Bill Carmody a candidate for Drake head coach opening?

Bill Carmody probably won't stay unemployed for long, and we have the first plausible school that could look to hire him: Drake, who recently fired Mark Phelps.

As the days and weeks move forward, we'll be keenly interested in two potential coaching hires. Northwestern's, which we've already spilled some ink about, and whichever job Bill Carmody chooses to take. Teddy Greenstein at the Tribune already wrote that Carmody would soon find work if Northwestern were to fire him - not to mention the insane amounts of well wishes from Big Ten coaches praising a guy they thought was a really good coach - and it seems like that will be the case.

Our first blip on Bill Carmody's radar comes from Des Moines, where the Bulldogs are looking for someone new after canning Mark Phelps.

Ohhhhhh girrrrrrl, I know you wanna coach in that Missouri Valley Conference girrrrrrrl yeahhhhhhh take it reall slowwwwwwwwwww now - Sorry, wrong Drake.

In addition to finding a way to produce their delicious coffee cakes after the Hostess bankruptcy, the middling MVC squad is looking for someone to get back to some success. They also had a bottoming out in the late 90's, going 0-18 back to back years, but they returned to mediocrity under Tom Davis. After he retired, his son Keno Davis took over, and immediately bolted for Providence after bringing the school to its first NCAA Tournament since 1971 and winning AP Coach of the Year his first season. Phelps underwhelmed, with just two winning seasons and two CIT's in five years.

Rick Brown of the Des Moines Register made the case that Carmody will be on the short list, touting him as a fit for the program and the guy that could bring them back to MVC relevance as teams like Creighton and Wichita State have blown by. It's not a crazy argument. When Carmody does land, it likely won't be at a major conference school, and although Carmody's pay is brought up, he will probably have to take a pay cut wherever he ends up.

However, it is super-weird to see some of the arguments Brown uses as for why Carmody should pick Drake.

But back to the news of the day. Carmody has worked in academic-rich environments at Princeton and Northwestern. Carmody understands the ins and outs of building a program with more stringent academic requirements than most. He would feel at home at Drake....

Drake president David Maxwell has a bachelor’s degree in Russian area studies from Grinnell College and master’s and doctorate degrees in Slavic languages and literatures from Brown. Meet Carmody, who gave Northwestern an international flavor by recruiting foreign athletes. He had players from Romania, Serbia and Sudan on this season’s roster, and that approach would be a nice fit at Drake.

I'm pretty sure the President's expertise in Russian literature has just about 0.0003 percent to do with the fact that Chier Ajou was on Northwestern this year. But I digress.

More weird is this:

The Knapp Center would be an upgrade for Carmody, who has coached in aging Welsh-Ryan Arena. Neither Drake or Northwestern has a practice facility. Drake is in the beginning phase of fundraising for a $7 million practice facility. There are not similar plans in place at Northwestern.

Yup. Drake has better facilities than Northwestern already, and they're improving them, while Northwestern... isn't.

I do think we make facilities into something that it's completely impossible to win without, which is somewhat untrue. Northwestern was a few games away from the NCAA Tournament for four years with awful facilities. But it is something that could hurt Northwestern as they try to get a new coach, not to mention how it already hurts them in season. Jim Phillips also tried to downplay the facilities thing in his presser Saturday, which is hopefully less ignorance and more what he has to do to sell new coaches on the team. Let's hope some good options are buying.