The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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MARCH 2017 ■ 25 How did you handle ending NC State's relationship with Mark Gottfried? "We entered into the conversation with the understanding I thought he would not finish the rest of the season. When Mark brought the subject up and asked if I would reconsider and allow him to do that, it seemed to mean so much to him, and it seemed like the right thing to do. "He and I met with the team the day of our discussion on the separation and em- phasized that he is still their head coach and still their leader. We spent time emphasizing academics, study table, going to meet their tutors and going to their classes. They need to understand that things didn't just flip all of a sudden and everything is different. "We are in the middle of a semester and toward the end of basketball season, and our expectations are still there." Has the perception of NC State im- proved over the last six years due to Gott- fried getting into the NCAA Tournament four times with two Sweet 16s? "I think Mark helped change our profile. In the 20 years before Mark joined us, we did not go to the NCAA Tournament in 15 of those seasons. For him to take us back to the NCAA Tournament four consecutive times elevated the program. "As for where we are moving forward, so much of that depends on who stays and who goes [among current play- ers]. They are going to wait to see who the new leader is. "That person will have the opportunity to decide if he wants to persuade certain players to stay or he wants certain players to leave or to transfer. That is yet to be seen. "In so far as the overall profile, Mark Gottfried improved it. There is no question about that." Do you think the changes at NC State over the last six years will help with this coaching search? "NC State has a different profile right now than it did seven years ago, with 11 of our teams ranked in their respective top 25, and a number of them ranked in the top 10. "That might seem completely separate from a coaching search, but coaches are smart. They want to see who they are sur- rounded with at a school, and how the rest of the program is doing matters. "For football to listed by ESPN in its power rankings at No. 22 for the 2017 sea- son is a good thing. "It is an interesting dynamic in a search process. There probably will be coaches who have some interest, but when you get right down to the level of competition — as Mark calls it, 'The tough neighborhood' — they might not be up to that every single year. "Coaches, of course, will not say that publicly. They find something else to say, whether it's about our fan base or some- thing else. Our fan base is the core of our strength and not a liability. "It comes down to the profile of the per- son. I'm looking for a person with an edge. I wouldn't say a chip on the shoulder, but an edge. I want somebody who has the work ethic and the edge to take on this job because we are still building. "We have made strides under Mark, but the right person can take us to the next level. "We know in our neighborhood we have two Hall of Fame coaches that are near retirement. They will soon find out what searches are like in this day and age. "The thing about the search that con- cerns me the most is all of the crazy rumors on the Internet. I cannot chase all of them down and correct them. It is noise, but it does matter. Once it gets picked up by a legitimate news source as fact, it is now more than noise. "There was a day where a legitimate news outlet would not do that, but we are past that now. We saw that with the ABC affiliate in Durham when they said we had contacted another coach [Archie Miller of Dayton] while Mark was our coach. That was all false, completely and totally. "We are not doing interviews with them because of that. I'm not doing an interview until we can sit down and understand why they did that. If I don't get a satisfactory an- swer, I will probably never do an interview with them again. "The term fake news was created, and I'm beginning to see how that really applies to intercollegiate athletics these days. It is not just politics. I am always concerned about that part of the search." What can be accomplished prior to a potential coaching candidate having his season come to an end in March or early April? "The first thing we have to do is select a search committee. We will pick a group that works on this. It will be a strong, diverse group. Hopefully, there will be a member of the board of trustees on it as well as a number of key senior members of the ath- letics staff. "Our faculty representative, or his des- ignate, by charter of the athletic council is to be on every revenue sport head coach search. "The second thing is to decide which search firm we will use to support us. Search firms have a very important value. One of the things they do is a different kind of background check. This is the type of background check where people understand habits of individuals. "They will know that candidate A has a drinking problem. We would never get that through a normal university background check. They do this for a living 24/7. They know those kinds of things, and they are important aspects of the search. "The third thing we will do with the search firm is in the room with the com- mittee. We'll go through a list of potential candidates and do an exhaustive discus- sion about the achievements of each one, the habits that we might not know about. The propensity of any of the individuals in living in the southeast versus northwest part of the county. "Then, we will narrow down the group and focus on a small number of individuals we are interested in. "At that point, we are looking at where they are in their season and what they are doing. We look at who their agent is, and the search firm will generally reach out to their agent just to say, 'NC State has some interest in talking to that person.' "One of the strange things about this is the Internet turns talking to a person into trying to hire them. We don't know until we talk to them if the fit is good, and neither do they. That doesn't mean we offered them a job. It is the beginning of the process in getting to know each other and that person's needs and wants. "There will be coaches that say, 'I can not talk to you until we play our last game. I just can't. I can only focus on this.' There will be other people who will say perhaps, 'I need to stay focused on my team, but I'm willing to at least have a conversation about it.' We don't know that yet about any individual candidate." What ways do you get help in learning about coaches that you might have only watched on TV a few or several times? "You are always going to watch film when you can, and obviously you should. Basically, a lot of this comes down to what they have achieved. The achievements are "We want that edge, recruiting and a solid X-and-O coach, who is fundamentally sound and willing to do what it takes to make our team follow the fundamentals." ■ Yow