Every athletic director has a list of potential coaching candidates, just in case.
“You have to,” Fresno State’s Jim Bartko told me last month when we spoke in his office.
Bartko needed a list in June when Arizona State hired away his softball coach. He nearly needed one in March when another Pacific-12 school was interested in his women’s basketball coach. (Jaime White ended up getting an extension.)
Now we’re in October, and the football team Bartko depends on to fill his department’s coffers is 1-6, has lost 15 of 17 against FBS opponents and is drawing its sparsest crowds in decades.