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CSU's Decision To Get New Football Coach Will Be Costly

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) - Colorado State University fired its athletic director and is now looking for a new football coach. They want to get the Rams back to winning, but the shakeup won't come cheap.

CSU bought out Athletic Director Paul Kowalczyk and Head Coach Steve Fairchild after the Rams finished a third season in a row with only three wins. On Wednesday the new athletic director, Jack Graham, hits the road in his search for a new coach.

Graham said his search for a football coach will have an intense pace -- not necessarily fast or slow.

"The recruiting timeline is critical," Graham said.

Graham said he talked to the assistant coaches right after firing Fairchild.

"I asked them to continue to recruit, recruit aggressively, and they agreed to do so with passion," Graham said. "They agreed there's no reason we can't continue to sell the vision of the future of CSU to the athletes we want to bring here."

CSU said it will pay Fairchild his remaining 1-year of base salary of $350,000. The 3 1/2 year buyout for Kwalczyk is $910,000. The university will also pay a consulting firm $250,000 to help with the search for a new football coach. That's just over $1.5 million, which the university said will come from the CSU Foundation, a not-for-profit that manages charitable gifts to the university.

As of June the CSU Foundation had $297 million in assets. Graham won't say if he has extra money for a new coach, but he knows what he wants.

"We want a person who's got great emotional maturity and yet at the same time can engender terrific passion to play the game hard in our players, to inspire our coaches; to inspire our fan base as well; a great communicator, someone who can communicate leadership and the vision of this football program," Graham said.

Graham said he's spent the last couple days refining what he's looking for in a new football coach. He said the coach could come from another college, or from the NFL.

Although it's desirable to find someone with CSU ties, it's not a requirement.

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