Saturday, December 11, 2010

More mystery about the Bowen "hire"

Jason Stamm of InsideHilltopperSports.com said Friday evening he had confirmed that Clint Bowen, UNT's will-he-or-won't-he new defensive coordinator, interviewed at Indiana on Thursday. From what message-board chatter I can piece together, it sounds like Bowen is considering a position-coach job that pays more than UNT can offer as a defensive coordinator. Other than money, I can't think of another reason why Bowen would do that, but sometimes money talks.

What little time I had Friday to chase this led to not much on UNT's end, but senior associate athletic director Eric Capper told the Western Kentucky student newspaper in an e-mail  that "there has been no official announcement about the hiring of any assistant football coaches and at the present time the University of North Texas does not have a contract with Mr. Bowen."

Obviously, that could be administrator speak for "he's here, just not officially." If there's a soap opera playing out between UNT and IU for Bowen's services, it'll play out soon. But I also know Stamm isn't pulling junk out of thin air when he says Bowen has interviewed at IU, and that at least bears watching.

My guess is at least a modest level of confusion or uncertainty about Bowen's status exists on certain fronts, but it stands to reason new UNT coach Dan McCarney knows one way or another. The most suspicious aspect is there's been enough time for Bowen to be firmly in place at UNT, and he's apparently talking to IU as late as Thursday. Maybe he's covering bases, which isn't a bad idea in that nasty business.

Here's the updated story from the WKU paper.

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