Kevin Tresolini

The News Journal

NEWARK – Football season ended Saturday at the University of Delaware, meaning hunting season is now in full swing.

The Blue Hens are in the market for a new football coach, and the list of candidates has already been narrowed to about six, athletic director Chrissi Rawak said.

“We’re going to look to start interviewing relatively soon,” she said without providing specifics on who or when.

With other schools’ football seasons still going on, much will depend on coaches’ availability, she added.

The head-coaching position has been open since Dave Brock’s Oct. 16 firing, with co-defensive coordinator Dennis Dottin-Carter taking over on an interim basis.

Delaware closed its second straight 4-7 season Saturday with a 41-10 loss to Villanova at Delaware Stadium.

Rawak said there was “unbelievable interest” in a position that drew more than 100 applicants.

“While I’m not surprised,” Rawak said, “I’m happy. I think it just demonstrates this is a coveted role and people recognize that across the country. It’s not regional. This is a really tremendous opportunity at a great university with great tradition.”

Rawak was part of the team that hired Jim Harbaugh as Michigan football coach and has called on that experience from her previous job. She has also surveyed former UD football players and the search firm Korn Ferry is involved.

“Academics are very important,” she said, “but at the end of the day we want to win, and win the right way.”

The back-to-back losing seasons were Delaware’s first since 1938-39.

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Some interesting names have already surfaced as possible candidates for the UD position, The News Journal has learned, most notably Coastal Carolina coach Joe Moglia.

Moglia, 67 and owner of a UD master’s degree, was head coach at Archmere Academy in Claymont from 1971-74 and later an assistant at Lafayette and Dartmouth. He then embarked on a prominent business career that culminated with him being CEO at TD Ameritrade.

In 2009, Moglia decided to get back into coaching as a volunteer at Nebraska. In 2012, he became coach at Coastal Carolina. Moglia’s teams have gone 50-15 and he was Eddie Robinson Award winner as FCS coach of the year in 2015.

There is strong sentiment among many for Delaware to hire someone with head-coaching experience. Others who fit that bill and may be in the running, sources say, include Danny Rocco at CAA rival Richmond and Russ Huesman at Chattanooga. Both are in the FCS playoffs.

Naturally, Rawak’s Michigan ties have connected her to several candidates. The most prominent seems to be Tennessee offensive coordinator Mike DeBord, who had a couple Michigan stints, coached in the NFL and was also head coach at Central Michigan from 2000-03.

But Tennessee’s defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, who formerly held that role at Penn State as well as the CAA’s William & Mary and Villanova, has also been mentioned. He was head coach at Columbia (2003-05).

Former Lehigh, Elon and Ball State coach Pete Lembo, now assistant head coach/special teams coordinator at Maryland, is also viewed as a contender. So is fellow Terps aide Mike London, who guided Richmond to the 2008 FCS title, was later Virginia’s coach. He is now Maryland’s associate head coach/defensive line coach.

In a bit of irony, former Delaware coach K.C. Keeler’s offensive coordinator at top-ranked Sam Houston State, Phil Longo, also appears to have drawn interest from Delaware. He also has some head-coaching experience in 2004-05 at the now-defunct La Salle program.

Former Delaware quarterback Matt Nagy, the Kansas City Chiefs’ co-offensive coordinator, is not inclined to return to his alma mater despite overtures from UD.

Delaware’s present coaching staff, not knowing what its future holds but under contract through the end of the school year, will maintain a business-as-usual approach until something changes, Dottin-Carter said. That includes overseeing players’ routines and recruiting.

“Even though we may not be coaches here at the University of Delaware, we want to do everything we can to make sure the university is exactly where it needs to be in the battle for football supremacy,” he said.

Delaware returns 18 of the 22 offensive players in the two-deep from the Villanova game and 20 of the 22 on defense.

“There’s a lot of ability in our locker room. I will maintain that. I have no problem saying it. I believe it 100 percent,” Dottin-Carter said. “And I absolutely think that we need to do a better job coaching it.”

As for how 2016 turned out, Dottin-Carter said, “It’s absolutely frustrating when you know the potential that you have.”

It’ll be up to the next coaching staff to make six-time national champion Delaware, now absent six years from the FCS playoffs, a winner again.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @kevintresolini.