Another criticism Carr and others make is that search consultants are inclined to place athletic directors who they think are likely to later hire them for coaching searches. Parker has participated in at least 40 athletic-director searches. There is no denying that the company has gotten repeat business from ADs it placed. For instance, in June 2011, Illinois paid Parker $30,000 to assist in the search for an athletic director, a job that went to Mike Thomas, who was previously at Cincinnati. About nine months later, Thomas retained Parker to help him find a men's basketball coach—Ohio's John Groce—for which the firm was paid $90,000. A similar sequence of events took place among Parker-placed athletic directors at Arizona State, Iowa, Iowa State, Mississippi State, N.C. State, Notre Dame, Washington and elsewhere. But beyond the timing of the transactions, there is no proof of collusion.
"Repeat clients are standard in the search business," Wilder says. "If you build a relationship and if you do quality work, people ask you to do quality work again. Just speaking about Parker, there has never been an environment where we say we will put you in as a candidate if you do this."
Carr didn't mention Parker in his critique of the industry, but he insists that handshake deals are common. "The process of hiring coaches and athletic directors should be more of a meritocracy than it is today," Carr says.
