TheTastyGreek

Not trying to pick a personal argument or fight, just using this as a jumpoff point for a hiring thought that's come up a few times here... In my opinion, hiring a current D2, JUCO, or other lower division coach is (potentially) the absolute worst possible decision we could make. There's a reason that, these days, it only ever seems to happen (and even then, rarely) among the very bottom conferences in D1 basketball. Meaning, way, way below CUSA or the Belt. Even 10-15 years ago, this might not have been such a bad idea. But the money explosion in D1 sports has so widened the gulf, we ought to be very skeptical why anyone we think is a good fit is active in a lower division instead of coaching (even as an assistant) in the D1 ranks. Just to illustrate the point... Back when we hired Johnny Jones, the base salary for the head coach at Nebraska (Barry Collier) was 20% lower than what Michael Lewis is making there as the 2nd or 3rd assistant. Six figure salaries were pretty unusual among assistants, and multi-year deals were very unusual. Now, there's so much money floating around, the #4 guy on the sideline for a Big 10 team with as many NCAA bids over the last 23 years as our school, and that last won their regular season in 1950 (in the Big Seven!) is guaranteed just under three quarters of a million dollars across three years. Even in 2000 or 2001, the money gap wasn't anywhere near there. So, a guy who liked where he was, or wanted to be a head coach, or had ties to the program, might stay at a lower division school rather than looking for a D1 assistant job. If you make $50-75k, and your job is secure, and your wife and kids are happy... Is it really worth it to fight for an $80k job where you're taking orders from someone else, and the cost of living may be double what it was in your old job? Especially when they can cut you loose after a year with no penalty? Even 15 years ago, sticking around at a D2 or a JUCO (if you were successful and paid well for that level) made sense. The difference between what you could make at that sort of gig and what you'd make as an assistant at a D1 or even a low major head coach wasn't so huge. Now, whatever makes you a good coach, whether it's development, recruiting, in-game strategy... If you have it, someone at the D1 level will find you and add you to their staff. And you'll be offered potentially TEN TIMES or more what you make as a D2 or JUCO head coach. So, if you're staying put there... Why? And, is there any answer to "why?" that wouldn't also rule out North Texas? Are you waiting for a big D1 head coaching job? Are you or your family tied to the area? Is there some reason you aren't able to get interest at the D1 level? There are a lot of guys coaching as D1 assistants who have experience as a JUCO or D2 head coach. Some of them may have dropped down for a few years to get the title on their resume (like Steve DeMeo seems to be in the middle of doing), some of them may have worked their way up through those ranks to get their D1 opportunity. But anyone who is active in a lower division carries an immediate, obvious question mark that makes them (in my opinion) even more risky than a D1 assistant with no head coaching experience. Of the guys I assume to be in consideration here, at least one is an active D2 guy and another is a current D1 assistant with a JUCO HC background (and watch everyone's head explode if we hire him, given where he's working as an assistant right now). But I think that if you look at the sort of coaches everyone mentions as "why don't we go get ___" from a perceived lower tier D1 school, almost all of them were inexperienced head coaches before getting the gig that made them so appealing. If we can get a guy active at the D1 level as a HC, great. I like Roman Banks! if we get a D1 assistant with previous HC experience, either at the D1 level or below, that can be fine too. I like Darrin Horn! I sort of like Unnamed Former JUCO HC and Current D1 Assistant Who Seems To Have A Relationship With Wren Baker And Could Potentially Be A Candidate (Or A Future Top Assistant Under Our Next Coach)! But if it comes down to a guy currently coaching below D1, I'd need to get a real clear picture of why he's down there, because I'd rather go fish in the D1 assistant pool rather than hire a career D2 or JUCO guy for our job.

Gottfried's murder-worthy record at NC State (6 seasons): .598 JJ's inferior record over his last 6 years at North Texas: .651 If you were looking to kill to get Gottfried's record here, you should have murdered JJ and the rest of the team right before Tony Mitchell got eligible. If we'd had to forefeit all those games he played, we'd have exactly the same win percentage.

They should have waited for the end of the year, then let him coach out the last 3 seasons on his contract, THEN replace him. Maybe. That's how you run a program.

