It's that time of year: College coach carousel!

I remember a writer once said, the only thing you know during a coaching search is that everyone is lying to you. So if you're only writing about confirmed coaching candidates, where you have their agent, their spouse, the coach himself, the AD/GM on or off the record saying they're a candidate, you're going to have a lot of empty news holes and since any paper worth a shit would have a daily update on the coaching search, well good luck with that.

Not a single Florida paper ever listed Muschamp as a candidate for the UF opening. That didn't stop stories about Bob Stoops, Charlie Strong, Bobby Petrino and Dan Mullen from being written.

 

Post-Dispatch says that Mizzou is upping Anderson to 2 million per year, and not a penny more...

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/article_28525b44-53f6-11e0-b074-00127992bc8b.html

That's the stance the university should take. And my guess is -- short of a Final Four appearance -- this will be the last renegotiating it does. This is the third straight year he's actively flirted with somebody else. Either stay or go.

 

Let's be honest. Arkansas is a better job that Missouri. Why should be take less money to stay at a worse job?

 

I wonder how much the Pressey kids have to do with it. He and Paul are such good friends, and to follow him to Arkansas would cost both of them a year and stunt their growth.

 

I think it's poor wording to call them candidates.
Go ahead with your list, but that might not be the school's list. And they aren't candidates until the school considers them to be, not the paper.
Call them: A list of coaches who we think might be a good fit for this job.
It's ridiculous to say somebody is a candidate for a job 10 seconds after -- or before -- the job is vacated.

 

Maybe someone in the CBA or at a prep school. He's done as a D-I HC.

 

You can call them "possible candidates to replace Coach XXX"

Everybody gets hypersensitive during a coaching search. The AD/GM doesn't want it to look like he didn't get his first choice and the coaches who are up for the job only want to be mentioned if they're going to get an offer or if they're using it to get more $$$ from their current school.

I once had a very well-known coach call me and said, "I'm calling to tell you that I'm not confirming or denying that I've been contacted for that job."

I would sometimes call the AD and say, "I'm going to say 10 names and you can choose to make a comment or not." Sometimes he would say nothing. Sometimes he would say, "Yeah, not him." and sometimes he would say, "Who the hell gave you that name?" In that case, it wound up being the guy who got the job.

In the case of most coaching searches, you're not going to be right, but you owe it to your readers to make an educated guess at who the candidates might be.

When you're covering a school that is typically tight-lipped, it can open the conversation a bit. I remember once we did the list and the next day the PR guy told me, "I've been told to tell you to take this guy off your list."

 

I know a college writer that during coaching searches would call up the wives of the coaches in question and would say, "I hear congratulations are in order!"

That would get a response of:

"Why? He didn't get the job. Coach X did."
"Thanks, we're very excited, we can't wait to get there."
"How'd you get this number?"

In one of the cases, this writer kicked everybody's ass on a big coaching search and years later I asked him how he got it and he said he'd called the wife and she took the bait.

 

Generally not something Missouri has to worry about.

 

Maybe not, but Mizzou has been in at least two regional finals in recent years.

 

I may be in the minority, but as a reader, fan, whatever, I don't want "speculation" on possible candidates. I want, at the very least, informed leads. I understand speculation from a columnist's perspective, but not from a beat writer's. I don't want a list of crap, I want a list of at least some truth or merit. Even if that means I don't get a story in that day's paper, I'd rather that than to be misled just for shits and giggles.

Again, I may be in the minority on this, I realize that.

 

You're not alone. The Pearl "firing" was reported on the radio days before it actually happened. I assumed from here that Anderson was going to Arkansas. People don't want to guess if what they were told days ago is right or wrong.

Take a breath, get the correct info, and then go with it.