SOUTHEAST ROUNDS UP COACHING CANDIDATES FOR FOOTBALL POSITION

A little less than two weeks after Southeast Missouri State University entered the market for a new head football coach, Southeast athletic director Don Kaverman says the search is going well and the pool of potential candidates is a large one."We're still accepting resumes, but we have quite a group already," said Kaverman. "We have some very fine applicants. There has not been a shortage of interest, as I had anticipated. I'm very encouraged by the group of applicants."John Mumford, Southeast's head coach for the past 10 seasons, resigned Nov. 22, just two days after the Indians completed their second straight 3-8 season. Mumford had a 40-70 record at Southeast, including a 13-31 mark the past four years.

Kaverman is heading up a six-person search committee that will attempt to sift through all the resumes and narrow the pool of candidates to a manageable number. The committee will eventually choose several finalists and later make a recommendation regarding the new coach.

On the committee with Kaverman are two Southeast boosters, Jim Limbaugh and Jim Rust; Southeast NCAA faculty representative Georganne Syler; Southeast assistant men's basketball coach Anthony Beane; and Isaac Powell, a junior member of the Southeast football team."The committee met for the first time Thursday and we will meet twice next week," said Kaverman. "Our first task is to narrow the list (of applicants) down to a manageable group and ultimately to bring three people to campus for interviews."Kaverman said he would like to have some finalists identified soon and, if everything continues to proceed smoothly, the goal is to have the new coach in place by early January."That might be a little aggressive, but that's what we're shooting for," he said. "Ideally, we'd like to have a coach identified and approved by the first of the year, because that individual needs to get his staff together and salvage what's left of recruiting (the signing period begins in early February)."Names of coaches who have applied for the job have not been released, but two current assistant coaches of note who are reportedly interested in the Southeast post are Tim Billings and Phil Meyer.

Billings has been the defensive coordinator at Marshall University since 1990. The Thundering Herd, undefeated this season, has made a dramatic rise up the Division I-A ranks in just a few seasons after being one of the nation's premier I-AA programs. Billings also was an assistant coach at Missouri for two seasons.

Meyer, the quarterbacks coach at Iowa State the past five seasons, is well known locally because he spent five seasons as an assistant at Southeast, from 1984-89, when the Indians had some solid Division II teams. Meyer was Southeast's offensive coordinator from 1986-89.