Dana Holgorsen will join the staff of the West Virginia Mountaineers as offensive coordinator and head-coach-in-waiting, according to the Charleston Gazette. One of the most hotly contested and desired coaching properties in college football, the current Oklahoma State offensive coordinator’s name had been on the short list at Pitt and at a number of other schools prior to the Mountaineers’ offer.
Dana Holgorsen To Join West Virginia As Offensive Coordinator and Head Coach In Waiting, According to Reports
Bill Stewart, current head coach at West Virginia, would leave the school in 2012 and turn over the job to Holgorsen as part of the deal. The exact timetable for the transition is unknown. According to the Gazette’s report, the entire defensive coaching staff would be retained, including defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel. The decision is a savvy one: Casteel has been a constant at West Virginia since the Rich Rodriguez era, and presided over one of the nation’s most efficient units in 2010.
If the Mountaineers had one glaring problem it was their offense, something Holgorsen is clearly there to fix. According to Bruce Feldman, Holgorsen would likely look at taking Shannon Dawson of Stephen F. Austin University with him to Morgantown. Current coordinator Jeff Mullen, who has interviewed at Kent State University for their open head coaching job, would reportedly be gone no matter what happened with the KSU job.
Bill Stewart may still be uncomfortable with all of this, but the story appears to be rolling forward pending a guarantee that the defensive staff would be retained until 2011 and then have the option to stay on beyond that.
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