College Basketball AD's Need a Logic Course

The college basketball world continues to amaze me. You sometimes wonder what these AD's are thinking?. Today brought us a new coach at Appalachian State, after the guy who had been there a year, Buzz Peterson decided he liked the beaches of North Carolina better than the mountains and headed to UNC/Wilmington. That may be one of the most lateral moves you will ever see in the game.

The sad story here is about the guy who sat quietly in the empty stands, on the Mountaineer bench as an assistant named Matt McMahon. In fact McMahon also played his college ball at Appalachian State. He had been an assistant the last ten years under both Houston Fancher and Buzz Peterson. McMahon was considered a shoe-in for the job if for no other reason putting up with the boredom of living in Boone, NC for over a decade. But not so fast. It seems one of the other assistants was a former University of North Carolina star named Jason Capel, who is also the younger brother of Oklahoma University head coach Jeff Capel. Jason had all of ten months coaching experience on any level, that being with Peterson at Appalachian State, yet in the end, the Appalachian State administration decided Capel was a better choice for the job than their loyal alumnus who had paid his dues, McMahon.

Peterson had done an admirable job at ASU, turning the program around in his short stint there, but now the reigns have been turned over to a guy who has never called a timeout with very little coaching experience just because he has the right name and pedigree. Not since NC State hired Sydney Lowe, who at the time had no college degree, have I seen such a farce. I guess that old line of "paying your dues and good things will happen." is just that, a line. McMahon will be fine and has decided to go with Buzz to the beach as an assistant. I wondered why in the world would a guy like Peterson go from one state school job that he had made a winner to another that he would have to build up again. Perhaps Buzz knew the administration was suspect and he better get off the boat while it was still sitting floating on top of the water.

At any rate, the mentality of some college AD's are hard to follow. When Oliver Purnell busted out of Clemson for a $700,000 raise and less pressure at Depaul, the Tigers went hard after Mississippi State's Rick Stansbury. This is a guy who is seen by many as a hired gun who gets some amazing recruits to come to Starkville Mississippi. One D1 assistant told me off the record, that when they saw a Mississippi State assistant come in the gym to look at a recruit they were recruiting, they just would get up and leave. It was a done deal. The implication being that they could not compete with what might be in the Mississippi State's assistants briefcase. Well, Stansbury turned them down. Their next move was to hire a squeaky clean up and comer out of Wright State named Brad Brownell. A great coach who has done a terrific job but a full 180 degree turn from Stansbury. Of course the seasons biggest travesty has to be at Wake Forest where they fired Dino Gaudio. A guy who took over when Skip Prosser passed away three years ago and guided the Demon Deacons to a 61-31 mark and knocked off Texas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in March. In fact he had one of the highest ranked freshman recruiting classes coming in for the Fall. Before Dino could even get his office packed up, it was announced that Colorado head coach Jeff Bzdelik was the front runner for the job and sure enough a few days later he was named the Deacons new head coach. How had he done at Colorado? He was 36-58 the last three years. Well that makes great common sense, let's fire a guy who has won twice as many games as he has lost in one of America's toughest conferences, the ACC. Then let's hire a guy who has won less than 40% of his games in the Big 12. Wow!

Remember these are educated guys making these decisions, they have master's degrees and doctorates. I guess Logic was not a required course of study for most of them. So what does this all mean? We better be real scared, Sarah Palin could be our next President or the next women's head coach at Tennessee. She did play a little college basketball and she has a big name. Coach Summitt you better watch your back.