HCIW is so stupid
It works in this case.
Snyder deserves a HoF victory lap.
Assistant coaches can have more recruiting contact than a head coach so it gives VB more time to recruit.
This gives VB basically an extra recruiting class, year on the trail as the assistant then his first year as HC is his second class.
Giving BV the HC job and having him run the program as he sees fit is actually what makes sense. (This assumes you think BV will make a good head coach.)
I'm all for what gets Venables here, so if it's one or the other, I'm for whichever one works.
However, in this situation, Bill isn't really running a whole lot, and history has shown recently that a soft transition generally nets better results than a hard transition, at least in the short term.
Venables would have a year to run the program as he sees fit, with Bill's input, and he'd be able to give a number of the assistants a year long interview to see if he wants to keep working with them. Several of them are going to walk when Bill does, based on age alone, so it's safe to say that BV will have the opportunity to fill in assistants as he sees fit, including DC. It also means he doesn't have to scramble to put together a staff and recruit in an 8-9 week period. While there would be recruiting restrictions, he could recruit once they get to campus, and that would be huge for us. It gives him a year to assemble a class and re-introduce himself to the local and regional high school and JUCO coaches.
A lot of negative stuff happens in the chaos during that transition. Your recruits start looking around, you make snap judgments on assistants so you can have a staff going into Spring football, etc. Existing players have to adjust to a new S&C program during winter workouts, then they have a new process during Spring football with new coaches, they generally learn new schemes vs. what they've spent months or years implementing and getting comfortable with, etc. There are a lot of benefits to getting there a year early if that is something you're interested in.
If Venables didn't have a connection to a lot of these coaches, I could easily see him saying no. But he does have a connection with many of them, and that may increase his comfort level in a HCIW situation.