AD Ross Bjork reveals how he'll go about the Ole Miss coaching search
When former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze resigned amid a major scandal earlier this offseason, athletic director Ross Bjork acted quickly in naming Matt Luke the team’s interim coach.
The Rebels will play out the 2017 season under Luke, but whether or not he’s the long-term answer remains to be seen, as Bjork will evaluate the school’s options this year.
Bjork explained to Ben Garrett on the “Talk of Champions” podcast that he will try to play this year’s coaching search close to the vest as he attempts to determine whether Luke should be named the full-time coach or if an outside hire would be best:
“Confidentiality is key,” Bjork told Garrett. “A lot of times when you’re in a short window, because you’re going so fast, you just go. In this case, we’re going to have so much time, that nothing can leak out, nothing can be speculated, or ‘sources.’ Right now, if anything is leaked, I would leak it. I would be the source, and that’s not happening so I think we have to have a very, very careful process.”
Bjork said the school needs to make sure it finds a coach who can handle the SEC spotlight, as Ole Miss is a popular program in the state of Mississippi:
“There is no question that the job is so big, especially in the SEC,” he said. “Especially in a state like ours where people want to touch and feel the head coach, we’re going to need a special leader to make sure that they can do all of those things off the field, while making sure that inside the football building that we’re clicking on all cylinders.”
Luke will have his work cut out for him if he wants to earn the full-time job. However, with the scandals and negativity surrounding the Ole Miss program in recent years, Bjork may find that he has trouble landing a big-name coaching candidate.
Buddy stephens
Miles
I will burn my Ole Miss gear on Facebook live if that happens.
You obviously don’t know what is, and what isn’t, within Ole Miss’ reach as far as a coach goes. I don’t say Miles because I like him. I say it because he’s literally the only coach with the type of experience we need. He’s also the only one ‘very interested’ in the job, as he said. Please, since you feel so strongly about it, name a coach with better experience than Miles who you legitimately believe would/could become Ole Miss coach.
Ole Miss should go after Skip Holtz, he won’t cost a lot, will be able to guide you thru the coming storm and hand the reins to the next coach.
Miles would be a complete failure, he has inherited good situations and then coasted. He built OSU into a .500 dynamo before taking over a program built by Saban and he then coasted to mediocrity.
There is no way he will have the caliber athletes at OM he had at LSU and he didn’t do much with that talent.
Couple that with the fact that he is the biggest Quarterback Killa since Houston Nutt and OM should look elsewhere.
Who says we need some old, washed up coach just because he has “experience” as a HC. I would go for Larry Fedora. He’s making $460,000 per year in base salary, with added bonuses that could total $1.83 million. We can throw $3-$4 million at him and give him something to think about. If we went with a coordinator, my first choices would be Matt Canada or Dave Arranda. Freeze didn’t have D1 HC experience and he did pretty well on the field.
I respect your opinions. I just don’t think anyone with head coaching experience in such a league as this is interested in our sh*tstorm. While money is intriguing, it isn’t everything to some people.
…except for Miles, who does have experience. Meaning, we could go after someone else, but he’ll lack experience at the SEC level and may not be interested in the money because of Ole Miss’ “sh*tstorminess”.
Money talks. If we don’t get a second year ban, I think a lot of the negative feelings go away. Any coach that comes in will do so with the understanding that they will have several seasons to rebuild and run the program. I believe, much like the recruits, that any potential coaches that may be interested are going to hold off until the NCAA decision.
To your last sentence, oh, absolutely. I think the NCAA cloud played a pivotal role in Cam Akers not committing to OM. Speaking of coaches though, waiting to see what the NCAA does is the wisest course of action. Another bowl ban, and its repercussions is the most anticipated event. I truly believe it’s coming considering the NCAAs history of throttling programs for cheating. If our entire staff was still here I could see 2 or 3 more postseason bans. But since the entire staff is gone, minus Luke, is gone, I think it’ll be just one more bowl ban.
The Les Miles of the comment section has spoken. The only difference is that Les embraces his dumbness while BootyBuster can’t even see his. And of course Les can be really funny at time where Armyguy is full of roid rage.
You sound defeated. Your rage is apparent of your defeat. You feel… lesser. As you should. There is no logic in your words. No dignity, no credibility, no intelligence. It’s all just senseless babble. Did you miss your yoga class this morning?
Then you just proved you have no reading comprehension skills.
“people want to touch and feel the head coach”
I thought that’s what the hookers were for…?
Glad I wasn’t the only person who thought that could’ve been phrased better.
Bjerk will be gone soon. The way he’s handled this whole thing is bad.