Tyson Helton says the college football coaching carousel now resembles the sport’s recruiting cycle, with two distinct periods of activity before and after Christmas.

“There’s two cycles,” the Western Kentucky coach Helton said Wednesday. “There’s right after the season. Then it kind of dies down for the holidays.

“Then there’s this whole January, February, sometimes, even March, period where you get those phone calls and people are saying, ‘Hey, I’d love to talk to this guy.’ ”

Helton recently received a couple of those phone calls.

Charlotte and its new coach Will Healy hired away Montario Hardesty a month after he’d been named in December as WKU’s running backs coach.

Then another Conference USA foe, Alabama-Birmingham, plucked new Hilltopper tight ends coach Richard Owens for its staff. He’ll coach the Blazers’ offensive line.

Helton replaced Hardesty and Owens’ vacant positions with Garret Chachere and Zach Lankford, respectively.

Wednesday’s signing day news conference marked Helton’s first time meeting with local media since those two changes to his staff.

“I think it says a lot about our staff that those guys were recruited off our staff, that they were wanted,” said Helton, who was hired Nov. 27 as WKU’s new head man.

“Going into this job and knowing the dynamics of the way the coaching world works, I planned for that.”

Chachere joins the Toppers from FCS program Southeastern Louisiana, where he served as passing game coordinator and running backs coach.

The New Orleans native Chachere is a veteran coach who’s now served at 13 different programs since 1992.

Chachere inherits a running backs room that returns six players from last year: rising redshirt senior Marcelis Logan, rising redshirt sophomores Keshawn McClendon, Jakairi Moses and Joshua Samuel and rising sophomores Gino Appleberry Jr. and Garland LaFrance.

Samuel is the top returning rusher. He led WKU backs last season in carries (121), rushing yards (639), yards per carry (5.3) and rushing yards per game (53.3).

“I’ve always tried to hire (Chachere), to be honest with you, even when I was a coordinator and those kinds of things,” Helton said. “It just didn’t work out. So the timing was perfect when coach Hardesty left.

“I called him. He said, ‘Brother, I know you’ve called me a couple of times and it didn’t work out.’ But I was glad it did this time. The timing was right.”

Lankford’s hire to tight ends coach was an internal promotion. Helton had brought him back to the Hilltopper staff in a support role before Owens’ departure opened one of the team’s 10 full-time, on-field slots.

This is Lankford’s second stint at WKU. He worked with the offensive line as an offensive graduate assistant and an offensive quality control coach from 2014-16, helping the Tops to three bowl wins and two Conference USA championships.

Lankford played tight end at UAB from 2006-10. His time there overlapped with Helton, who was the Blazers’ quarterbacks coach from 2007-11 and running backs coach in 2012.

Helton said Lankford has “mastered” and “excelled in” each role he’s had since starting his coaching career in 2011.

“He’s a good guy in the classroom,” Helton said of Lankford. “He’s a good teacher. As a player, I can tell when we were coaching him that he picked up things, retained things well. He became an older player and started to actually coach the younger players.

“So you could tell right away that he was going to be a good coach.”

Four players return at Lankford’s position group: rising redshirt junior Kyle Fourtenbary, rising junior Steven Witchoskey, rising redshirt sophomore Kris Leach and rising redshirt freshman Jay Gibson. WKU signed one tight end in its Class of 2019, Josh Simon.

Chachere and Lankford join a full-time staff that includes four other new coaches: Chris Chestnut (wide receivers) Bryan Ellis (offensive coordinator/QBs), Mike Goff (offensive line) and Andy LaRussa (safeties/special teams coordinator).

Maurice Crum (linebackers), Jimmy Lindsey (defensive ends/recruiting coordinator), Kenny Martin (defensive tackles) and Clayton White (defensive coordinator) were retained from former coach Mike Sanford’s staff.

“I love our staff,” Helton said. “I think we’ve got an extremely strong staff. I think they’re great educators, great coaches and they’ll be good for our team.”{&end}