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The Fates of College Basketball’s Blue Bloods

Jan 252014

Former Pitt guard and current Arizona basketball coach, Sean Miller

… And Those Who Aspire to Join Them

I’ve been thinking about the Blue Bloods of college basketball. The programs that are the elite of the elite. That you automatically expect to be ranked in any given week. That you automatically expect will make the NCAA tournament. Whose fan bases and administrations are so irrational that they will contemplate firing a coach for not winning a National Title or getting to a Final Four once every couple years.

Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky, UNC, Indiana, Georgetown, Michigan State. The historical titans of the game.

Yes, I left off Duke and Syracuse. I haven’t included Florida. I think Duke and Syracuse are better programs than Georgetown or Indiana at the moment.

To be truly mentioned among the titans of the game, a program has to survive the loss of its legendary coach. UCLA basketball will always be associated with John Wooden but what makes this program the elite of the elite is that it has survived and thrived after Wooden. Choppy waters along the way but UCLA can still capture the national imagination and does own a National Title, post-Wooden.

Duke and Syracuse are undoubtedly among the modern giants of the game. But the legends of these schools coach them right now. Duke was a very good program prior to Krysysskwsswwskksi in the same way that Penn State football was a very good program prior to Joe Paterno. Syracuse had a little bit of history but was not held in the same regard before Jim Boeheim’s tenure. In fact, Boeheim was hired only after the previous head coach was hired away by Tulane.

Gnōthi seauton – Know Thyself

Baseball, Basketball, College Basketball, College Football, Football, Futbol/Soccer, Pro-Basketball, Pro-Football, The Bigger Picture No Responses »

May 082009

ESPN.com reports that Rick Pitino may be interested in the Sacramento Kings head coaching job. Having largely failed in two previous stints in the Ligg, Pitino’s outsized ego may push him to give the NBA another shot in order to prove that he has what it takes to succeed on both levels, ala Larry Brown.

With the exception of the aforementioned Brown, few successful college coaches, football or baskeball, seem to prosper in the Pro’s. Tim Floyd, Nick Saban and Mike Montgomery easily come to mind. Pitino’s new nemesis at Kentucky, John Calipari wasn’t successful in the Pro’s.

John Calipari On the other hand, Bill Callahan failed miserably at Nebraska. Charlie Weis has yet to deliver at Notre Dame. Al Groh chose to go back to UVA rather than coach the New York Jets and although his record in Charlottesville is admirable, it’s not particularly elite.

In college, you have to schmooze alumni and boosters. You have to raise money for the athletic department. You need to court 18-year (oft-spoiled) superstar children who have never heard a bad word about their games. You have to graduate players. You are the face of a program, much moreso than in the Pro’s.

In the Pro’s, you have greater access to your players but have to deal with egos made larger by huge, sometimes unwarranted, contacts. You have to assist a general manager with navigating a salary cap/luxury tax. The season is longer.
Perhaps it takes failing like Steve Spurrier did with the Redskins for a coach to realize that he is better suited to one game or the other. I think Pitino is better suited for the college game. He’s a master at it.

I would posit that coaching in the Pro’s isn’t inherently more difficult; it’s just a different game. It’s not as if the salaries are markedly different. Phil Jackson, for instance, is a master at the Pro game. I don’t think he would be comfortable in college. But for some reason, we in this society equate the Pro’s with the pinnacle in all aspects. Becoming a Pro may be the ultimate goal for an athlete but it shouldn’t necessarily be the case for a coach.

To Build or Redefine a Legacy

Basketball, College Basketball, The Bigger Picture No Responses »

Apr 062009

As the college basketball season draws to a close, the coaching carousel has started to spin, as it always does this time of year. Jamie Dixon has been rumored to leave Pitt for a few years now; whether it was when USC a few years ago or now that Arizona is searching. I don’t think he’ll leave… for now.

John Calipari is leaving a pretty good situation at Memphis for the University of Kentucky. Tim Floyd turned down Arizona to stay at USC. Mike Anderson is staying at Missouri after getting a hefty pay raise and who knows what Mark Few at Gonzaga will do.

John Calipari

Some programs are defined by one great coach. Arizona is considered one of the better jobs in the country because Lute Olson made it that way. Likewise, Jim Calhoun at UConn and Mike Krzyzewski at Duke define their institutions.

Other great programs define their coaches. Ben Howland at UCLA, Roy Williams at UNC and now John Calipari at Kentucky are just another few names in the long list of winners at their schools. Great though they may be, the institutions are the big schtick, not the coaches.

Money aside, I often wonder why rebuilding a program seems more attractive to a coach than creating his own legacy. Kentucky’s tradition may be greater than most programs in the country but once you reach a certain level, the infrastructure is the same. If we take long-term legacy into account, who’s to say that Memphis under Calipari couldn’t have become the next UConn.

I, for one, think Jamie Dixon could become the icon of Pitt basketball. He could be the one to make it a destination job. Laugh if you will but there was no predetermination that schools such as Kansas or Indiana would become college basketball royalty. College basketball is slightly different from college football in that you don’t need a fertile recruting backyard to be successful. Duke had ZERO players from North Carolina on its roster. Of those 14 players, only two were from the same home state.

I don’t think anyone would fault Calipari for taking the enormous pay raise he got from Kentucky. I think he is poised to become the next great Wildcats coach and will rule the SEC for years to come. But if he had been offered “only” $1 million more, would it have been prudent to leave a program he was already building into a dominant force. We will never know.