It's not a good job for the sort of coach some of us think we ought to demand (proven, successful, experienced HC, hot name, heralded assistant, etc.), and it's a pretty good job for the sort of coach many people will get upset about us hiring (2nd or 3rd assistant on a strong mid-major or lower tier power conference team). If you're in it for money, a mid-level power conference team generally pays at least one and sometimes two assistants more money than what we're paying Benford and what we're likely to pay our next coach, even if we bump the salary by 25%. It's why even some successful mid- or low-major coaches leave their gigs for assistant jobs these days. So, if you're an established assistant in the right situation, you'll make more money staying put than working for us. If you're a guy that wants to be a head coach for its own sake, you don't have to jump on a job like ours just because it's open and other opportunities are relatively limited, like we might see in football. There are triple the number of D1 teams playing top division basketball as there are playing football. So, if you want to be a head coach, there are as many reasons to avoid us as there are to come here, and 20-40 jobs (depending on how many fire/retire openings hire other active head coaches lower on the food chain) opening up each year. If you're in it for fame or acclaim, you'll be better off going somewhere that basketball is the big (or only) major sport, and/or where your team is the big show in town. Ideally, somewhere with a history of success and taking the sport seriously, and a consistent (not one-off) track record of rewarding coaches or providing them opportunities to grow and move up. WKU, Murray State, something like that. If you're in it to climb the ladder, we're not a particularly good school and definitely not a good conference for that to happen. You need to make the NCAA tournament to get on a big school's radar, and we're in a situation (not likely to improve within the next 2-3 years) where we're an obvious one-bid league. So, even if you can come in, and win quickly, and rack up 20+ win seasons... You're in the same situation you'd be in in the Sun Belt, or the OVC, or the Summit, or any one of a number of leagues that are likely easier for you to come in and mop up, especially if you take over a successful team from a successful coach that moved up in the world. Gotta win your tournament, or you'll never register for a power conference job. So, if you're angling for the big job, why slug it out with WKU and UTEP and Old Dominion and the other schools in this league that take basketball seriously, when 50-75% of the league will drag you all down so badly each year that you're fighting each other for one slot in the tournament? Why not either go lower and take over a surging program, or go higher (in conference level AND money) and try to rebuild an A-10, MWC, AAC-level school where, if you can win games consistently, you aren't betting your career growth on just a timely hot streak the first week of March? There are at least 3 programs I expect to replace a coach this offseason that are going to be after the exact same sort of candidates we'll want: Missouri State, Duquesne, and Indiana State. And it's not hard to make a case that any or all of them will be more attractive, because of money, profile, history, opportunity, talent base, or a combination of those things, than our job. As a homer, it's nice to think that we're more attractive and we ought to be the more appealing job... But as a stone cold realist, it's easy to see why anyone could potentially prefer any of those three to our gig. And that's to say nothing of the guys who think they're one season away from an even bigger opportunity than any of the four of us, and are willing to let their chips ride for a shot at a power conference opening. So... Is it a good gig? Well, if you're an assistant like Justin Hutson, already open to considering a HC job at places like San Diego? Maybe. If you're willing to move away from your recruiting pipeline in California, and you don't think you'll get consideration for a bigger opening without trying your luck somewhere like UNT first. Or, if you're an assistant like Michael Lewis, and you're willing to take your grab at the head coaching brass ring for a $100k annual raise and 2 year increase in the guaranteed money you're already getting from Nebraska as their 2nd or 3rd assistant? Maybe, if you think you can recruit outside the midwest, and do it quickly. But if you're a current head coach, and you're successful already, and you're under contract for a while, and you have things humming merrily along at your current gig? No, this isn't a very attractive job at all.

Didn't Moon end up on probation/show-cause for recruiting violations over Dewey? Not sure I'm comfortable with that.

A power conference team often pays assistants more than we pay Benford. UT-Martin lost their head coach to an assistant gig (NC State, I think) that paid him over $500k.

Waiting for the end of the season to fully evaluate before taking action.

Well, gang... You hate to see it happen, but no winning streak can go on forever. If we had to see it end, at least it was to the 13th best team in the league, by almost 20 points. No shame in that. No more than anything else, I mean.

Not sure about that one yet, but an excellent question. TO THE ARCHIVES!!!

