The Chicken or the Egg? Does the USC AD really know how to build a successful and profitable sports program?
by Paragon SC on Jul 2, 2009 8:30 AM PDT
in USC Basketball
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The smashing financial success of football under Pete Carroll actually works as a deterrent to spending an arm-and-leg on a basketball coach. If USC lose money in football or barely made money, there would be pressure to pay Jamie Dixon $2 million or more per year to get basketball going.
But with football bringing millions in profit, there's no urgency to make money on basketball, so that's why there were not any marquee names that almost got the job.
What?
I realize that I am not a Marshall School Grad let alone a college graduate but I think I am a pretty good businessman. I have been pretty successful in most of the sales jobs I have taken since I left the service so the thought process above makes absolutely no sense to me. If true, it takes another layer off the onion in how Mike Garrett really doesn't get the big picture.
Gordon Gekko said the following in the movie "Wall Street"...
"A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place."
This is one of my favorite movie lines of all time and I use it all the time...it also describes Mike Garrett perfectly.
If we are to believe what Scott Wolf writes above (and I do) then USC athletics is like a rudderless ship that jjst happened to make it to port.
I have have always been taught that you always reinvest many of your profits back into your business. Personnel first, equipment second, etc. So, it would seem to me that reinvesting our football profits into securing a top flight coach in basketball would be priority #1. I understand that the NCAA investigations are hurting us by scaring some away who might be interested in the job. But what has Garrett been doing in order to secure the future? If Floyd was the guy then why wasn't he locked up long term? By not doing that Floyd's eyes wandered over towards Tucson. That was the straw that broke the Camel's back and we saw our recruiting class explode and two of our underclassmen declare for the NBA (DeRozan was a foregone conclusion).
It is now clear to me that in the way the school handled the Floyd/Guillory allegation that they were fine with Floyd leaving. That they let Floyd twist in the wind denying his ability to stand up for himself in the wake of a pretty damning charge. Garrett looks at mens basketball like Steve Jobs looks at Apple TV...as a hobby. He has no real interest in making it a a top notch, top of the line product. (I am a HUGE Apple TV fan BTW).
I understand that the USC fan base in general is lethargic when it comes to basketball but if Garrett put more of a commitment into it he would see a huge amount of growth. Garrett tried to cut corners by allowing Floyd to go through with the Mayo recruitment. As I have stated ad nausea, Garrett knew who Guillory was and he still let him hang around the basketball program. He did nothing to protect the program when things were starting to grow. He didn't want Floyd bad enough to lock him up long term.
He instead took the attitude that it is a privilege to coach at USC...
That may be true for football but not basketball.
Floyd of course, is not blameless. His hypocritical statements that his players should stay to finish the task at hand as he is about to get on a plane to Arizona to interview for the head coaching position there didn't endear him to a whole lot of people...and we started seeing the results BEFORE the Floyd/Guillory allegation broke.
I have a hard time seeing how USC is taking basketball seriously with all the weird moves or non-moves that they have made.
Garrett is showing he out of his league on some of these things.
Yes, there are some who want to give Garrett credit for other USC coaching hires he has made in the 2nd tier sports. That's fine, I can see where those hires and their success on the field/court build up a sense of pride in the USC faithful but those sports don't pay the bills. Football and Basketball do!
Like DFW said in the comments...So, if football made less, basketball would invest more?
Is that really how Garrett and the AD think?
Heck, Garrett allowed the most storied baseball program in NCAA history to disappear from view with his hiring of Chad Kreuter. I mean they are not even competitive.
There are couple of great comments in the piece linked above...they are well worth the read.
I understand that Garrett is in a bit of a tough spot, but he did bring some of this if not all of this on himself. No one really knows what the future holds in regards to USC basketball. Kevin O'Neill is not a long term solution. There is nothing on his resume' that would indicate otherwise and until the NCAA hands down their findings Garrett will have a hard time marketing the virtues of the USC basketball program. And once the NCAA black cloud does depart the real work begins...rebuilding.
The question is will there be anything left to rebuild. Garrett and the AD have done in a few short weeks what the NCAA would never or could never do...completely decimate a program into a nuclear wasteland. Garrett's moves have set us back YEARS and I mean more than the token couple of years that the NCAA will probably hit us with.
So, back to my original question...the Chicken or the Egg?
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Sounds pretty bad to me
USC basketball has for years now been relegated to a second-tier status that really is totally unbecoming of a major college power. USC, as much as I knock it, has a first-rate athletic program and an outstanding athletic history in nearly all sports. To write off basketball- one of the two high-profile college sports-is stupid. Basketball is relatively cheap, and considering the investment in the Galen center, you’d think that USC would take a better approach to the quality of the program. That requires ponying up the $$ to land an elite coach. Everyone knows that USC basketball is heading for hard times, but big $$ would surely interest an elite coach somewhere and the returns from the investment would be incredible. Setting aside the fact that a strong basketball program also generates money, you’d see a true basketball rivalry between USC-UCLA, runs at an NC from time to time, and seeing USC prominently menioned in March during the advertising extravaganza known as the NCAA tournament-why in the world would any AD simply wash his hands of such a chance? Mind-boggling, and it implies something worse to a prospective coach than low $ offers-it implies that basketball is utterly, totally irrelevant to the USC adminstration. And few coaches, and certainly no elite coaches, are going to want to coach at a school where their contributions don’t matter, IMHO.
