Mike Bianco and Ole Miss: The story behind the hire that revived the Rebels

OXFORD | Mike Bianco sat silently in the breakfast area of a Monroe, Louisiana, Holiday Inn, sipped his coffee and contemplated his next movements -- and his potential future.

For 10 minutes on this May 18 morning of 2000, the then-McNeese State head baseball coach debated whether to multitask his minutes prior to his team's elimination game in the Southland Conference Tournament. Sam Houston State, that day's opponent, would have his attention when it mattered, but until then his mind was on a different team in a different state.

Bianco left his room early and went to the hospitality area to have breakfast as he routinely did while coaching on the road. It started monotonously enough until his team's bus driver walked by, threw a USA Today sports page on the table and set Bianco's mind in motion with his brief sentence.

"You see what happened to that Mississippi coach," Bianco remembers the driver saying.

Since there were no Southland Conference Baseball teams located in Mississippi, Bianco's curiosity piqued. As he thumbed through the newspaper, he found the key brief buried in the agate: Ole Miss baseball coach Pat Harrison had resigned after four seasons.

Those four seasons ago, Bianco was a rumored candidate and had a conversation or two with Ole Miss supporters about the possibility. He knew he was never a real option, but he did recall saving some contact information, filing it away in what had become a mountain of phone numbers.

His obligation was to McNeese, but he was impatient.

"I thought ‘Oh my gosh,' but we are playing today," Bianco said. "Should I just wait? I thought that nothing was going to happen for the next couple hours, and I can’t help my team anymore right now. I went to my room and called my assistant, Susan, but I share her with the athletic director.

"I called and asked for a favor. I said, 'Susan, I need you to go to my office without telling anyone and go to my Rolodex. I have this guy who I don’t even remember his name. It might be under Mississippi or Ole Miss. There’s a name in there that says Ole Miss Booster Club or something. I need you to quietly find the number for me.'"

Tim Climer could hear the pings of batting practice in the background.

He issued multiple apologies during the phone call, but each time Bianco cut him off, told him he had his attention and to continue the conversation.

"I'm constantly hearing the pinging, and I told him I didn't want to bother him," Climer said about that conversation nearly 17 years ago. "He's in the dugout before his game. He told me he wanted to win the game, but he wanted the job, too. He said to hush. He'd talk to me up until first pitch."

Not knowing the other's movements, while Bianco's secretary searched for Climer's contact information, Climer was trying to find Bianco.

[Related: Five Bianco facts that didn't make the cut]

An avid Ole Miss fan and college baseball junkie, Climer's ties to the program are strong. His father, Tommy, played at Ole Miss in the early 1960s, including the 1960 team that went 22-3 and won the SEC but couldn't advance to postseason play because of segregation.

He had followed Bianco's career ever since famed LSU coach Skip Bertman mentioned Bianco as an excellent future coach in his 1992 book, Skip: The man and the system. "The system" is a key phrase of Bianco's story, and Climer had spent years believing a descendant from famed Miami coach Ron Fraser's tree was the way to baseball success in Oxford. The two notable SEC limbs were longtime Mississippi State coach Ron Polk and Bertman.

While Bianco's secretary was looking for Climer's contact information, Climer called Bianco's office. Unsure how to broach the subject, he eventually gave his intentions away. The secretary gave him an unexpected response.

"I called his school and he is calling my office," Climer said. "When I finally got his secretary I hated to say what I wanted. 'I’m calling from Mississippi.' She said, 'Is this about a job? He’ll want to talk to you.'"

Bianco and Climer discussed the opening and a public relations plan that could add attention to his name. Eventually, they hung up, and Sam Houston State beat McNeese, 6-5, in 11 innings to eliminate the Cowboys. On the bus ride home, Bianco continued the calls and waited on the one that mattered most.

Bianco starts his 17th season at Ole Miss on Friday when the Rebels host No. 10 East Carolina. He has the eighth-most coaching wins in SEC history and is only four victories behind Auburn's Hal Baird and 25 wins from Vanderbilt's Roy Mewbourne.

