John Becker - Head coach - Vermont - 47

TheTastyGreek · March 18, 2016

Wondering what this is all about? - READ THIS

Age: 47

Current contract situation: Base salary of $230,000, signed through either next year or the 2017-18 season (please post a link if you can confirm the extension through 2017-18)

Experience: 5 years as a D1 head coach, all at Vermont. 2 years as a D3 head coach at Gallaudet. 5 years as a D1 assistant at Vermont, 5 years as a D3 assistant.

Best year as a head coach: Two contenders:
2011-12. 24-12 overall, 13-3 in conference. Won the America East conference tournament. Won their play-in game against Lamar, then lost to #1 seed North Carolina.
2013-14. 22-11 overall, 15-1 in conference. Lost their America East conference semifinal tournament game to eventual champion Albany. Auto-bid to the NIT, lost first game to #2 seed Georgia. 2014 America East Coach of the Year.

Worst year as a head coach: 2015-16. 22-13 overall, 11-5 in conference. Final record doesn't look so bad, but at various points they were 6-7 and 10-9 on the season. At various points, Becker called his team "really dumb" and said of himself "I'm not doing a good job coaching". Some Vermont fans wanted him to get fired. Some are just idiots, but that's how fan dissatisfaction always starts. Ultimately, the team rallied late in the year, and made the America East conference tournament final. They blew a 13 point 2nd half lead and lost to Stony Brook. Currently alive in the CBI; won their first game against against Western Carolina, set to face Seattle in the CBI quarterfinals.

What makes him worth considering? He's been a head coach for 5 years, he has 5 20+ win seasons. 5 years, one NCAA bid, one NIT bid, one CBI semifinals run, one (current) quarterfinals-and-maybe-more run. 9-4 record in conference tournament games, 4-4 (and counting) in postseason tournament games.

If we gave him Benford's original contract, we'd almost double his salary and he'd have an extra 3 or 4 (unclear, see above... may still be a school option) guaranteed years beyond his current Vermont deal. His Vermont buyout is only $100,000 (see page 9). That's practically nothing... For comparison, we paid Wake Forest a $250,000 buyout to hire Mike Petersen to coach our women's team back in 2012. And he was awful! Becker is actually good!

Whycome would he'd suck real bad? IS he actually good? He has five 20 win seasons in 5 years. But his best year was (arguably) his first year, and the past two years have been his worst. Before Becker took over, Vermont had 20+ wins in 8 of the previous 10 years, too.

Additional comments: Briefly stepped away from coaching entirely to be an IT guy (he did both jobs at the same time while working D3), then took a $10,000 (not a typo- ten thousand dollars a year) job as the DOBO at Vermont. At his last D3 school, he was also a tennis coach (despite not really knowing how to play tennis). Gallaudet is a school for the deaf... Becker was an assistant and later the head coach there, despite not knowing sign language when he interviewed with the deaf head coach.

If you wanted to convince me Becker is the propped-up product of a successful program, I'd have to concede that there's at least a small chance you're right. If you wanted to convince me that John Becker is a wizard because he can teach sports he doesn't know in a language that he doesn't speak (all while working a full time job as a computer technician), I'd have to concede that there's at least a small chance you're right about that, too.