Tressel from Every Angle

The Postmortem: Dohrmann essay = bleh. Lots of things we knew, a few fun but irrelevant tidbits from the past, and anonymous sourcing; something tells me the author won't be winning another Pulitzer for this one. (Did you hear that George Dohrmann won the Pulitzer? Pulitzer Dohrmann Dohrmann Pulitzer Pulitzer!)


The Reaction: Ohio State fans are blasé. Every other fan base sees this as an opportunity to ascend the conference ladder. Except for Indiana fans.


The Candidates: No one has any clue. Much will depend upon just how severely Ohio State is hammered by the NCAA; it's tough to believe that an Urban Meyer type candidate will want to take on a reclamation project. Remember, USC had to go with their fourth or fifth option after getting hit with sanctions, and USC is arguably a better job than Ohio State (the weather is nicer, at least). I'm putting exactly zero credence into any of the lists floating around.


The 2011 Season: Who knows. The biggest question mark is whether Terrelle Pryor after game five; opinions seem to range from "probably not" to "absolutely not." If Pryor is gone, Ohio State will be starting either a true freshman or Joe Bauserman, a lesser-of-two-evils situation if ever there was one.


Unfortunately for Buckeye fans, the pain potentially doesn't end there. The NCAA meeting is set for mid-August, so there probably won't be enough time for a 2011 bowl ban or scholarship reduction. But Pryor wasn't the only player suspended for the first five games next year, and while the others haven't been implicated in the automobile-related hijinks, further suspension isn't out of the question. And Dohrmann's piece suggested that many more players on the Buckeyes have received improper benefits. Without better sourcing than Dohrmann provides, however, the NCAA is going to be hard pressed to follow up on those claims.

Tressel Resigns

Not a shock that it happened, but certainly surprising that it happened before the 2011 season:

The Ohio State University announced today that it has accepted the resignation of Jim Tressel as head coach of its football program. Luke Fickell will serve as interim head coach for the 2011-2012 football season. Recruitment for a new head coach – which is expected to include external and internal candidates – will not commence until the conclusion of the 2011-2012 season. 

“In consultation with the senior leadership of the Board of Trustees, I have been actively reviewing matters attendant to our football program, and I have accepted Coach Tressel’s resignation,” said President E. Gordon Gee. “The University’s enduring public purposes and its tradition of excellence continue to guide our actions.”

Boom. We're still working with incomplete information on this (the George Dohrmann story scheduled to go up on SI.com later today will help explain some things), so any speculation beyond what is known seems unnecessarily premature. I'll post some extended thoughts once the article is released.

Basketball Coaches Are Human, Too

With just one exception, I am fully positive that college basketball coaches eat, sleep, breathe, and have fully formed emotions just like you and I. We want to be loved, and trust, and paid well, but not at the expense of hating every last waking moment of our lives and waiting with anxious hope for the moment that Spanish Flu returns to give us sweet repose from this world. On that note, despite being completely shocking before the switch, maybe Ed DeChellis's move to Navy isn't quite so inexplicable:

This move looks like an absolute stunner on the surface – a high-major coach leaving for a low-major job and a pay cut of $200,000 annually. But a lot entered into it that makes it more easy to comprehend. 

DeChellis, now 52, is not interested in coaching more than another 8-10 years, tops. He felt a lack of respect and commitment from the Penn State administration. When he asked for raises for his assistants, one of whom is the lowest paid of 36 in the Big Ten, he was rebuked. 

After reaching the Big Ten tournament final and squeaking into the NCAA tournament for the first time in his tenure, he was unable to get an extension or raise on a contract lasting three more seasons. 

His daughters have completed college and are out of the house. His wife Kim, I've been told, loved the idea of living in a beautiful area bordering the major metro of Washington/Baltimore. 

And there's the enchantment and majesty of the Academy, a spectacular campus full of people who follow a higher calling than bank accounts and pocket cash.

John Gasaway, echoing this:

In the real world, where employment is kind of important, a person in the situation I’ve just described is going to update the top of their resume (”Became first coach in 17 years to lose a tournament game to the guy I lost to”) and start working their contacts. But DeChellis isn’t in the real world. Until yesterday he was a major-conference head coach. He’s supposed to barricade his office door and hold on for dear life. 

And for what? To avoid the salary cut he’s now taking? If you’re Ed DeChellis in the spring of 2011, there’s a prohibitive likelihood that a salary cut is on the way, no matter what. By taking the job at Navy the coach has negotiated this cut on a timetable of his own making. Besides, any normal human would be thrilled to be pulling down a reported $450K in a quaint, historic, and highly livable Chesapeake town located in close proximity to substantial cities and airports. No, the Middies aren’t going to the Final Four anytime soon, but expectations at the 5700-seat Alumni Hall are set accordingly. Not to mention the unique nature of the Naval Academy’s student population means the regular recruiting grind is, mostly, a thing of the past for DeChellis. (He now has little or no reason to attend all those AAU events. Woe is Ed!)

Sometimes ambition runs dry, and you realize that a little extra money isn't worth the gnawing pain at the back of your eyeballs. DeChellis took his alma mater to the NCAA Tournament and now gets to go into semi-retirement (relatively speaking of course; now his work load will drop to 40-60 hours a week), earn half a million dollars each year in a nicer area of the country, and he won't wake up every morning wondering whether he will have a job if 19 year olds don't make their free throws next February. You or I would have thought long and hard about making that same decision. It is a testament to the insanity of college coaches that more do not do the same.