Ole Miss has 14 NCAA Tournament appearances in his 16 seasons including seven hosted regionals. The Rebels have three SEC West titles, an overall SEC championship, an SEC Tournament title and a third-place finish in the 2014 College World Series.

But 27 years ago and nearly a decade prior to Bianco talking to Climer from the dugout on ULM's campus, his reality was far from Oxford or any baseball diamond.

Bianco, a left-hand-hitting catcher, transferred from Indian River Community College to LSU in 1988. He was a captain on the Tigers 1989 team that finished third in Omaha. Detroit selected Bianco in the 40th round of the MLB Draft, but he never signed.

Instead, he moved home to Seminole, Florida, with then-girlfriend Cami Marquette to pursue a career as a financial planner. The two lived with Mike's parents until Cami found an apartment nearby.

That was their life until the financial career didn't take off, and Jim Wells offered Bianco a graduate assistant position at Northwestern State. He accepted and spent the 1991 and 1992 seasons in Natchitoches, Louisiana, while Cami attended graduate school at Nicholls State.

"Had that opportunity not come along, he was set on being a financial lender," Cami Bianco said. "Thank goodness that didn't happen. He wasn't very good at it."

The couple married in 1992, and Bianco returned to Baton Rouge a year later to join Bertman's staff as pitching coach. During those five seasons, LSU advanced to the College World Series four times and won three national championships.

McNeese hired Bianco in the summer of 1997, and he steadily rebuilt the Cowboys into an NCAA Tournament team by 2000. Days after the Ole Miss job opened and the Cowboys bowed out of the Southland Conference Tournament, McNeese received an at-large regional bid as the No. 3 seed at Louisiana-Lafayette.

The Cowboys lost two straight in Lafayette, and the Cajuns won the regional and shocked No. 1 overall seed South Carolina in the super regional to make the College World Series. Bianco didn't coach in Lafayette again until he punched his own Omaha ticket in 2014.

John Shafer spent the final weeks of the 2000 college baseball season uncertain of the answer to a looming decision.

The Ole Miss athletics director from 1998-2002 loved baseball coach Pat Harrison as a person and a mentor to his players. Harrison had led Ole Miss to an NCAA Tournament berth the year before, but that was the only postseason in the former Pepperdine coach's three seasons in Oxford, and his fourth year was floundering down the stretch. In fact, the Rebels had only been to two regionals since 1977.

"I had not made a decision, but deep down I knew it was just time if there was no NCAA Tournament," Shafer said. "We weren't getting our share of the players we were capable of recruiting, and it had been up and down with Pat before I was hired. He was a class gentleman. It was hard, but it was the right thing."

Ole Miss lost its final five SEC series of the season, but the definitive blow didn't come until after its last game, an 8-1 loss to Arkansas in Oxford. With a bubble-worthy No. 39 RPI, the Rebels would sneak into the SEC Tournament -- and keep NCAA hope alive -- if Vanderbilt beat Kentucky.

The Wildcats won 11-1 in Nashville to sweep the series and advance to Hoover. The Rebels' season ended, and the search would soon begin.

"That team didn't hit the benchmark," Shafer said. "I didn't see a trajectory that was in a positive direction."

Shafer was an All-SEC shortstop at Auburn and a member of AU's baseball staff before administration positions at Vanderbilt and Georgia. The baseball search was a personal one to him because of his background. And also because of his belief in Ole Miss' potential.

"Ole Miss is a place where you can get to a College World Series and win a national championship," Shafer said. "With Ole Miss football and basketball there are certain ceilings when it comes to consistency and lack of resources that prevent it, but baseball can be an annual winner. I knew it was a winner if we got the right coach."

Twenty days passed between Bianco's morning pursuit of phone numbers while in Monroe and Ole Miss' announcement of its new head coach.

Cell phones were new enough at the time that Bianco didn't concern himself with his constantly. However, during this search, he never spent a second without it.

"During that week or two-week span, I never left my cell phone," Bianco said. "I remember one time (Shafer) calling and I was jogging and I stopped to get my breath, and he asked what I was doing. In only John’s way he loved that. Like I had a phone on me and was always working. I really wasn’t. I was just hoping he would call."

