New Utah football coach Urban Meyer said Wednesday that he hopes to have "90 percent" of his new staff hired by Friday or Saturday, and he is interviewing several candidates over the next two days.
Meyer's biggest hire will be an offensive coordinator, but he also needs some defensive coaches.
Earlier this week, he named a director of football operations, Rex Hogan, who comes to Utah from Notre Dame, where he spent two years as a football intern and two years in the Irish athletic department as a business intern. Hogan, 31, replaces Steve Clark, who moves with former running backs coach Vincent White to St. Mary's in California. White is the new head football coach there.
Meyer has retained defensive coordinator Kyle Whittingham and safeties coach Bill Busch from the Ron McBride staff and brought with him three former assistants at Bowling Green, quarterback coach Dan Mullen, receivers coach Bill Gonzales and offensive line coach John Hevesy.
He can have nine assistants and a couple of graduate assistants.
Meyer said "three or four" recruits will be in town this weekend, but the weekends of Jan. 10, 17 and 24 will see much heavier recruit traffic as current players will be back on campus then following semester break. Utah has only about 15 scholarships available, he said, because of the return of a number of LDS Church missionaries.