Women’s Basketball: Brodhead obvious choice to Farmer

Eric Narcisse, Daily Advertiser, April 4, 2012

Most coaching searches tend to be a long and grueling process, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case for UL Athletic Director Scott Farmer, who acted fast in securing former Ragin’ Cajuns women’s basketball coach Errol Rogers’ successor.

Despite a self-compiled list of names and recommendations of potentially good candidates made by the search firm Carr Sports Associates Inc, as well as the submitted 38 resumes from people interested in the position, Farmer said Tuesday he only conducted three interviews before deciding Garry Brodhead was his guy.

Although the decision wasn’t made until around 8 p.m. on Sunday while watching the Women’s Final Four, Farmer said he became more and more confident that Brodhead epitomized everything he and UL President Dr. Joseph Savoie were looking for in their next coach.

All that’s left to be done is the formality of being approved by the University of Louisiana System’s Board of Supervisors and the agreement on a contract. Tuesday was the deadline according to Farmer to get Brodhead on the agenda in time for the next meeting.

"The Board of Supervisors will have to give the official approval of coach Brodhead’s hiring and then we’ll have to work out a contract," Farmer said. "We have discussed (the parameters) of a contract and it will likely be a four-year contract."

Farmer doesn’t expect any problems occurring in contract talks with Brodhead, but did dispel the notion that he must be paid in the same ballpark as UL men’s Basketball Coach Bob Marlin.

"During the interview we talked about salary and years as well as bonuses for athletic achievements and academic achievements by his team," Farmer said. "But in the courts of law it has been determined that the men and women’s basketball coaching positions aren’t the same job, but what we have done is researched the salaries of coaches in our own conferences. We want our coaches to be competitive in salary with those coaches in our conference, so it could be in the top 25 percent of the conference or the average coaching salary in the conference."

Brodhead, who has begun the process of trying to assemble a coaching staff, will have to hit the ground running once approved.

"Coach Brodhead met with his team this morning and now he’ll have to get his staff together," Farmer said. "Right after that, he will have to prepare to go out and recruit, so he has a lot of work to do."