Being its the dead period for winter recruiting, there isn’t a whole lot going on right now. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some newsworthy things going down in other areas.
UND’s secondary coach, Marty Rodgers, has decided to head back to his alma mater Southern Illinois. Rodgers, who was a standout safety under Coach Schweigert for the Salukis, will be taking on a similar role for SIU under new head coach Nick Hill, whom Rodgers played and coached with at SIU (Hill took over for Dale Lennon). It’s a lateral move in the coaching world but to get to go back home is always a big prize. Hard to blame Rodgers for that.
Rodgers did a very good job working with the extremely young UND secondary the past two seasons and will be missed.
Our speculation is that it’s not a slam dunk that Schweigert hires a secondary coach to replace Rodgers (job description does indicate they want cornerback coaching experience, however). They could easily hire a linebacker coach or even an offensive coach who has important recruiting ties and move a guy like Joel Schwenzfeier back to the secondary, or even DC Eric Schmidt.
Tom Miller of the GF Herald wrote a nice little piece on the actual job posting on UND’s HR Site. It is interesting they ask for 8 years of D1 experience, 5 years of 3-4 defense experience, and 5 years of D1 recruiting experience. That could be an indicator that they have somebody in mind, like Miller alluded to.
Whomever it may be, all signs point to a coach with some sort of past history with Coach Schweigert, whether it be Duluth, SIU or UND ties.
Not sure what to think of the job requirement that states a candidate must have, “recruiting experience in the southern region/states (example, Kentucky, Tennessee, Lousiana, Alabama, etc.)”. Considering UND hasn’t actively recruited a player in any of those states for as long as we can remember, that one is a head-scratcher. Could be an indicator of a potential candidate, once again.
Knowing the difficulties and red tape of hiring in North Dakota, we imagine an official announcement should come by mid-January. Actually pretty good timing for it to happen with the recruiting dead periods and national coaches convention coming up. The staff can pick up from there and finish off recruiting for the end of January until signing day.