OT: The NCAA needs to regulate coaching moves

[Crazy Patriot Guy]

Months back I was watching Fox Sports Southwest and they were talking about Rice head football coach Todd Graham leaving after one season to take the job at Tulsa where he had previously been the DC.

Rice was 1-10 in 2005 and Graham turned them into a 7-6 team with a bowl appearance. He and OC Major Applewhite switched from the wishbone to a spread offense and even had an All-American at WR with 20 TD catches, all in one season.

Then he bolts. You can't particularly blame him, the reporters on the show didn't, Tulsa was his dream job all along and it was understandable for him to take the job when it was available.

However, one reporter made an excellent comment, which is the point of this post. Something is wrong when coaches can come and go as they please but players have to sit out a year if they transfer to another Division 1 school.

Coaching contracts are meaningless these days. How often do you see on the ticker on ESPN that a coach just extended his contract through 2015 or so and then he's gone a year or two later?

Like the reporters said, the school where the coach is under contract really has no choice if he's interested in another job, it takes too much commitment to be the head coach to leave it to a person that wants to be somewhere else. So you pretty much have to grant permission to interview him and then let him leave.

Dennis Erickson recently left after just 10 months at Idaho to take the job at Arizona State. I remember reading about how furious his players were and the AD was very disappointed. He got these kids to dedicate everything they have and buy into what he's trying to do and then takes off almost instantly.

Again, you can't blame these guys. I remember reading that Erickson's desk at Idao was the exact same one that he had when he previously was the head coach there before leaving in 1985. Obviously Arizona State has more to offer. Graham leaving Rice for his dream job at a better football program in Tulsa is again understandable. However, something needs to be done to start regulating these coaching moves.

Maybe the NCAA needs to start putting minimums on contracts, stating that you have to stay for a certain period based on how long your contract is. You can't really make a coach sit out a season because that just screws up two schools because it will usually be obvious which school the guy will be taking over. I don't have the solution, I just think that one needs to be thought of.

 

[Seymour93]

It's the same way in college basketball. Kansas State gave Bob Huggins the break of his life and after just one successful season Huggins bolts for West Virginia. Let's say the Mountaineers go far in the tourney and Huggins is offered the job at Illinois... does anyone believe that Huggins would choose to stay put? As long as the big time jobs are offering big time money these coaches will always be bouncing around from place to place. Since the NFL has, for the most part, achieved parity, coaching disloyalty isn't a problem in pro football.

 

[BradfordPatsFan]

I get your point but these are guys who are just changing jobs. In any other job do you need to sit out a year if you take the same position somewhere else?

That is what the coaches would fall back upon if the NCAA tried to regulate their movement.

 

[PatDaPatriot]

There's nothing the NCAA can do to regulate coaching moves. They're football coaches, not indentured servants. The most that a school can do is include a significant buy-out in the contract negotiated with the coach...

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

I get your point but these are guys who are just changing jobs. In any other job do you need to sit out a year if you take the same position somewhere else?

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If you sign a covenant not to compete contract, you do. It's fairly common in broadcasting (why TV anchors must wait before jumping to the competition) but what bothers me is when there is a scandal and the team goes on probation, the caoch is long gone. If you want to clean up the NCAA (who doesn't) make the new school suffer the same fate as the old one (probation, less xscholarships) and you'll clean it up the next day.....

 

[Michigan Dave]

You have to balance that with the best interests of the game. It's still amateur athletics, and the bulk of the players aren't going to be professional players, and are probably choosing their schools accordingly. In the NCAA, programs are constantly toeing the line to try and pull any possible advantage. I don't like a system where players have no consequence in switching schools. Not because of the players, but because you would have other coaches out there looking to poach programs as soon as a coach left, and you would have more programs willing to look the other way on violations, or accept poor performance to make sure that doesn't happen. While it's not fair, it's for the good of the game.

Also, recruits can be let out of their LOIs, and the school would be under severe negative publicity were they to hold a recruit to a LOI they didn't want after a coach was fired/left. Look at Michigan. We fire Amaker. We have 2 good recruits coming in. 1 stays, the other has been released from his LOI and is opening up his recruitment.

 

[Michigan Dave]

If you sign a covenant not to compete contract, you do. It's fairly common in broadcasting (why TV anchors must wait before jumping to the competition) but what bothers me is when there is a scandal and the team goes on probation, the caoch is long gone. If you want to clean up the NCAA (who doesn't) make the new school suffer the same fate as the old one (probation, less xscholarships) and you'll clean it up the next day.....

Another good point, but there are some issues that would be difficult here. First, you can't punish a school for something that didn't happen there. If we find out that John Beilein was dirty at WVU, I don't want Michigan put on probation. However, when Steve Fisher was fired, and started fresh again at San Diego State when we went through a period of uncertainty that hurt the program before the sanctions were levied, and we then had to deal with the actual consequences of the wrongdoings during his regime, that struck me as unfair as well. But San Diego State shouldn't have been punished. It's tough. How do you punish the coach? The coach argues his punishment was being fired, but if he can be hired right away by another program, it's not a severe punishment at all. Especially in a situation like Michigan, where we're 10 years removed next year from the tournament because of Fisher's teams.

 

[dhamz]

I think that if a coach leaves, players should be allowed to transfer and play right away. If they want to put in some rules to limit where the player goes (such as not within the same conference) that would be OK.

It is a fact that the coach is an enormous factor in where these kids go to school. In basketball it is overwhelmingly the #1 factor. Everyone knows it. Schools openly admit they know it by never letting their coaches have less than 4 years remaining on their contract so that all potential recruits can be "assured" the coach will be there for his career.

Under the current system, not only are kids not allowed to make the choice to move on their own with no penalty, new coaches consistently come in and run off kids. These kids who "voluntary" (wink, wink) transferred also sit out a year.