On Coach Search Info, Buyer Beware
A writer I knew only by reputation called me one day to ask if I had heard anybody mentioning Dave Odom. then basketball coach at Wake Forest, as a candidate at Georgia. I told him I had not.
“Well I haven’t either,’’ the guy said. “But I put him in my story because I felt he just fit the profile.’‘
You’ll be seeing all kinds of names connected to Wake Forest’s search for a coach to replace Dino Gaudio. Most of that information will be balderdash. Such is the nature of this kind of reporting, certainly around a school like Wake Forest where one man, Athletics Director Ron Wellman, is confident and secure enough to serve as a one-man search committee, especially early in the process before the candidates are brought on campus for formal interviews. So more times than not, the only person who really knows what is going on is Wellman himself. But, being in the information business, we realize that our readers want names, candidates, to mull over and debate.
My own personal standard is that I don’t report a name unless it has been mentioned by someone who might actually know what they’re talking about. That’s not to say they do, just that they might. Short of that, I would never mention anybody, because Ron Wellman is not in the habit of letting me know what he’s doing or thinking. But that’s how I came up with the five coaches I named in this morning’s article in the Journal, Tubby Smith of Minnesota, Brad Brownell of Wright State, John Groce of Ohio, Chris Mooney of Richmond and Brian Gregory of Dayton.
Mooney signed a contract extension earlier this month after being courted by Boston College, but even a fresh contract isn’t always ironclad protection against losing a coach. But Wellman would probably have to be really, really sold on Mooney to go there unless, on the off chance, say, that Mooney has a clause in his pact that would allow him to leave for Wake without major repercussions.
It’s no secret in coaching circles that Smith’s wife Donna isn’t fond of living in frigid Minnesota, and Tubby could probably feel pretty much at home in Winston-Salem, only a short drive from his alma mater of High Point. He’ll be 59 in June, but that doesn’t seem to be as big a drawback as the kind of money it would probably take for him and Donna to return to the sunny south. In its survey of salaries of those coaches who made the NCAA Tournament, USA Today had Smith pulling in $1.861 million. And that was before Oregon dangled the big bucks and prompted Minnesota to seek an extension of Smith’s contract. The same survey had Gaudio making $793,901 which was about what I figured after the preseason extension. But Wake is paying its football coach $2.1 million a year and is still gussying up BB&T Field. Some serious money would probably have to come rolling in for Tubby to be in the picture.
Wellman is from Ohio and he has returned to his home state to hire Grobe from Ohio U and Rick Rembielak—the head baseball coach who was released last summer—from Kent State. So Gregory and Groce are in the geographical wheelhouse, so to speak.
Two more names I heard today were Dana Altman of Creighton and Travis Ford of Oklahoma State. Altman has been at Creighton for 16 seasons, long enough to have had his name surface the last time Wake was on the open market looking for a coach in April of 2001. His 327-176 record is impressive, but he’s not exactly in the peak of his career. His 2009-10 team finished 18-16, breaking a streak of 11 straight seasons with at least 20 victories. He has made the NCAA Tournament seven times, but hasn’t been back since 2007.
And he did leave Creighton in 2007, for a day. Less than 24 hours after being named head coach at Arkansas, Altman reconsidered and returned to Omaha.
Ford, who played at Kentucky under Rick Pitino, has been at Oklahoma State two years, finishing 23-12 the first year and 22-11 the second. Both years the Cowboys were 9-7 in Big 12 play, and both years they made the NCAA Tournament. They beat Tennessee and lost to Pitt in 2009 and lost in the first round to Georgia Tech last month.
Stay tuned. More balderdash to come.