College basketball coaching carousel

The New Mecico State coach gets his turn to find out if Vegas is worth it.

UNLV hires Menzies to replace departed Beard

 

A fair number of non-golf ace head coaches have hired assistants specifically BECAUSE they liked to golf, for that very reason. (At least a little.)

If the head coach is a real duffer and hates golf, they want at least one guy on the staff who can knock it around decently with the real golf nuts among the auto dealers, real estate agents, lawyers, etc etc, who write big booster checks.

 

FWIW, every college basketball coach I've ever covered has been great at golf. These guys have to have SOMETHING to decompress with every once in a while. Unless you wanna go the Pitino/Petrino/Ryan route...

 

My life would have been much less complicated had I taken up golf.

 

I thought James Franklin, then at Vandy, said that he liked his assistants to have hot wives because it showed their recruiting ability (and I suppose he included talent judgement as part of the concept).

 

I think that the changes in the television landscape mean that any job outside of the Big Five Conferences. I looked at the USA data base of school finances for 2013-2014 (the latest I could find) and Texas Tech had 77 million dollars in athletic department revenues and UNLV had 44 million in revenues, despite UNLV getting 20 million subsidies from the school and Texas Tech getting about four million dollars. So Tech can pay the basketball coach twice as much.

UNLV also has a bizarre governance structure. Beard had to wait two weeels until a Regents meeting where his contract got approved after two hours of discussion won a 9-4 vote. How many schools subject a coach to that?

 

College athletes flying by private just remind me that in about 2004 I was on a Singapore-New Delhi flight. I flew with the Australian cricket team, which were at that time world champions. They sat in business class, not first class, on a five and a half hour flight. I think the team had transferred in Singapore after about a eight hour flight from Australia. We arrived after midnight and it took 90 minutes for the bags to come off the plane. The team and coach pleasantly stood there after about 14 hours of flight and transit time waiting for their bags with the rest of us. The difference in cultures.

 

Remember the line in "Moneyball" with all the scouts together. One gives a thumbs down on a player because his wife is ugly. "Proves he isn't competitive."

 

Most contracts for public schools need to be approved by regents. What's wrong with scrutiny of the highest-paid state employees?

 

It's a competitive disadvantage. Have you ever heard of another coach being publicly announced as coming to the school and then having to wait two weeks until the regents vote to see if he actually has a contract? The UNLV regents only approved by a vote of 9-4. So the prospective coach was three votes away from being out on his butt.

I will agree with you that these arrangements violate ninth civic class principals of good government. But the business of D-I college sports is sadly not played by those principals.

 

It's standard practice for regents to ratify contracts at a board meeting at a later date. University presidents do not have carte blanche authority to hire without oversight.

It took regents in Arizona six weeks to approve Bobby Hurley's contract.

Arizona Board of Regents approve 5-year contract for ASU basketball coach Bobby Hurley

Look at Neil McCarthy, whose contract at New Mexico State was not ratified.

McCarthy lawsuit settled

 

Hurley really quit his job in Buffalo and moved to Arizona where he had to wait six weeks if he really had a job?

And I think that the McCarthy example supports my argument, not yours. According to the article you cite the President of NMSU did not have the regents ratify the contract. But McCarthy was fired he got paid off. His contract was ruled valid and then the school settled for 800K, which was a lot of money for New Mexico State in the late 90's.

Court determines contract is valid | TheCabin.net
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