Shafer had Bianco in mind from the beginning. He'd watched him at LSU as a player and assistant and knew his success at McNeese. But Bianco wasn't the only coach on the list. Shafer also brought in Turtle Thomas for an interview that same week.

Thomas was starting a postseason run with LSU that led to the Tigers' fifth national championship since 1991. One of the sport's top recruiting coordinators for nearly two decades, Thomas went to LSU in 2000 as Bertman's lead assistant after 12 seasons as Jim Morris' recruiting coordinator at Miami, which included the 1999 national title and six straight College World Series appearances from 1994-1999.

Shafer put each coach, and respective wife, through the same schedule -- one after the other. The candidates stayed at the Oxford Holiday Inn and had dinner at City Grocery with Shafer and his wife, Dianne.

"I’m sure Mike’s dream was to be the head coach at LSU," Shafer said. (Note: Bianco would later turn down an overture to be LSU's head coach in 2006) "And I was giving him an opportunity, and we talked about this, to compete against LSU. To have his own program. Mike had mannerisms much like Skip. He talked with his hands and fast. There was never a time during the visit that I wasn't comfortable with him."

Shafer believed he had his choice but wanted validation. He went to the SEC Tournament and discussed both Bianco and Thomas with Bertman.

"I had Skip come over to the Wyndham, and we talked pros and cons and indifferences about both guys he knew well," Shafer said. "Skip and I went back a long time. I respected what he had to say. Skip gave that to me, that validation. He said things about Mike that made it easy. I got with Mike and sent the school plane for him."

Mike and Cami flew to Oxford for an announcement on June 7. After a quick crisis of being unable to find a red and blue tie, Bianco arrived in Oxford, met with the media and supporters and got back on the plane for a whirlwind day back to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to gather things, organize and then return to start the position.

"I felt at ease," Cami Bianco said. "This was where we were supposed to be."

Shafer's fondest memory of the day was after the events and pomp. He took the Biancos back to the airport, and Cami asked if he was getting on the plane with them.

"I had lunches from McAlisters (Deli) on the plane," Shafer said. "They got on and I said my goodbyes. I told them is was a chance for them to enjoy and reflect on what happened, what just happened. Tears were coming down Cami’s face. I made a good choice by not flying. It had been a hustle bustle day, a really big day in their lives."

Bianco had a list, a whole lot of confidence and was about to hear a lot of nos.

The first two assistant coach hires came easy, as he brought hitting coach Clint Carver and volunteer assistant Butch Millet from McNeese. Carver's offense with the Cowboys set school records, and Millet pitched for Bianco before joining the staff. The system Bianco learned from Bertman called for the volunteer position to help with the pitching instruction.

But the most important hire of his tenure was a tougher sell. Bianco inherited a program that went 48-69 over the previous four seasons in the SEC. There had to be a talent infusion, and he needed an energetic recruiting coordinator who could compete against the nation's best.

He had a wish list that would later turn into a compilation of some of the nation's best head coaches. He had four names -- and no others -- in mind for this critical spot: Florida Atlantic assistant John McCormack, Tulane assistant Jim Schlossnagle, Clemson assistant Kevin O'Sullivan and Notre Dame assistant Brian O'Connor.

Bianco was quite the identifier of talent as those four, by 2017, combined for 39 NCAA Tournament appearances and 13 trips to the College World Series as head coaches. But each politely declined the invite to come to Oxford.

"I started with McCormack because I knew John and we went to junior college together," Bianco said. "I gave him the long spiel of I got the job and let's go to the SEC. We’re going to knock them dead and nobody came. Everybody said they were good where they were. Then the short list went from whatever to zero. I had no idea after that. I had no names."

Dan McDonnell was recruiting in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when he glanced at the transactions portion of the newspaper and vaguely recognized "that LSU guy who the paper said just got the job in Mississippi."

McDonnell had been at The Citadel for 12 years as a player and coach and recently turned down an offer to join East Carolina's coaching staff. He was content but open if the opportunity came to improve his position, and Bianco's LSU background set his mind in motion.

