2014 College basketball coaching carousel thread...

Not really, because he apparently lied about the degree to land the assistant coaching jobs as well. Can't fess up to the boss after you've already lied to the boss to get the job. And you can't subtly take the classes to finish the degree without advertising the fact that you don't yet have it (especially in the state of Kentucky, where anything anyone associated with the UK and UL programs does is scrutinized by the masses).

BTW, I presume this also means he can't return to Manhattan, right? Quite a turn for the guy. Yesterday a shooting star about to sign a multi-million dollar contract, today an unhireable pariah.

 

Guess he'll have some time now to finish up that degree. And there are probably more than a few college programs who will look at his ability to shade the truth as making him quite hirable.

 

It didn't bother Rutgers. But I don't think Eddie Jordan lied about it either.

 

It is pretty hilarious that this is the one area where college basketball wants to plant its integrity flag, while Calipari and Huggins and Bruce Pearl and all the others just keep on keeping on.

 

I encountered one coach who on his resume had no mention of graduating. It didn't say he didn't, but it didn't say he did.

The media guide said he graduated, it even listed the degree. I asked him about it after the fact and he said, "Yeah, I noticed that when the first media guides came out and I never corrected it."

In my mind, that's not his fault or his responsibility. That's on the SID for either lying or making assumptions. At this school, it could have been either.

 

If I was the AD at USF, I wouldn't have withdrawn the offer, I just would have made it contingent that he finishes his degree in a certain period of time or be subject to termination. You don't make it public, but if it comes out, it's no big deal.

If he finishes, great. If he doesn't, you have reason to can his ass for cause if he sucks during his first couple seasons.

 

This is all related to the fiction that coaches are equivalent to faculty members, which makes administrators feel better. I wonder what would happen if Kobe applied for a college coaching job.

 

The one thing we really don't know is how often are coaches hired who don't claim to have graduated from college. It's so easy to make your resume look like you graduated without saying you graduated.

 

Sid Lowe didn't have his degree when he was hired at NC State, but didn't lie about it. Might been tough to pull that one over on his alma mater. It was a requirement so he finished up that summer with online courses from St. Paul's in Virginia, which later lost its accreditation and closed.

 

When O'Leary hit the news several years back, I was an SID, and I quietly went to all of the coaches and told them to look over their bios in media guides and on the website and let me know if there was anything that needed to changed. Our head basketball coach was the only one who took me up on the offer. I changed the information in his online bio and then made sure it was correct in the next media guide.

And we also had a women's volleyball coach who graduated from college, but refused to have the year of her graduation listed on anything. The conference office got mad at me every year when I turned in rosters with her alma mater listed, but no year of graduation. She was kinda vain that way.

 

I remember a writer telling me about a player who left school early, went back and got his degree and it was super-hyped, he walked with the class at graduation and it was pretty big news at the time. A writer (now a well-known national columnist) tried to chronicle what he had to do to finish his degree and found out that all he had to do was take three tests to make up for the 16 credits he was short. They decided not to run the story, not for any real reason other than the story wasn't what they thought it would be. It was pitched as a "These are the steps he went to to do this" and when they found out there wasn't really anything to write about. I don't think for a second they were trying to protect the school or the athlete.

 

I know what would happen. Woj would break the story.