Rutgers announces deal with Ventura Partners regarding football coaching search

Rutgers athletics announced a partnership with Ventura Partners on Monday to aid in the search for the next head coach of the football program.

From the press release:

“We are excited to be working with Ventura Partners,” said Hobbs. “They provide a unique range of services, including talent acquisition and development. We will begin working together immediately to ensure excellent leadership for our football program. They will also be working with us throughout the engagement on strengthening our human resources and providing market data and intelligence.”

Among the services and deliverables to be provided by Ventura Partners are leadership identification, market mapping and intelligence, outreach, internal search assistance, reference review, staff development, and industry consulting.

”Ventura Partners, a national executive search and talent management firm with a specialty practice in intercollegiate athletics, has been retained by Rutgers University to assist in the search,” said Chad Chatlos, Partner, Sports and Entertainment at Ventura. “We will work closely with Pat Hobbs, the Director of Athletics, and his leadership team on the appointment.”

Based on some quick research, Ventura Partners led the coaching search at Kansas State last year. The Big 12 program hired Chris Klieman, who led North Dakota State to a FCS national championship last season. They also led Utah’s search last year for a new athletic director after Rutgers alum Chris Hill retired. The PAC-12 school hired Mark Harlan after serving the same position at South Florida the previous four years. This past spring, Ventura led the search for Washington State to find a new basketball head coach, hiring San Francisco’s Kyle Smith. This article referenced additional recent clients Penn State and Mississippi as well.

While it’s difficult to know exactly the direction this coaching search will go, here is a interesting quote from Chatlos in an article written last week by Yahoo Sports that discussed the Rutgers search and the recent trend to hire older, veteran head coaches:

“There can be a lower risk for an AD to hire someone who has been through it before,” said Chad Chatlos, who runs collegiate searches for Ventura Partners. “The risky part is that a lot of those coaches were fired. They weren’t getting the job done at their former place. Hire them and it doesn’t go right again, people will ask, ‘Why did you hire them?’ ”

No matter which direction the coaching search goes, at least now things will start to pick up now that a search firm has been selected to handle the vetting process. For our stock watch report on potential candidates from earlier Monday, click here.