Rich McDuffie plans on talking to Bob Spoo within the next month about the football coach’s future with the program and what Spoo’s intentions are about returning, McDuffie said Wednesday.

Spoo missed the whole season after undergoing surgery in August for an undisclosed medical reason.

He was initially expected to miss four to six weeks. Mark Hutson was the team’s acting head coach during the regular season and led the Panthers to their second straight playoff appearance.

“I think he did a wonderful job,” McDuffie said of Hutson. “He was in a tough spot at the last minute.”

McDuffie, Eastern’s Director of Athletics, said it is only natural for a coaching staff coming off of a good season to have possibilities at other programs.

“You have a successful year, coaches will have an opportunity to look at other places and jobs,” he said. “In all of football, coaches are always coming and going. It’s just part of the job. Obviously, you’d like to keep the good ones.”

After the season ended in Saturday’s 24-13 loss to Illinois State at O’Brien Stadium, the coaching staff returned to the road to begin the next phase of the job: recruiting.

Hutson said, while on a recruiting trip to Ohio, that the season of head-coaching experience could give him a leg up if he were ever to interview for a head-coaching position.

“If I am fortunate to interview, I can start looking back at it as hands-on experience,” he said. “Instead of saying what I would do, I can tell them what did happen.”

It was Hutson’s fourth season on the Panthers’ coaching staff.

Before the season began, he was listed as the assistant head coach and when Spoo was sidelined, it was a natural choice to go to Hutson.

“You have to do a great job at what you have,” he said. “I’m doing the best job I possibly can at Eastern.”

Defensive coordinator Roc Bellantoni’s future at Eastern is more closely tied to Spoo’s.

“I want to be here as long as he’s here,” Bellantoni said. “It would be really hard for me to leave the school and coach Spoo right now because I want to make sure things are stable before I do that.”

But he did concede that if any opportunities would arise, they would be seriously considered.

“If an opportunity at a (Division) I-A position, low end NFL job or a solid I-AA head coaching job was offered, I’d be crazy not to do it,” he said. “(But) the key with that question is my phone isn’t ringing.”

Hutson said the job was a benefit regardless of what happens in his career.

“I enjoyed every moment of it,” he said. “Looking back on it, it was a good learning process.”