To borrow a term from the presidential campaign, it&#8217;s the silly season of coaching transition.</p><p>Several football programs are in the market, and the in-season turnover rate is as high as I can remember.</p><p>This means the usual rush of identifying logical candidates has come earlier than ever.</p><p>Thus the silliness.</p><p>Earlier this week, Connecticut coach Randy Edsall told a sportswriter that he was not interested in becoming a candidate for the Syracuse job.</p><p>Why would he? UConn is a better job today than Syracuse, Edsall&#8217;s alma mater. The problem is Edsall couldn&#8217;t possibly say otherwise.</p><p>What is the right response here? Even if Edsall were interested as some speculate he is, he&#8217;s smart enough to know that expressing it is pure folly. By leaving the slightest crack in the door, he&#8217;s seen as a shameless opportunist who is abandoning his program.</p><p>Same for Texas Christian&#8217;s Gary Patterson. The wildfire that spread two weeks ago when it was reported he would succeed the fired Ron Prince at Kansas State has died, and things are eerily quiet in the Little Apple as the Wildcats prepare for Saturday&#8217;s season finale against Iowa State.</p><p>Patterson angrily disputed the story then, not necessarily because it was false, but the idea that his name could become attached to another job with a month remaining in the season inflicts serious damage to his reputation and his current employer.</p><p>For example, recruiting against TCU has gotten easier the last two weeks. Every rival school is telling prospects about the Horned Frogs&#8217; unstable coaching situation.</p><p>Patterson had no choice but to issue a strong denial. It still doesn&#8217;t mean he might not be Kansas State&#8217;s next coach.</p><p>Back-channel conversations between an agent and school operatives, usually a search firm hired by the university, occur during the season. They almost have to, said Bob Lattinville, a St. Louis-based agent who represents several coaches.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s to explore the preliminary issues,&#8221; Lattinville said.</p><p>Issues like the buyout clause or even the feeler to determine whether a coach might be interested so the school doesn&#8217;t waste time once serious searching begins.</p><p>Kansas State has zipped lips since the disastrous teleconference announcing Prince&#8217;s firing to the point where it won&#8217;t even say whether a search firm has been hired to explore candidates&#8217; backgrounds.</p><p>Not using an outside search firm, which Kansas State has done in the past to help identify coaching and administrative candidates, would heighten speculation that coaching legend Bill Snyder is the guy.</p><p>It&#8217;s also instructive to return to something athletic director Bob Krause said earlier this month, that he&#8217;d like to have a coach hired by the end of the season. That&#8217;s moving too quickly for an established coach, even if talks are happening on the sly.</p><p>Krause&#8217;s target date leaves today and Saturday to get something done, and upstaging the team isn&#8217;t the right move. But it means something could pop quickly, Sunday or Monday, and that would seem to point to Snyder.</p><p>If it is Snyder, would the Wildcats get two coaches with one announcement? Coaching designates are all the rage these days. Less than a year after his hire, Texas picked defensive coordinator Will Muschamp to succeed Mack Brown, which probably accelerates Brown&#8217;s departure time to two or three years.</p><p>We know Florida State offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher is the Seminoles&#8217; coach-in-waiting, and Purdue and Kentucky have set up similar arrangements. Kansas State rolling out such a plan if it introduces Snyder, 69, wouldn&#8217;t be a stunning development.</p><p>What would be a surprise is if K-State and Krause, or their representatives, haven&#8217;t been working behind the scenes to make something happen quickly.