Price Of Success
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?