice WR coach. He is a star in the making.