University of Wisconsin athletic director (and former football coach), Barry Alvarez, was forced to have to look for a new coach last month. The popular choice of the Wisconsin faithful was current Pitt coach, Paul Chryst, the former Badger offensive coordinator. But because Chryst has only been at Pitt for one year, Alvarez thought that it would be very unfair to try and seduce him away (the fact that Pitt had already gone through three coaches in the previous three years would have made it even more devastating), and so he didn't. Coach Chryst appears to like it at Pitt and may not have been interested in leaving anyway but this was a very magnanimous gesture on Alvarez's part and it showed me that there are still a few decent fellows left out there.
College football coach: odd job,
ReplyDeletemuch power (even Woody Hayes couldn't handle that). Washington
State U hired Mike Leach last season: the guy that was fired from
Texas Tech for player abuse. 4th highest paid in the PAC 10, he led the cougars to a 3-9 season, winning just one conference game.
His best receiver quit over alleged abuse. ...odd job..sort of
like a CEO in some ways-the board is afraid to fire you until some egregious action.
Leach is one of those high risk - high reward type coaches. I wouldn't write him off just yet but, yeah, he's definitely a head-case.
ReplyDeleteLeach is one of a handfull of coaches who never played college ball. Another interesting coach
ReplyDelete(basketball) had quite a career
as player, assistant coach and
head coach working up through Duke, Michigan and Seton Hall...
then working wonders at Harvard of all
places.
I hope that Amaker stays at Harvard. It's a perfect fit.
ReplyDelete