WVU football's head coaching situation keeps getting weirder, as former Post-Gazette reporter Colin Dunlap's declaration that current head coach Bill Stewart tried to get him to "dig up this dirt" about incoming head coach Dana Holgorsen has athletic director Oliver Luck scrambling - and not really sounding like he has a particular plan in the meantime:
He was non-committal when asked if either Stewart or Holgorsen would be head coach come fall.
"I am not worried about the Mountaineers going into the season without a head coach," he said. "That will not happen."
In the interview, Luck also called into question his decision to hire a coach-in-waiting. He said he thought it would be a good idea, so that Stewart could mentor Holgorsen, and Holgorsen could focus on installing his up-tempo offense.
"In my mind I thought it made some sense," he said. "In retrospect, we can all second guess. ... Would I do it again? I don't know."
It seems hard to believe that Stewart - whose contract is currently "on hold" - will still be WVU's coach in 2011 once all the smoke clears. If Holgorsen ended up as the 2011 head coach, that would be ironic, after this whole brouhaha began as a story about his alleged troubles with alcohol.
I don't envy Luck as he tries to figure out what to do here. But he might have brought it on himself to a degree by arranging the head-coach-in-waiting situation, in which outgoing coach Stewart was supposed to stay in his job in 2011 while Holgorsen came in as offensive coordinator and then took over Stewart's job in 2012. From Stewart's perspective, It would take a big man indeed to handle that in a professional manner - although that doesn't excuse Stewart's behavior, if in fact he did try to get reporters to smear Holgorsen.