2014 College basketball coaching carousel thread...

Love when this happens. Another slick talker comes back
to earth.

 

I'd bet if they ran searches on every basketball coach in the country, at least 10-20 percent of them didn't graduate when it says they did, if at all...

 

You mean the disciple of "Less than 15 Seconds" Rick "Success is a Choice" Pitino is a liar?

Thank god I am sitting down!!

 

After the O'Leary issue happened, another reporter and I got the resumes of every athletic coach, including assistants and started checking if they had actually graduated when it says they did.

After a couple days, we found out that two football assistants, two basketball assistants, the head coach of one of the lesser sports and a couple others had discrepancies on their resumes. That was including two who actually graduated the year after their resumes said, we didn't count those...

Executive editor catches wind of what we're doing and kills the project/story. I found out months later that editors at a few other papers did the same thing when their reporters had similar findings to what we had. This included several pretty big papers, places where you would think they would live for this kind of a story. At one place, the editor called the beat writer and said, "You do realize that if you get (assistant coach) fired, you're relationship with the university is over?" This was from an incredibly well-respected editor.

There's a reason why these types of stories only come out by accident. Right now there is probably someone at USF who is incredibly pissed that they bothered to check if he had graduated.

 

Masiello probably confused USF with UCF that does have a policy of hiring
coaches without a degree..

 

If the question was about whether he got a degree from the University of Kentucky, I would think a high school diploma could be accepted as a reasonable substitute.

 

So, should I assume this is a "toy department" issue, or is all journalism as compromised by the trade for access?

 

Trade for access. Not a toy department issue.

 

What I don't understand...

Maisello didn't graduate from Kentucky in 2000 but the guy has been on college campuses THE LAST FOURTEEN YEARS. Couldn't he have, quietly, pulled his head coach aside and said, "look, I need a few classes to graduate"? He had to have known that, one day, if he lucked into the tournament and won a game, he would get the big opportunity.

I find it funny that USF hired and fired Stan Heath - the poster-child for getting a major opportunity with someone else's recruits and some else's team (Kent State) - and they go out and make a similar hire, only Maisello didn't get a diploma.

One other Maisello rant. He was a walk-on at Kentucky. How the F do you not work the system and graduate? It's not like you're playing much and everyone in that city would do anything to help. Internships. Course work. Easy classes. He was a communications "major" at Kentucky? Any of the city's three TV newsrooms would have found a way to get him an easy internship just to be associated with a Wildcat back then.

I assume that Shaka Smart graduated from Kenyon and got his Masters, right?

 

Well, he got an offer to join the staff of a pretty good Tulane team and presumably hadn't finished his degree. He became focused on his coaching career and never looked back, much like anybody in any profession who doesn't finish their degree. Nobody at Manhattan or Louisville obviosly bothered to check.

 

There was a sense of "You're going to ruin our relationship with the University to get a couple assistants fired? No thanks..."

I was pissed at the time. I felt a little better when I found out several other papers made the same call. I didn't agree with it, but I was glad others had to deal with the same thing.