There's no problem hiring a guy you know well. Head coaches do that all the time. So the question here is does Fleck have bad judgment of coaching skills or did he know Sanford might be a weak choice but overlooked that because of the relationship?
Doesn’t sound like they were super close friends for years and years to me. I guess you can call it nepotism by definition, but it’s not like Ferentz, seems like a pretty standard hiring to me. You could call the majority of hirings nepotism probably if you’re using it like you are.