This is probably about right
Since 1970 I have been a USC basketball supporter, going to any game I could fit into my work schedule. It has always been this up and down thing with this program when there is commitment there has always been a break away from it (problems, coach fired, sports arena etc.). Then there is this in all this time not one coach has left because he was moving up to another program or to the NBA, that in itself supports AD not into Basketball.
But I can’t believe you build a new facility and have this mind set, you are wasting money at that point. When it comes to getting an elite coach, why wouldn’t a guy want to get paid to go through sanctions (if they happen) in all that time rebuilding the program the way you want, there is no pressure.
I would have to say when it comes down to interviewing that the AD doesn’t interview that well?
Paul D. Kelley
by so.cal.native1952 on Jul 2, 2009 9:50 AM PDT reply actions
Basketball
A few points:
1) Garrett has never been accused of being a great AD, in fact many thought he was pretty bad prior to Carroll. However over the course of his tenure, you have to give him at least the title of average (not counting the Carrroll hire). Why some suddenly thought him great after hiring Carroll is the surprising part.
2) There might be a lot of truth to what Scott wrote, but he also said that he didn’t think USC could hire a top coach prior to getting O’Neill. Sounds like Monday morning QBing your own point. Garrett was never going to get a top coach at this point in the program outside of throwing an obscene amount of money at someone. O’Neill is what he is, an interim coach. Someone to get the program over the next year or two.
3) It doesn’t take a lot to rebuild a basketball program. Hire a good caoch and a couple of good recruiting classes. It’s not like football.
4) ucladj89, I agree with everything you say. What I find interesting is much of what you say can (to a smaller extent) be said about the bruin football program. They have never been willing to pay big for a coach or assistants. Even Dohn says they are not willing to pay Chow the going rate for a top OC after next year (amazing). There is no reason UCLA is this way in football, they have everything to become a elite program year after year. It’s like the two schools have some weird symbiotic relationship that is at times very hard to understand.
Ev, you make a good point re UCLA football but some distinctions are apparent
You are spot-on acccurate about UCLA’s unwillingness to pay big for a coach or assistants. Lots of speculation about why this is a fact, but it is a fact, and it has IMHO seriously damaged UCLA football, especially over the past decade or so that UCLA has been struggling in bare mediocrity. But it’s not quie the flipside to USC’s treatment of basketball-UCLA has a solid football history, not a great history to be sure, but a very solid, top-25 level history, even with the facilities sucking and the (relatively) low pay. USC basketball has not won a PAC-10 title outright ever and only this year made the NCAA tournament three years in a row. That is astonishing. There also is not much question of the UCLA adminstration’s commitment to football, although I think your post accurately points out that the commitment can be said to have wavered from time to time in light of the refusal to pay the big $ for an elite coach. To be fair, however, nobody in the PAC-10 has ever paid out huge $ for a coach to come on board to fix a program (by huge I’m talking Saban/SEC standards.) I think the acid test will be when Chow’s deal needs to be considered in 2010-they have to pay the guy market rate. Losing this caliber of coach is simply not an option if UCLA ever intends to reinsert itself into the discussion of big-time programs again. We shall see.
For UCLA, I think the bigger problem is not the lack of interest on UCLA’s administration’s part regarding football, but the depth of that interest and the willingness to commit the necessary resources. Football is expensive; basketball is not (compared to football.) UCLA figures it can get by relying on the resources of the LA area to bring in talented coaches, but coaches go to $, too. So we seem to be stuck in a cycle where the school is determined to find someone who will take the job for less than top $, which obviously gives you a lot of choices but keeps the big-time, sure-fire winner away. From my perspective, I hate it as a fan, but UCLA football still makes $, so maybe the admin figures that as long as football does OK, they can live with it never returning to Red Sanders-style, or even Donahue-style, glory. USC basketball, OTOH, makes no sense to me because of the substantial investment in the Galen Center and the recent success of the basketball team.
I imagine that
Chow will want at least a million dollars a year to stay. He is all about the money. ucla was a convenient place to be for him since his family lives in Los Angeles. He only has a few working years left before he retires. I think he will stay with the bruins unless the NFL calls. It would seem unlikely that the NFL would want him back unless the bruins put up some impressive offensive numbers this season or next year. I agree with you that ucla needs Chow calling the plays to be successful. I don’t think that Neuheisel can do it on his own.
The egg. . . .
. . . . chickens are descendants of the vanquished and extinct dinosaurs. (i was hoping someone else would answer the question semantically- apart from the theater that is USC athletics. when i answered my 5th grade teacher, Mr. Thomas- he told the class i “made that up”. at the time, i thought he was just a total dick for lying to my class. when my parents found out that he truly didn’t know, i just felt very sad for him. get this. . . the principal didn’t know either)
Comer4tide to Nico2.0: "How come I've never heard of any of your random songs?"
Todd to Comer: "Because if you had, he wouldn't listen to it. BOOM. Roasted."
Nico to Todd: "Shouldn't you be off voguing somewhere?"
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