McNeely has a lot riding on DiNardo

Gerry DiNardo's head coaching background sounds decent when you sing it aloud. \nFormer Vanderbilt coach. Former LSU coach. Former coach of the XFL\'s Birmingham Thunderbolts. \n Pretty decent credentials for somebody about to become the football guru at a basketball school. A month ago, who would have thought that athletics director Michael McNeely could lure a coach with two SEC tenures and professional experience to take one of major college football's most unattractive jobs?\nYou then examine DiNardo's recent history, and the song doesn't have as much harmony.\nIn his last three years as a head coach, DiNardo compiled an 8-23 record. Cam Cameron went 12-21 in his final three seasons at IU.\n During DiNardo's final season at LSU, the Tigers started with a 2-0 record before losing eight consecutive games. DiNardo didn't last the entire season. He was fired two days after LSU lost to Houston, 20-7, at Tiger Stadium.\nWhen DiNardo left the Tiger Stadium field, he was jeered by many of the remaining fans. At the time, the stadium was half-full, despite the near-capacity crowd that was seated when the game started. \n In DiNardo's one year as an XFL coach, Birmingham started 2-1 but lost its last seven games. The XFL folded shortly after the season, and DiNardo was out of coaching. \nLike anybody who coaches at the NCAA Division I level for an extended period of time, DiNardo had connections. In this case, it was McNeely, whom he had worked with at Colorado when both were assistants.\nWhen LSU hired DiNardo in 1994, he was the program's second choice. LSU wanted Texas Christian's Pat Sullivan, but was unable to lure him to Baton Rouge.\nWho knows what number DiNardo was on McNeely's depth chart? \n McNeely conducts his business as secretly as some CIA agents, so we will probably never know how many potential candidates he met with during the course of this rumor-filled coaching search.\nAt Tuesday's news conference, McNeely said that DiNardo was the only coach to receive an official offer.\n"Gerry was the candidate that fit our profile early on," McNeely said.\n DiNardo has been out of coaching for months. He had not been connected with any other coaching vacancies. If DiNardo was McNeely's man the entire time, then why wasn't he hired earlier?\nA few extra weeks would've given DiNardo more time to assemble his staff. Now he will likely spend some sleepless nights this week finalizing his staff before recruiting visits resume Sunday. By that time, most recruits, especially those outside of Indiana, won't be able to associate DiNardo with IU.\nA late flight forced McNeely to announce DiNardo's hiring an hour before Tuesday's home basketball game against Michigan State. The announcement was orginally to be made at a 4:30 p.m. press conference, but it was pushed back an hour almost immediately after it was first announced.\nWhile all of this was going on, Stanford was searching for a coach, as well. One of the candidates for its vacancy was former San Diego Chargers coach Mike Riley, who was reportedly a candidate for the IU job. Instead, Stanford chose Florida defensive coordinator Buddy Teevens to replace Tyrone Willingham.\n If Riley is still without a head-coaching job a month from now, McNeely might be locked in his office kicking himself. \nSure, Riley struggled in San Diego the past two seasons. But hiring a coach with NFL experience would've drawn attention to a program that struggles filling half of a 52,000-seat stadium. \n Imagine the stories Riley could tell recruits about coaching linebacker Junior Seau or quarterback Doug Flutie. Not even DiNardo's fiery personality can make a story describing what it was like to coach against "He Hate Me" exciting for more than five minutes, which is about as long as the XFL lasted.\nMcNeely is the individual with the most to lose with the decision to hire DiNardo. He took it upon himself to conduct this search, and whatever DiNardo does or doesn't accomplish will reflect upon him. \nThis is McNeely's first major personnel decision since becoming IU's athletics director last April. His first major hire is a coach who rebuilt two programs but had trouble maintaining any consistency. \n"I think in the end, we will be proud Gerry Dinardo is the head coach," McNeely said.\nMcNeely's football background was a major reason he's athletics director at IU. It's time to see how good that background really is.