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Today Appalachian State’s AD Charlie Cobb appeared on Charlotte’s ESPN730. He talked about the decision to end Coach Moore’s tenure at App, the basketball program, and conference realignment.
Here are some of the highlights:
On what he’s looking for in a new head coach:
We want to find someone that’s got a connection to our community, to our school, and I think that’s really the first key. Understanding Appalachian and what this football program means to our campus and to our community.
Secondly you look for someone with some really strong leadership skills.
Third, for us the spread offense is part of what we do. That’s what our team is built around. We’re built around speed, we’re built around being aggressive and so I think if, and I know we will, we’ll find someone that fits those 3 primary characteristics, we’ll continue our success.
That’s basically just a description of Scott Satterfield. I’m bumping up the likelihood of us hiring him from 90% to 99%.
On joining an FBS conference that has geographic rivals:
It’s the #1 criteria for us. And that is joining a league that has geographic rivalries. Candidly we could be in an FCS, I’m sorry, an FBS league today that would involve schools all over America. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for Appalachian…
I’ve thought about this quote a lot. He is NOT referring to the Big East or C-USA cause we couldn’t be in the Big East and we actively pursued C-USA. The description of “all over America” doesn’t apply to the MAC or Sun Belt. So the ONLY conference I think he could be talked about was that supposed east coast WAC division that was rumored. That obviously fell through. But the fact that it was actually a real possibility that we turned down is a new revelation.
On basketball coach Jason Capel:
We’re a really young team, we went through a transition…right now we’re seeing that vacuum, or a little bit of a void, with having older players on our roster. Through another year of cycle, we’ll answer that question. We’re getting better every week and every game and I think that’s the exciting part of where our basketball program is.
AKA Capel is getting a pass this year.
