Oct. 31, 2006
Commodore Notebook Archive – click here
Is The Hot Seat Really Hot?
I find it strange how our enlightened society seems to reason. Long gone are the days – if indeed they ever existed — when we first looked for something good in our fellow man. To our detriment, for example, we allow mud-slinging political advertisements full of half-truths to influence how we vote on Election Day. Whoever lands the most low-blows too often wins and then we wonder why we have such messes with government. If we rejected these misguided attempts to influence and candidates who used them actually lost elections, they’d become dinosaurs from a poor taste era.
Supermarket tabloids thrive on the juicy story: an actor is arrested, a starlet has liposuction, a public figure is caught DUI. A week or two back I thought Sara Evans’ impending divorce must be more important to us than Iraq, judging from the breathless reporting on her personal life. Alas, the media is feeding us what we apparently enjoy. Shame on us.
In sports, for every mention of a Good Works Team or an academic accomplishment there must be 50 stories about shoplifting, an after-hours bar fight or other juicy suspension. The transaction column has become the police blotter. One might conclude the sporting world is a fraternity of thugs.
Another relatively recent staple of the sports media calls for all pundits to eagerly discuss which high profile coaches are on the proverbial hot-seat for their jobs. These lists are much more interesting to the masses than a review of the most secure coaches as they appeal to the gossip side of our human nature.
There is one huge flaw in most of these “must win or goodbye” lists. They are the opinion of the author and possibly other busy-bodies but generally not the actual decision-maker. On any college campus, or professional franchise for that matter, there is usually only a small authorized board or perhaps just the athletic director or president whose opinion really matters in personnel matters and they aren’t talking.
Perceived public opinion is generally just one part of an administrator’s evaluation and most realize that the public’s relationship with its coach can change faster than a Nashville weather forecast. In other words, don’t place a lot of stock in the mass media’s termination blather.
As we approach a new basketball season, stories abound on which coaches need big years to “save their jobs”.
I, for one, give them little credibility because they can be superficial in analysis, petty in their origin and/or too often based on wrong criteria. You might remember when a dire prediction proved accurate; of course, sometimes in the same vein that if you forecast rain every day sooner or later you will be right.
We don’t need to feel sorry for these coaches, at least at the major college level. They are highly compensated and know they constantly live in glass houses. They knew scrutiny would be a part of their public lives the moment they accepted the job.
Just don’t bet your ranch on any given coach’s job status based on a reporter’s commentary. Sports are known for their quick changes in forecast.
Exhibitions are Upon Us – Georgetown Coming Soon
Our two basketball programs open this week with exhibition tune-ups. Wednesday (Nov.1) the men host Northern State, led by former Lipscomb coach Don Meyer. The women have an exhibition Thursday. Both games tip at 7 p.m.
Make sure you are paying attention to the men’s regular season home opener. It’s November 15 against Georgetown, which should be one of the premier games of the season. The Hoyas have two players on the pre-season John Wooden Award Watch List – 7-2, 278 pound center Roy Hibbert and 6-9 forward Jeff Green.
