Saturday, July 19, 2008

More Job Security

Sometimes you have to wonder if smart people run college athletics. Imagine this scenario in the real world. A manager leads a group of people to great success one year. Then the next year he leads nearly the exact same group with another year of experience to considerably less success. Those people that led the group the last two years have no other option but to leave so the manager is starting with an entirely new group this upcoming year. Recent history suggests this manager takes a few years to achieve any type of success with a young group. Would that manager get a contract extension and raise in the business world? I seriously have my doubts.

Well, if my Internet is working correctly it appears the UO has done just that with the men's basketball coach. All of the followers of this coach may counter that adding a year does nothing except make it easier to recruit. If that is so, why in the world did the UO decide to increase the buyout? Good luck to whoever has to live with that decision. Paying the debt service on a new arena with a team that is good every now and then and a coach that puts together an abomination of a home non-conference schedule shouldn't be too hard.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh... "nearly the exact same group"? Does Aaron Brooks ring a bell? Losing your top scorer, player with the most minutes, and the guy with twice as many assists as any other player on the team is a tough replacement.

They thought Tejuan Porter could fill his shoes... sadly Porter ended up with less assists than Maarty Leunen.

By the way, the Ducks still made the NCAA Tourney last year, and has half (5) of Oregon's all-time tournament appearances. For people who've followed the Ducks for 30 years, we can appreciate a coach who has success in Eugene, and decides to stay.

On top of everything else, it would have been a complete disaster to fire a coach after bringing in a recruiting class of this caliber. A player like Michael Dunnigan has NEVER been seen in green and yellow, and never would have been seen if Kent were canned.

J Smith said...

Do you have problems with the definition of nearly? That means almost the same. When a team has one less player it is nearly the exact same group.

Since you posted as anonymous I doubt I will get an answer but I will ask anyway. Why do the 30-year Duck fans have problems with assuming things that are not written? The old crumudgeon Duck fans are a sensitive bunch.

The 30-year fans also have a fabulous way of making excuses. Perhaps I am a weird UO alum but when something I do sucks I have no other option but to fess up to it. As I recall Kent did recruit every single one of those players. My memory also seems to tell me that Brooks was at the UO for four years so it was not as if his leaving was a surprise.

No where in my post did I say anything about firing Kent. I simply said that in no other line of work can your season be a disappointment (as defined by young Duck fans who don't have pathetic expectations of yesteryear) and you get an extension and raise. Thanks for jumping to conclusions anonymous. I expect to see you cheering loudly at next year's season opener against New Jersey Institute of Technology.

In the future I hope I can find a 30-year Duck fan to be my boss. When things go well I am an extraordinary individual. When things hit the fan those around me are the ones that dropped the ball.

Anonymous said...

I agree that it doesn't happen in many, if any, other lines of work, but college coaching is a strange carousel. We should have been better last year, but I'm not particularly trigger happy because I'm not convinced we could get someone who is a clearly better coach. And although you didn't explicitly state you think Kent should be fired in your original post, it more or less implied it.

I also have to disagree on the scheduling. Last year's schedule was tougher than people give it credit for and this year's is a very respectable schedule with a potential Maui semifinal matchup with North Carolina and several other quality opponents. Maybe not filled with big name schools, but respectable nonetheless. Didn't see NJIT on there, but maybe we should add them??!!