"I knew of Mike a little, and I knew the system he was coming from at LSU," McDonnell said. "It was the opportunity of a lifetime. The Skip Bertman system was it. As Mike called it, it was the McDonald's franchise of college baseball. You have a chance in that franchise."

McDonnell went home, put together a resume packet and sent it multiple ways to Oxford. Then, much like Bianco weeks earlier, he waited and hoped for a phone call.

"I was really just looking at resumes and started making phone calls, and I got this letter and resume faxed to me from this coach from The Citadel," Bianco said. "I had no idea. Honestly I just didn't have anyone else. I only knew The Citadel from the 1990 team that went to the College World Series. I didn’t know Dan. I put it in the pile. It was only interesting because he was a recruiting coordinator. The next day I got the same packet of information from FedEx."

McDonnell's references were South Carolina's Ray Tanner and Clemson's Jack Leggett. Bianco called both, and they said McDonnell was successfully recruiting at a military school and "giving them fits." Those recommendations started the process, and Bianco kept going back to McDonnell's letter that came with the resume.

"Mike made a list and I’d get the bad updates," Cami Bianco said. "'Jim doesn’t want to do it.' I can remember we were together at lunch, and he showed me the letter Dan had sent him. Mike said he's thinking about him, and he reads the letter to me. Dan signs it 'Yours in Omaha, Dan McDonnell.' I said, 'Mike, this is the guy you need to hire.' It was a boom and a blessing from that point."

McDonnell flew to Oxford soon after, and a delayed flight caused him to get to the Memphis airport well after night fall. Bianco drove them to campus and straight to Swayze Field.

"I didn’t even know how to turn the lights on so I brought him into an empty, dark stadium," Bianco said. "There were a couple emergency lights on. We went through the motions and then we sat in my office and talked until 1 or 2 in the morning. I just loved his energy. His dream was to coach at a program like this and to build it. I knew right then I was hiring him. I offered him the next morning."

It didn't take McDonnell long to accept. He had already decided.

"I called my wife the night before saying if he offers, we have to take it," McDonnell said. "I told him yes on the spot, and he asked if I needed to call my wife. I said, 'No, I'm ready to go.'

"He reached behind the desk and handed me this huge radar gun and a cell phone. He told me to go get us players. That's what I did."

McDonnell, who would leave Ole Miss to become Louisville's head coach following the 2006 season, can retrace his travel path with incredible accuracy, even 17 years later.

He went on a recruiting whirlwind to upgrade the Rebels' talent immediately for the 2001 season, first signing junior college first baseman Josh Christian, pitcher Adam Yates and infielder Matt Tolbert before securing Southern California transfer Pete Montrenes.

Tolbert and Yates were named Louisville Slugger Freshman All-Americans, Christian tied for the team lead in home runs and was All-SEC, and Montrenes finished in the top three in the SEC in wins, strikeouts and ERA, becoming just the second player in school history with at least 10 wins and 100 strikeouts.

"Matt Tolbert was going to Meridian Community College and I told Mike if we had dudes better than Tolbert, then the program wouldn't be in this shape," McDonnell said. "Josh Christian had nowhere to go. I flew up to the Cape because Montrenes was pitching against Team USA. He didn't get to pitch for Southern Cal, and then he leads the SEC in strikeouts. We just rounded up players and pieces."

The new additions helped Ole Miss tie a then-school record with 17 conference victories and advance to the New Orleans Regional. McDonnell's first full recruiting class ranked No. 6 nationally.

"We were off and running," McDonnell said. "I remember seeing us sixth and saying 'Heck, yeah.' The program would never be the same after that."

Shafer, who has since retired and moved to Richmond, Virginia, thought back to those days and voiced contentment of what Ole Miss and Bianco have achieved together. His hire has been Bianco's program for nearly two decades.

"People thought we were going to groom him for the LSU job," Shafer said. "Just a stepping stone; I heard a lot. Mike and I talked that it’s not a stepping stone. This is a dream job for a lot of people. I want it to be your dream job, never knowing what would happen over 17 years. Ole Miss has made it attractive, and Mike has made it successful."