Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Up next at Central Michigan: Dan Enos

Central Michigan announced Tuesday that Michigan State running backs coach Dan Enos has been named head coach. Insert joke here about being the next coach at Cincinnati.

I'll be honest: I don't know a whole lot about Enos, which isn't surprising since his resume consists of jobs as a quarterbacks coach or running backs coach at schools such as Southern Illinois and North Dakota State. The one thing I do know is that Enos is widely recognized around the state as MSU's top recruiter, the "coffee is for closers" guy on the staff. How much that will matter at a MAC school remains to be seen. I suppose the important thing is that he brings in better players than Western Michigan and Toledo and the rest of the MAC, but it's not like he'll ever get the state's high-end recruits to come to CMU instead of Michigan or Michigan State.

On top of that, Enos has never been more than a coordinator (and that was at the Division II level), so while he has a fairly extensive offensive background, it's still a HUGE jump up to D-I head coach. It's kinda surprising that CMU reached out to a guy with such little experience ... then again, they've done pretty well with their past two hires (Brian Kelly and Butch Jones), so I should probably give them the benefit of the doubt.

The advantage Enos will have right from the start is that he's taking over the best program in the MAC ... sort of. CMU has won three of the past four conference titles under Kelly and Jones, which is great. The Chips have accumulated a lot of momentum in that time. The bad news is that the star offensive players who were the key pieces on those teams -- Dan LeFevour, Bryan Anderson and Antonio Brown -- are all gone. Anyone who expects Enos to come in this year and win another MAC championship is probably being unrealistic.

As for the Chips' long-term success, it will depend on whether Enos can use his recruiting magic and offensive acumen to produce a good team; based on what little is known about him, I can't offer an educated guess either way. The only reaction from Michigan State blogs is basically "this sucks for our recruiting."

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