Recordpub.com - Geno Ford deserves contract extension

A Mid-American Conference regular-season men’s basketball championship and a selection as the league’s Coach of the Year should help Kent State’s Geno Ford get a well deserved contract extension.

Ford has two seasons remaining on the two-year, $200,000-per-year deal he signed in April of 2008.

On Friday of last week, Ford led the Golden Flashes to a championship-clinching win over arch-rival Akron. Three days later, he was named the MAC’s Coach of the Year in a 13-10 vote over Akron’s Keith Dambrot.

“We are very pleased, and this only enhances our support for Geno,” said Kent State athletic director Laing Kennedy. “We will be looking at a contract extension hopefully within the next few weeks.”

Kennedy said dates to watch for the contract to be in place is the Final Four, which will be held on April 3-5.

A provision already exists in the current contract for Ford and Kent State to mutually agree on a one-year extension, but Ford has earned the right to expect more. With Kennedy set to retire on June 30 and a new athletic director starting work the next day, Ford deserves the security of at least two more years added on to his contract.

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AS FOR THE A.D. SEARCH — According to a Kent State source, at least seven sitting athletic directors will be on the list of 12 candidates who will be interviewed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport next week.

Most of the other five candidates for the Kent State athletic director position are associate or assistant athletic directors with marketing and fundraising accomplishments at some big-name schools from the BCS conferences.

The 17 members of Kent State’s search committee signed a confidentiality agreement and have remained tight lipped about the candidates culled by consultant Todd Turner, a former athletic director at Connecticut, Washington and Vanderbilt who now works for ISP Sports.

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WIDE-OPEN FIELD — As the No. 1 seed, Ford’s men’s basketball team is the favorite to win the MAC Tournament this week at Quicken Loans Arena.

As the No. 3 seed, Bob Lindsay’s KSU women’s team is among the favorites to contend in the women’s tournament, which begins today in Cleveland.

Those positions don’t necessarily lead to secure feelings for either coach. Both see their respective tournaments as wide-open events with several possible champions.

“The tough thing with the tournament is it is just about being hot,” said Ford, whose Flashes open tournament play Thursday at 7 p.m. against No. 9 Ohio University. “It’s not like an NBA best-of-seven playoff where the best team is always going to win. You’ll have the MAC Tournament this week, someone is going to win. You could turn it around and play the exact same tournament the next week, and you probably wouldn’t have the same champion.”

Bowling Green is once again the favorite to win the women’s tournament as the No. 1 seed following its sixth consecutive regular-season championship.

“But I think there are at least five teams that could win it if things fell into the right place for them,” said Lindsay. “We’ll see what happens. Bowling Green is the regular-season champ, so you have to beat them, but I think it has been proven the last two years that other teams are capable in the tournament of beating them. They have to come in and play well. They are the ones who have all of the pressure on them because they won the regular season and now they haven’t gone to the NCAA Tournament for the last two years.”

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Contact David Carducci at dcarducci@recordpub.com