The college basketball coaching carousel is in full swing: coaches getting fired, others hired, and everything in-between. Tennessee just treated Texas’s trash like its treasure when it hired Rick Barnes to lead the Vols. DePaul retreaded a guy — Dave Leitao — who once left that program for a better job. St. John’s attempted to win back fans by bringing in the greatest player in the history of their program, Chris Mullin, to coach.
Unless you have a crystal ball, there are no tangible ways to predict how any of these hires will work out. Sure, we can use the current state of the program and the new coach’s previous track record to make educated guesses at who will — and won’t — succeed, but there’s a decent chance we have no real clue.
There are some fair assumptions to be made, though. Rick Barnes took Texas to seven more NCAA Tournament appearances in his time at Texas than the Vols did in that same time frame. Depending on the Tennessee fan base’s expectations, Barnes should be viewed as an upgrade from some of the program’s previous coaches. Of course many of those fans would have preferred to bring back Bruce Pearl, but of all the realistic coaches the Vols could have landed, Barnes was probably the best of the tried-and-true group.
DePaul was a bit more interesting. Some fresher, more alluring names were reportedly interested in the gig. Still, because this is DePaul, the school listened to a coaching search firm and decided to bring back Leitao. While he may very well work out, especially in comparison to the Oliver Purnell era, it is easy to see why people think of the move and giggle on the inside.
Leitao left DePaul after taking the Blue Demons to two NITs and one NCAA Tournament. (It should be noted that DePaul was in Conference USA at the time.) Then he left the program for Virginia because he wanted more coin and the chance to be a part of what was perceived as a better program. After failing miserably he was canned and spent the majority of the time in subsequent years being Frank Haith’s assistant coach.
That doesn’t exactly scream future excitement if you are a DePaul fan, but give the school this: It should be applauded if it honestly thought Leitao was a better hire than Bobby Hurley or Bryce Drew. I mean, at least DePaul didn’t cave into the pressure of hiring a guy it didn’t think was a good fit. At the same time, the move was more likely done to save the school some loot, which probably places this move in its proper perspective. Regardless, the Blue Demons made a move that they felt was best for them — even if it was to just save a few bucks.
Those two previous examples are schools who made moves for the betterment of their programs — not exactly for the same reasons, but both rooted in the athletic department’s sincere appraisal of what would be best for the school for the foreseeable future. Neither were, especially not with the Blue Demons, a PR-based move to win the day’s headlines.
That brings us to the third example in this recent spin of Coaching Carousel: Spring Break 2015.
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St. John’s is a bit different from Tennessee and DePaul. The school clearly wanted to win some headlines, a luncheon, and anything else that would help excite the Red Storm fan base. While I will acknowledge that Chris Mullin might very well end up being a tremendous hire, as of today there’s no proof to say he was anything other than attempt to get people talking about the Johnnies.
Mullin meets every prerequisite to be considered more of a PR hire than a coach being hired based on his track record. Mullin has never coached at any level. What he is, though, is a Red Storm legend known for being a Brooklyn boy (although he’s lived mostly on the West Coast for three decades). He’s also someone who has NBA connections and a slew of other attributes that make his hiring more of a wishful thinking, win-the-day maneuver than an attempt to land a proven commodity.
There’s no obvious right way to go about hiring a head coach. I would argue, however, that there are clearly wrong ways… such as hiring guys who are unfamiliar with local recruiting and have a history of not working hard. I’m not entirely sure the PR hire fits in with that, but it sure doesn’t help.
If Barnes doesn’t work out at Tennessee, people will be kind of surprised, yet no one will blame the Vols’ athletic department for bringing him in. If Leitao fails at DePaul, well… let’s be honest, it is DePaul… so not a soul would be shocked if the school brought in the reanimated corpse of John Wooden to lead the charge and they still failed (no risk-reward at DePaul, I guess).
As for the Johnnies, they are in dangerous territory because of this PR hire. If it doesn’t work out, after passing on actual coaches who know their way around the Xs and Os, they have essentially admitted that their program no longer carries enough credibility to attract the big coaching names some fans may have preferred.
We can admit that PR hires win the day. However, it isn’t insane to also acknowledge that if the PR hires fail, those same schools can lose so much more in the long run — for starters, credibility among people who don’t get giddy on the insides just because a guy is famous. More importantly than that, St. John’s now stands to lose possible future coaches who previously would have coveted the job, and recruits who will no longer consider the program worthy of their talents.
PR hires, when they don’t work out, are basically just a circus attraction sideshow that can ruin a program for decades. That’s not exactly worth the risk, in my opinion.
