Kingsbury Completes Off-Field Personnel Hires

I wanted to address a couple of off the field hires, thanks to Football Scoop for taking notice. Sometimes the off-field hires are as important as the on-field hires. I think they essentially host the recruits, make sure that they are taken care of and with the new recruiting rules, which essentially permits off-field personnel (i.e. non-coaches) to contact recruits, these hires may be more important than ever.

Kenny Bell, Chief of Staff | Bell was previously the director of recruiting last year and followed TAMU head coach Kevin Sumlin to TAMU from Houston. Bell graduated in 2011, so he has almost zero professional experience for me to even discuss because he graduated from Houston in 2011. You can read Bell’s bio from TAMU. Perhaps the most interesting thing to note is that Bell was the offensive quality control guy at Houston. At TAMU, Bell was essentially in charge of any and all recruiting matters, from organizing to budget.

Tommy McVay, Director of Football Operations | White hair. Sunglasses.

Danielle Bartelstein, Assistant Director of Football Operations | Bartelstein was at TCU last year, the obvious connection is that she was probably recommended by Tre Haverty. One thing that struck me was that this might mean that Kingsbury is really taking into account what the folks he’s surrounded him have to say. Bartelstein was essentially another go-between for the recruits and the coaching staff. Someone that organizes. There’s not a lot to her TCU bio, but I did find an ESPN2 article where she is mentioned as a student at Illinois, which is where she got her undergrad. I don’t know what to say, except that she apparently partied, like the rest of us, during her undergrad and she likes sports.

David Raih and Scott Parr | So Raih was the tight ends coach at Iowa last year and he’s now taken a job at Texas Tech. I am glad that he is, but I find this to be a strange move. Raih is from Iowa. Played quarterback at Iowa and he even played in the Alamo Bowl against Texas Tech and Kliff Kingsbury in 2001. This is literally the only connection that I can conceive between Raih and Kingsbury, that they essentially played in a bowl game a decade ago and kept in touch after that. Raih was in some sort of sales position after graduating from Iowa and then came back to be a graduate assistant for a couple of year.

Parr, and I did not know this before finding his Texas Tech profile, is maybe heading into his fourth season as head of high school relations. Interestingly, Parr was the offensive coordinator for West Texas A&M from 2007 through 2009. And he was actually pretty good at it. Parr was a receiver at Hardin-Simmons, graduating in 1998, then heading to Baylor as a graduate assistant, then to Tarleton to coach receivers, and then settling in at WTA&M as the offensive coordinator.