If the Yale administration has any concerns about the fortunes of the 2012 Yale football team, they'd better be hitting the ground running this week.
Beginning with the announcement that Yale's general counsel would be investigating Tom Williams' claims of being a Rhodes Scholarship candidate, the process leading to his removal as Yale's coach has moved at a snail's pace. I was told by a very reliable source that Yale had heard back from the people at Stanford verifying that they had recommended that he pursue a Rhodes Scholarship on the day that Yale played Harvard. For the record, that was Nov. 19. Yet, it took five weeks before Yale announced Williams "resignation." I believe that Williams resigned of his own accord about as much as I bought that Jack Siedlecki "retired" after the 2008 season.
I had multiple people with connections to Yale tell me the week of the Yale/Harvard game that Williams was as good as gone as soon as Yale put Williams' fate in the hands of the General Counsel. It seems to me that they waited to announce it until the week before Christmas to minimize the impact. Why not announce it when the Yale students are on break? That is exactly what happened. The Yale players were not informed of Williams' departure until after the media was notified. That is an absolute slap in the face to the Yale players and seems to me of being a case of the Yale administration acting in order to save face instead of doing what is in the best interest of the Yale program.
Today was the first one that Yale was left without a head coach. Now it is the time for Yale to get Williams' replacement. They do have about 10 early commits leaving about 20 spots left to filled. The word I have been hearing is that many of the prospects expected to visit campus in a couple of weeks have scheduled visits to other schools for the weekend of January 13-15. Among those planning to come to Yale that weekend was Wes Moon, a safety from Monarch High in Louisville, Colo. Down to Yale and Princeton, Moon recently committed to Princeton.
According to a story on the BoCoPreps.com site, Moon was quoted as saying "Yale's head coach resigned, which was the starting point, and then I was considering how much I wanted to take my official visit. My high school coach, Phil Bravo, asked me what I thought Yale could have that was better than Princeton. It took me a long time to sit down and ponder what I actually wanted, and I realized I was perfectly content with Princeton."
Even before the news of Tom Williams' departure from Yale became public, coaches from the rival Ivy League coaches were closing in on the players being recruited by the Bulldogs. The day that the Williams story broke, I spoke with Yale recruiting target Ludovic Richardson out of Notre Dame of West Haven who said a member of Brown's coaching staff had contacted him. Trust me, this was not an isolated incident.
If the people who make the call on hiring the new Yale coach don't want to Bulldogs to get completely crushed in recruiting, they may want to have a head coach in place by the end of this week or the middle of next week at the latest. At then if recruits do visit New Haven next weekend, they will be able to meet with the Bulldogs' head coach other than a bunch of assistants likely not to be around when Yale begins spring practice.
There's no reason that candidates can't be brought in for interviews this week. Two names consistently mentioned as being targeted by Yale are Vanderbilt defensive coordinator and former Yale receiver Bob Shoop and UConn defensive coordinator Don Brown. Well, Vanderbilt's season ended with a 31-24 loss to Cincinnati in the Liberty Bowl on Saturday and UConn wasn't bowl eligible so if Shoop and/or Brown are interested, let's hope Yale moves quickly to bring them in.
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