I’d like to give a big thanks to Bob Beaudine for his
collaboration on this article. Bob is the CEO of Eastman and
Beaudine, where he manages the nation’s leading executive
search firm in sports and entertainment. Bob has helped shape the
leadership teams of some of the world’s most innovative and
dynamic businesses. He has worked with major college athletic
programs and has placed 37 Athletic Directors at major universities
across the country as well as 29 Head Coaches in Football and
Basketball. He is also the author of “The Power of
Who”. Quotations in this article are his contribution.
Over the last decade, the college coaching profession has
undergone a dramatic and fundamental change as it relates to how
coaches are hired and fired. In past years, when an athletic
director decided to let a coach go, finding a proper replacement
did not require a process outside of the traditional notions of how
a regular individual was hired by an employer to fill a position.
The formula was simple: find a group of candidates that have shown
a requisite level of competitive success, interview the candidates,
determine which have the relationships and know how to build a
successful program, and hire the last candidate standing. Yet the
status quo in college athletics has been altered dramatically in
recent years. As the games themselves have evolved, the risks
involved have changed accordingly. In a day and age where millions
of dollars in athletics revenue and booster money is at stake,
mediocrity on the playing field is no longer acceptable. Athletic
directors are forced to manage multi-million dollar athletic
budgets and staffs of hundreds of people while simultaneously
dealing with the tremendous pressures of administration, alumni and
the media.
“The stakes today in getting just the right coach-have
escalated! With paparazzi, sports talk shows, and bloggers watching
each program’s every move, hiring the right search firm can
be a game changer! A successful search today is about
confidentiality, fit, and closing the deal with that one coach
everyone thought you couldn’t get.”
Additionally, with the recent explosion of social media and
blogging, news and rumors travel almost instantaneously. Every move
an athletic director or coach makes is reported on, criticized and
spewed out back out to the world before they even know what hit
them.
In a move to help take some of that pressure off their
shoulders, more and more athletic directors have sought help in
filling high profile coaching positions, particularly in basketball
and football. The executive search firm has become a saving grace
of sorts for athletic directors who simply do not have the time and
resources to find the best possible candidate to fit their coaching
vacancies. For any one job, there could be dozens, if not hundreds
of applicants. Search firms act as a filter to insure that the
proper candidates are sought out, screened (including comprehensive
background checks) and those that are the best fit make it to the
interview stage.
“The search process includes reference checks,
resume/education verification and identifying the best candidates
as it relates to fit & recruiting. It has to be confidential to
be successful. The process of confidentiality we’ve developed
over the last 15 years has gained the trust and respect of high
profile coaches that top Athletic Directors desire. Trust and
respect is vital to getting a strong slate for a search. But the
key to attracting the best coach involves ‘knowing’ the
five reasons why a great coach will consider making a move today.
It’s not always for position power and money. The five are:
1. People –A coach desires to have a great relationship
with the President/Athletic Director.
2. Tools –A coach needs the right budget, being able to
bring his own staff, the right conference, schedule, facilities,
and getting support when needed.
3. Opportunity- This revolves around the coaches family,
schools, city, aging parents and friends.
4. Legacy- Great coaches want to create significance by
turning around programs, winning conference championships and going
to bowl games, NIT and Final Four.
5. Money-Coaches want to be paid commensurate with the
opportunity and their peers. Many mistakenly think money is the
key, its important, but not the overriding piece of the puzzle. All
five are crucial.”
Yet beyond the more palpable benefits search firms offer,
they excel at a service that in many situations is far more
valuable to athletic directors - letting them tap into their own
personal networks. Search firms are in the business of
relationships; they know who the qualified candidates are and more
importantly how to reach them while being successfully conspicuous.
Athletic directors have little time to monitor potential coaching
candidates when they are not in need of one, and most of their
knowledge may come from biased and undependable sources such as the
media.
Moreover, with such a large network, often the biggest
benefit search firms offer an athletic director is the concept of
plausible deniability or rather the ability to reach out to
candidates as an impartial third party. As with coaching, the
athletic administration business is incredibly small and
incestuous. Most athletic directors know the majority of their
peers at other institutions, and even if they do not, they can rest
assured that word of their actions will travel very quickly to
those they don’t know. If an athletic director calls a coach
at a rival institution, such actions can be perceived as poaching
and even unethical. To prevent any animosity, a search firm can
call candidates on behalf of an institution and the trail will
never lead back to an athletic director, because he never formally
requested that specific coach be contacted.
“Athletic directors always have 2-3 coaching candidates
they’ve been tracking for years. Someone they think would be
the perfect fit. They have a list they usually carry in their left
hand coat pocket that covers every sport for that rainy day.
AD’s today are savvy CEO’s who also understand the
benefits of having a search firm they can trust to facilitate their
process. Someone who has had great success and experience in the
industry--knows the top coaches, their agents and how to facilitate
a successful process!”
Additionally, search firms have another powerful ally on
their side - agents. Almost all basketball and football coaches on
the BCS level are now represented by agents or some other advocate.
Not just for contract negotiations, but for job procurement,
marketing and almost all of their off the field activities. By
establishing strong relationships with key agents, search firms can
make a single call and have the ears of literally dozens of the top
coaching candidates. Although agents have become common place on
the coaching side, many athletic directors prefer to not have to
directly deal with such representatives. The search firm acts as an
intermediary, helping facilitate the hiring process and deal with a
coach’s advocate. Only once the process is completed and the
candidate is hired does the representative start to work directly
with the athletic administration or school’s legal counsel.
Many have questioned the necessities of the search firm,
citing that the high fees some firms charge are better allocated to
financially strapped athletic departments or the universities
themselves. However, it is difficult to deny the importance of
having a winning basketball or football program at a school. The
dividends that successful sports teams pay to universities are
many; most notably the massive exposure many small schools receive
when their team performs well on a national stage. Consequentially,
the head coach of a university’s football or basketball team
is arguably just as important to the success of that
institution’s president. When viewed in such a light, one
cannot argue spending a little money to do the right due diligence
and hire the best possible candidate.
“Hiring a great search firm today is just plain smart-a
great insurance policy. The search fees are insignificant in
comparison to the impact one great coach could bring to an
institution. Like: Scott Drew taking over at Baylor after a murder
(Now has them ranked top 25), Mike Anderson at Missouri taking over
after NCAA violations. (Took them to Elite 8) or June Jones at SMU
(taking them in just two years to their first bowl game in 25
years.) The right search firm understands the importance of making
a search transformational versus transactional.”
Whether or not the critics choose to accept it, search
firms’ involvement in the hiring process of high profile
coaching candidates is a trend that is here to stay. Coaches’
themselves should embrace such firms too, as increasing the
efficiency of the hiring process and making sure the best
candidates are employed will most probably lead to improved job
longevity. Like it or not, search firms may finally be the answer
to athletic programs struggling to find the right leader to take
them to promise land of sports success.
