I think that this ruling against Penn State today put the final nail in the coffin of the idea of coaches, at least in Division 1 sports, having essentially a life-long tenure provided that they keep winning.
Do you think that there will ever be a coach at a university who is as powerful and as revered as Paterno was at Penn State? If so, who do you think has that potential?
I sure hope there isn’t a coach like Paterno ever again. That kind of power and influence led to a sports culture that allowed children to be abused.
I fucking hope not. There are plenty of revered and powerful coaches who’ve been at one school for decades, but none of them should be allowed to help run the university because of the fame and fundraising power of a successful sports team.
Has “Paterno” been Hitlerized?
Let’s hope not. It was fun watching them haul off that statue.
Understanding the intent of the OP, I believe, possibly start the list with Coach K and Boeheim.
There will continue to be long-term coaches. Paterno won’t affect that. If you have a coach who keeps winning for you, then he can stay as long as he wants.
Mike Gundy at OSU will stay as long as he wants I think.
I’m not in Syracuse, but every Summer, the local news runs at least one report asking “Is this the season Jim Boeheim is finally fired?”
since the key words are “as long as he wants”, I think you can say that about coaches like Nick Saban, Les Miles, and Chip Kelly. Only problem, greed and/or burnout will happen.
There have been a few University’s that have walked away from big league Football. Arkansas played in the Southwest conference and for awhile SMU got really good for a few seasons. They were almost a semi-pro team in the late 70’s. Sure enough there were major recruiting violations. As I recall the school got sanctioned and then pulled out of big conference football. Not in protest, but they just decided big time football wasn’t worth the headaches. They wanted to focus on academics again. This was early 80’s. I’m not sure what they are doing now. The Old Southwest conference was shutdown long, long ago. Arkansas is in the SEC now.
Maybe Penn State should just pull out of Football for a few years. That would be better than playing under the sanctions the NCAA just hit them with.
aceplace-SMU’s “death penalty” pulled the thread on the demise of the SWC. Arkansas always fgelt like an outsider, so when the SEC came calling, the jumped at the chance. And Texas and A&M spearheaded the move to the Big 8.
A coach who keeps winning doesn’t need the protection of (metaphorical) tenure. The real problem is the other way around; when the real mission of a university is distorted by bending over backwards to keep a winning coach or program.
If an uncreative media asks the same question 35 years or more in a row, eventually they’ll accidentally get the answer it wants.
That’s great. I can’t way to see his press conferences when he turns fifty, sixty, and seventy.
Yeah, Mike Kzyzyzyzyky is probably the best example of a Paterno-like coach now; if there was a similar scandal in Duke basketball the fallout would be similarly nuclear.
I raised this topic in another thread months ago.
There USED to be MANY football and basketball coaches who were iconic, whose names were widely synonymous with the colleges they coached at. Joe Paterno was just one- Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Darrell Royal, Eddie Robinson, Bo Schembechler, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, Adolph Rupp, Knute Rockne and John Wooden were some of the others.
But right now, I would argue that there’s NOBODY in college football coaching today with that kind of power or stature. A Nick Saban may make a ton of money, but he can NEVER be to Alabama what the Bear was. Whenever he retires or moves on to another team, fands may miss him, but they won’t weep as they did for the Bear. Saban will NEVER be the first thing people think of when “Alabama” is mentioned, as the Bear once was.
There are many great coaches now, but there just aren’t any who are “bigger” than the colleges that employ them. Mack Brown is richer than Darrell Royal ever was, but he’ll never have the same stature. John Calipari may win numerous titles at Kentucky, but he will NEVER be the icon Adoplh Rupp was. Even the richest, most successful college coaches dodn’t command the power or automatc loyalty older coaches did.
I would say that, right now, only ONE collegiate coach in ANY sport has the same kind of stature as the other guys I’ve mentioned: Mike Kryszewski. Jim Boeheim came close, but I think he’s been knocked off his pedestal for some of the same reasons Paterno was.
No, SMU didn’t drop out of big time football. They tried to get back into it, they just haven’t had any luck.
There IS precedent for successful schools giving up big time sports in the wake of scandal, however. Look at CCNY (City College of New York): In the Fifties, they had the best team in college basketball. But after point shaving scandals broke, they abolished the varsity team entirely.
I think, long term, this won’t affect sports culture at all. If you win, you’re seen as good. If you win a lot, you can get away with a lot too. The case at Penn State was so freakish on the bell curve scale of “things coaches can do” it’s hard to draw anything concrete away from this as to how Uni sports will change. I mean, other than “report child abuse” which, well, duh.
It’s like asking “do you think they’ll fire Giants’ coach Tom Coughlin if he keeps winning Super Bowls?”
Well no.
“OK, what if, in the off-season, he kills a bunch of hobos?”
OK, yeah, then maybe then they’ll fire him.
One thing to remember is that some of these “iconic one school” coaches had different jobs before they took the reins at the school they are remembered for. Bear Bryant coached at three different colleges over 12 years before he got the Alabama job. And in his autobiography he talks about how he was tempted by an offer to coach the Miami Dolphins in the late 1960s, especially when Joe Namath told him the best young QB and running backs were Bob Griese and Larry Csonka. But one hold up was the Alabama administration insisted he find a big name replacement, he approached John McKay who was intrigued but decided to stay at USC.
About 20 years ago Bill James (speaking of guys who are clueless about Paterno), said he thought the conventional wisdom about Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak was unbreakable was wrong. James said that if you have a record where a lot of the ingredients that make it happen are willpower, then you have a decent chance of finding someone who is determined to break it. Cal Ripken Jr proved him right.
Love, admiration and respect are tricky things. Some people can be hated for something and find years later they are loved for the same qualities…Harry Truman, Barry Goldwater, Muhammad Ali to name a few. Tony Bennett became an MTV hipster in the 1990s with an unplugged show and I am sure no one saw that coming 15 years earlier when the network started. Some broadcasters (Michael Kay of YES and ESPN-NY) used to mock Tony LaRussa as a “so called genius with one ring” in the mid 2000s until he won two more in five years.
Someone who knows more about CFB can chime in, but how about Bobby Stoops at Oklahoma?