I think you misunderstood my post. Of course, a good search firm does all those things. They're not going to recommend an internal candidate (at least not from our athletic dept). If we make a typical insider Mississippi State hire, the search firm was just for show, and we ignored their recommendation.
I did misunderstand and on that you may be right.
My best argument against it would be that if they wanted to make an internal hire, they could have made them interim AD. Then basically say "we did a national search, best candidate was here and already impressing with what he had done on the job, etc."
If we had a legitimate candidate and they wanted input from the search firm but didn't want to bias the process before they got going, it would seem reasonable to not tilt the scales to an internal candidate by making the interim. They still get to look at him just like thtey would if he were at another school. If he ends up not being the guy, by not having him as interim AD you maybe minimize any tension between him and the new guy. Presumably if he was good enough to be a candidate you definitely want him to stick around in his current position.
I guess the alternative argument is that by not making him interim, you give credibility to the idea that your are listening to the search firm and not just dead set on promoting from within.
Or there is the alternative that we didn't have an internal candidate, but the search is going so ****** we are way down our list and now we do have an internal candidate.
Or the really bad alternative is that Bracky is the internal candidate and some boosters are "doing him a solid" by pumping up his four year average in exchange for having a yes man, in which case, just burn it all down, disband the athletic department, put Bully up for adoption, put Dawgstudent on an all kale diet, whatever it doesn't matter, nothing matters.