Assistant Coach Shuffle
Waves were made in Hawaiʻi during the months leading up to Spring practice. With the departures of Defensive Coordinator Jerry Glanville and Special Teams Coach Darrel "Mouse" Davis (the father of the Run and Shoot offense), the Warriors' most anticipated season took a slight detour.
On March 1, 2007, Glanville chose to accept the Head Coach position at Portland State University. It became apparent that he was seriously considering the position after staying in Portland an extra four days following his official interview. To harden the blow, Glanville offered Davis the Offensive Coordinator job at PSU. Davis was also the head coach for PSU in the '70s and '80s, where his run-and-shoot offense gained national attention. The silver lining on the dark cloud was that Davis wasn't the only one to benefit and there was another member of the coaching staff who would prosper from this particular move. With two vacancies on the coaching staff, it made it possible for Offensive Line Coach Dennis McKnight to be promoted from an unpaid Graduate Assistant, to a salary-earning full-time assistant coach.
As for the other open position to be filled, it was believed that because of his experience and tremendous recruiting accomplishments, Defensive Line Coach Jeff Reinebold was the obvious choice to become the next Defensive Coordinator. But shortly after Glanville's departure, talk of former Hawaiʻi Defensive Coordinator Greg McMackin surfaced as a candidate for the job he held in 1999, June Jones' first season as Hawaiʻi head coach. With the impressive, hard-hitting, 3-4 blitzing defense that Glanville put on the field in 2006 setting the standards ever-so-high, whoever was to inherit the job would have some big shoes to fill. Should Hawaiʻi remain a punishing 3-4 defense under Reinebold or return to a heavily blitzing 4-3 defense under McMackin that contributed to the biggest turnaround in NCAA college football history? The answer became slightly clearer when McMackin made an appearance as an "observer" to the first spring practice. The final confirmation came on April 5, when it was officially announced that Greg McMackin was named the Defensive Coordinator for UH. Although his time at Hawaiʻi was short, Glanville definitely left a lasting impression on the fans as well as the players.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Hawaii Warriors Football Team
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