Altman just one among many on Coaching Carousel
Welcome aboard the college basketball Coaching Carousel.
Beware: this ride can leave you dizzy and disoriented.
Don’t believe it? Try deciphering this…
On St. Patrick’s day, the Big Blue brass at the University of Michigan handed coach Tommy Amaker, who is apparently endowed with the anti-luck of the Irish, his pink slip, leaving him feeling blue on the day o’ green.
The Big Blue void created by Amaker’s canning sparked the interest of West Virginia coach John Beilein, who, two weeks and a $2.5 million contract buy-out later, made, well, a bee-line to to Ann Arbor take over the Wolverines.
Creighton’s Dana Altman, meanwhile, was linked to another Big Ten job. The rumor mill indicated the 13-year Creighton veteran was likely headed to the University of Iowa to fill the opening created by the departure of Steve Alford, a former rising star in the Missouri Valley Conference when he coached at Missouri State (the same school that, a few weeks ago, held a press conference to announce neither a hiring nor a firing, but to proclaim that embattled coach Barry Hinson would be retained, prompting me to wonder when press conferences had become necessary to announce the continuation of business as usual. Doesn’t that take the “news” right out of the “news conference?” But I digress...).
Altman, never one to tip his hand when it comes to job negotiations, shocked Creighton soon thereafter by announcing he was headed not to Iowa, but to the University of Arkansas, where he would take over as coach of the Razorbacks.
Alas, Altman quickly learned, it’s not an easy transition from CU to pig soo.
Within 24 hours, the DA era at the U of A had been ruled D.O.A. Having endured enough of Arkansas' hogwash, Altman returned to Omaha, ready to reassume his previous position as Creighton’s head coach.
Of course, he just as easily might have returned to his previous previous job, at Kansas State. About the same time that Altman announced his return to Creighton, Wildcats head coach Bob Huggins, perhaps operating under the influence of John Denver, decided to go back to his mountain home, West Virginia, to take over the position vacated by Beilein.
So, you’re probably wondering, what’s the moral of this meandering story? Some might argue – and perhaps rightly so, especially in the case of the ubiquitously underhanded Huggins – that the moral is there are no morals.
College basketball is a business, and coaching changes are nothing more than career moves. You wouldn’t condemn an executive for moving to a Fortune 500 company from a corporation struggling to stay out of the red, so why criticize Altman for bolting back to Bluejay country when he wanted to get out of the (Razorback) red?
Sure, a big-time Division I basketball coach holds a particularly prominent occupation. But can we really expect the loftiness of an individual’s ethics to match that of his job title, for the love of Ken Lay?
In a fantasy world, yes. But Fantasy World is the next ride over. This is the Coaching Carousel. And, as much as it may leave people running for the exits, disillusioned and ill, the college Coaching Carousel will keep turning, driven by coaches’ dual desires: the almighty dollar and the ever-elusive national championship.
So, coaches, feel free to keep taking yourselves – and your supporters – for rides on the ol’ Carousel. Just don’t expect your money back if you don’t enjoy it. After all, as Beilein learned, a ride on the Carousel can cost a pretty penny (or 2.5 billion of them).
