Smallwood: Coach Cal's rant is ridiculous
MAYBE IF the man delivering the sermon had not been Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari, I might have been moved a little more.
MAYBE IF the man delivering the sermon had not been Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari, I might have been moved a little more.
"We're firing coaches in midseason," Calipari said on Saturday after his Wildcats beat Georgia. "You know what I'm putting in my contract?
"You can fire me at midseason but you're going to have to pay me $3 million. Oh, you'll let me stay now, won't you? You can fire me midseason, but you're going to pay me. Every coach in the country, put it in your contract."
Coach Cal was making an unsolicited comment about rumors that Georgia coach Mark Fox's job was in imminent jeopardy. He was also upset that that North Carolina State's Mark Gottfried has been fired even though he will finish out the season as Wolfpack coach.
I hate for anybody to lose their job. Still, this is the profession Gottfried, Fox, Calipari and every other coach a major college program has chosen.
This isn't CYO or high school or even collegiate Division III. Big-time college basketball is a multibillion-dollar industry, and the difference between winning and losing could translate into millions of dollars.
That puts a tremendous amount of pressure on coaches, and sometimes guys get fired for reasons that seem unfair.
Still, let's not pretend this is a one-way street.
While there are coaches like Jim Boeheim at Syracuse (40th season), Duke's Mike Krzyzewski (36th season), Michigan State's Tom Izzo (21st season) and Phil Martelli (21st) at Saint Joseph's who have spent most of their adult lives at a single institution, that is no longer the norm.
Of the 351 Division I coaches, only about 15 percent of them have been in their job more than 10 seasons.
And while it's true that some of that is due to firings, it is also due to coaches leaving programs for what they see as better opportunities.
To hear Calipari rant about a lack of loyalty from universities to coaches is laughable. He is one of the poster children for turning success at one coaching job into the next, more lucrative opportunity.
After building Massachusetts into a Final Four team in 1996, Calipari quit and took over as coach of the New Jersey Nets.
He lasted less than 21/2 seasons in the NBA before being fired in 1998.
A little more than a year later, the University of Memphis pulled Calipari off the scrap heap and hired him for the 2000-01 season.
Coach Cal was the toast of Tennessee as he brought Memphis back to national prominence with six NCAA Tournament appearances in nine seasons, including finishing as national runner-up in 2008.
He owned the city and half of the state.
But less than a week after the 2008-09 season ended, Calipari bailed out on Memphis to accept an eight-year, $31.65 million offer from Kentucky (which two years later was extended to make it worth $36.5 million through 2019).
Memphis made a similar counteroffer, but Calipari said Kentucky was his dream job.
On Saturday, Calipari, who is the highest-paid public employee in Kentucky, raged, "Well, we want to win more. No kidding. We all want to.
"Live with my shoes. You want to win more? We gotta win by 25 or we got problems. We win by two or in overtime, people are jumping off bridges."
As I said, I understand how much pressure coaches are under. I've seen it up close for more than three decades covering sports.
But guys at the level of Gottfried and Fox are paid handsomely to produce results.
Last season, 32 college coaches had contracts paying at least $2 million a season and 10 more made at least $1 million per.
The average salary of the 68 coaches who made the 2016 NCAA Tournament was around $1.5 million – but that number is pulled down by coaches who are making less than $200,000 at schools from small conferences with automatic bids.
The average salary of a university president is around $450,000.
Gottfried, who is one of those $2 million coaches, took NC State to the NCAA Tournament his first four seasons but has missed the last two.
The Wolfpack will likely need a miracle run to the ACC Tournament title to reach this year's field of 68.
Georgia made the NCAA Tournament only twice in Fox's first seven seasons. It will likely need to win the SEC Tournament to qualify this year.
Paying out $1.7 million a year for bids into the NIT is not what the athletic department at Georgia had in mind when it hired Fox.
Coaching is a profession with a constantly revolving door.
After this year's tournament, a dozen or so coaches are going to cash in NCAA bids for better opportunities while a dozen or so will be fired for not being a part of March Madness.
Everyone knows that's the way the game is played – especially a guy like Calipari, who has played it so well.
@SmallTerp