Well, either he hasn't put out a statement yet... In which case: shut up about it. Or, he's in the middle of drafting a statement right now... In which case: shut up about it. Or, he's already put a statement out... In which case: shut up about it. I hope this helps you better understand how to process and respond to whatever the situation may be.

So, just to be clear... The time to criticize/complain about problems is not before. And it's not during. Or while things are ongoing. And obviously, we shouldn't criticize or complain after, as mentioned in the quoted post. Other than before/during/after the subject in question, people expressing disapproval over perceived (or obvious, flaming, screaming-out-loud) problems is okay though, right?

Unbelievably, at this point Benford will never actually be "fired". He's obviously going to finish out the season, and complete his contract. So, he's never getting fired. He's just not getting retained. Two ADs, zero winning seasons, and somehow the guy never gets fired. #NewDenton

We had no idea how terrible the overall attendance had been when my brother and I showed up for that final. I remember trying to ask the guy at the ticket table to sell us a pair that would put us near the North Texas bench... He just laughed out loud, sold us the first two tickets on the pile, and said "I'm pretty sure you boys can sit just about wherever you want". And he was right, because I want to say we were maybe 15 or 20 rows from the floor, and only that far up because we didn't want to take someone else's seats by accident.

Wren, close your tabs when you tweet photos. Looks like he's been Googling former Oklahoma energy exec, state legislator, regional university regent, and current felony embezzlement defendant Terry Matlock. I don't think he'll be willing or able to make a big donation at the moment, though. Also, is he trying to refill a prescription?

Green pin means they haven't called us, red pin means we haven't called them.

Even if Johnny Jones had parted the Red Sea, we'd all have spent the past 2000 years arguing whether or not it took him too long to do it, whether he was, at best, an average prophet, and whether he deserved any credit for only leading the Israelites to the cusp of real success, A few stubborn idiots would diminish the parting as a routine miracle performed on an insignificant water inlet, and criticize JJ for never successfully parting the Mediterranean or for never even having the courage to schedule an attempt to part the Atlantic Ocean. We'd hear about how the parting was no big deal, and how things were much better in the good days when Jeremiah's wife hung a linen belt with a special message over the back of his chair. We'd constantly have arguments over whether we'd make it to the promised land overnight if only we had the courage to raise our standards and follow Padre Pio or Joseph Smith instead of settling for prophetic mediocrity.

Is this a bit? You realize that's actually worse than JJs record here, right? And that two of those postseason trips were to the CIT, which we also could have bought our way into in 09, 11, or 12? As for the St Mary's win... Didn't catch it because I wasn't looking at this season. Impressive, though. I've always liked Scott Cross, and anything "negative" I have to say about him is only as a mirror to how some of our own fans mythologize him relative to JJ despite a record not much different from and generally worse than what they're condemning on our side. So... Seriously, is this a bit?

Long answer, I'd rather type on a computer than a phone. If I don't answer tonight, then @ me tomorrow and I'll break down what (and more importantly, HOW) I think we ought to pay our next coach.

I sure hope we aren't paying anywhere near that much for our next coach.

Ahhh... The lowly Sun Belt. Over the years and the steady drumbeat of crapping on JJ for poor results and underperformance, you've named at least three guys that I can remember as superior coaches that just so happen to currently coach in the Sun Belt: Danny Kaspar, Scott Cross, and Bob Marlin. Collectively, coming in to the year in progress, those three guys had coached 12 years in the Sun Belt. They are a combined 199-191 (.510) overall, and a combined 116-110 (.513) in the Sun Belt regular season. 24 of those games have come against non-D1 opponents, but if we need to eliminate them from the win column, we only need to subtract 23. Because Marlin lost to non-D1 Texas College (even BENFORD never lost to Texas College!). So, if non-D1 wins count, they're 8 games over .500. If not, they're .480 across 12 Sun Belt years. Combined, they have zero Sun Belt regular season championships, outright or shared. They have zero at large bids. They have zero NIT bids, at-large or automatic. They have zero wins against ranked teams. They have zero NCAA wins. In 12 total seasons. This year, the best of them currently has his team a solid 4th place in the lowly Sun Belt. So... If JJ sucked/sucks, why are all these coaches that are so much better than him so much worse in an even weaker Sun Belt?

In that case, have you compared his results to the guy he took over for?

Let's circle back to this and see how it matches up to whoever we hire.

What about Mike Leach?