ESPN: Wake A.D. Ron Wellman Retiring, To Be Replaced By Former Tennessee A.D. John Currie

According to ESPN, Wake Forest A.D. Ron Wellman is set to retire and will be replaced by former Tennessee A.D. John Currie, who is a Wake grad.

Currie has been out of the profession since the search to replace Butch Jones went a bit nuts. You may recall that Currie wanted to hire Greg Schiano, then Ohio State’s defensive coordinator.

A fan revolt forced Tennessee to cancel the hire and then to cancel Currie as well.

Part of the reason for the reaction, but not the only reason, was that Schiano was alleged to have covered for Jerry Sandusky when he was abusing boys at Penn State (the prosecutors said there was no case against him).

That leads to a potentially interesting situation with Danny Manning.

The UT fan revolt was pretty considerable but so was the Wake Forest revolt against former basketball coach Jeff Bzdelik.

Currie will be faced, within a couple of weeks of his hiring, with what to do about Danny Manning (it’s not clear when Wellman is stepping down, incidentally).

Manning apparently has a big buyout clause but if Currie opts to keep him he’ll have to deal with some significant unrest in the fan (and donor) base.

If he does fire him, then he has to figure out who to hire who is relatively cheap and acceptable to the fans.

That might tend to point to UNC-G’s Wes Miller. One major strike against him: he’s a Carolina guy and might be angling for that job when Roy Williams retires. There’s no question that he’s proven to be a solid coach though and he’s already in the Triad. If Wake fans could deal with the UNC part he’d be a promising hire.

It’s fascinating to think that Wake Forest could ignite another fan revolt and equally fascinating to think of Currie going through it a second straight time.

Definitely something for ACC fans to keep an eye on.