Ed DeChellis to Lolwut

(U mad?)

This is peculiar:

Naval Academy Director of Athletics Chet Gladchuk announced Monday that Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis is leaving his post at Happy Valley to become the 19th head basketball coach at the Naval Academy. 

"To have one of the most highly respected coaches and educators in the sport join our Navy family is a great day for the program and the Academy," said Gladchuk. "Ed's maturity, integrity, character and accomplishments at Penn State have made him one of the most respected role models in the coaching ranks. His career is all about building programs with educational priorities in place, including graduating every senior that has ever played for him, and in the end achieving team goals that resonate with competing for championships. Ed will make a positive and impactful impression on Navy Basketball in short order."

Basketball Navy is not Football Navy. Football Navy runs a wonky system, rips through the rest of mid-majordom, and frustrates a major team or two along the way to an 8-5 record and bowl appearance. Basketball Navy, well, sucks.

I have theories for the move, none of them very good:

• DeChellis got tired of waiting for Penn State to get serious about basketball. Maybe, but Penn State's "not serious about basketball" is about three standard deviations to the good side of the bell curve past what Navy can accomplish even with complete and utter dedication.
• This is as good as things are going to get for Penn State, so best to get out while the getting is good: Penn State will likely be quite awful next year, and DeChellis is on not very thick ice already, despite the NCAA Tournament appearance last year. Better to do the "you can't fire me, I quit" routine when you have some plausible deniability, not after you go 1-17. Still: Navy?
• DeChellis is married to the sea: Plausible.
• DeChellis bought a house in Maryland when Greg Williams retired and now he can't back out: Also plausible.

Given the tempo Penn State basketball usually moves, expect DeChellis's replacement to be named sometime in 2013.

Ron Zook for Illinois AD

(obligatory)

Longtime Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther announced his retirement last week. Most of the focus has been on what effect that could have on often-embattled coaches Bruce Weber and Ron Zook, but seeing as how those programs have achieved at about their historical norm most years under those coaches, with one wildly successful season apiece, the danger to those two is probably a bit overstated. Zook in particular seems to have Illinois ensconced in the meaty middle of Big Ten teams, and while that doesn't sound like much, Illinois went over .500 twice in the past decade. Meaty middle is an accomplishment in Champaign, at least on the football field.


Judging from the past paragraph and the title of the post, you probably know where I'm going with this: isn't Ron Zook the perfect athletic director candidate? He has spent a lifetime in major conference college football, and while he hasn't been particularly successful, he probably has more of a sense of what it a coach needs to win than your average businessman or athletic department employee. The coach-to-athletic director move isn't unprecedented (the best athletic director in the Big Ten is Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez).


Besides, 90% of an athletic director's job is spent either fundraising or thinking up zany schemes to make those fundraising efforts even more successful. Zook's recruiting prowess is unquestioned, and even the bulk of Illinois fans that don't particularly care for Zook the Coach seem to like Zook the Person. At 57 years old, Zook, may be tiring of chasing down high school football players during every waking moment of his free time. At the very least, the hors d'oeuvres are better when you spend every waking moment of your life chasing down millionaires looking to part with their disposable income. As for the other 10% of the job, search firms do most of the heavy lifting when communicating with prospects for coaching vacancies, and everyone in the business knows the top ten or so candidates each offseason. Figuring out which one of those candidates is actually a good head coach is probably little better than a crap shoot; just ask the guy booing Gene Chizik on the tarmac, or Charles "Turner Gill or Racism" Barkley.


There's a thousand reasons this won't happen, not least of which is that the football season is less than 100 days away--not exactly the best time to announce a new head coach, even if the promotion was made from within. And I'm sure this will seem like a success-through-failure promotion to many, even if sound football strategy is not a prerequisite or even helpful as an athletic director. But Illinois can, and probably will, do a lot worse.

Season Obituaries: Wisconsin

Let's say I'm Satan (could be true). Let's say that, in a free moment between debauchery and rigged fiddle contests, I offer you a deal: your favorite basketball team could make the NCAA tournament every year, and you'll even make the Sweet 16 half the time, but you'll never, ever make a Final Four. Do you take the deal?


If you are an Alabama State fan, the answer is "do you want my soul, because that will still be fine." Even if you're the fan of a long-suffering major conference team--Northwestern, say, or maybe Penn State--the answer would probably be yes. Michigan State fans would understandably be far less sanguine about the deal.


Wisconsin won the NCAA tournament in 1940, then made one more tournament in the next 52 years (and none from 1947-93, or to put it another way, none from mid-Truman to early Clinton). Even after ending the long drought, Wisconsin was a middling program; Dick Bennett made it out of the first round once, and while that once was a Final Four appearance, that team only went 8-8 in the Big Ten. The Badgers went 60 years without a Big Ten championship.


Enter Bo Ryan: Three regular season Big Ten championships in ten years, Wisconsin's first post-Korean War conference championships. The Badgers won seven tournament games in its history (three in 1940, four in the 2000 Final Four run); Bo Ryan has won 14. Wisconsin made seven tournaments before Ryan's entrance; Bo has gone 10 for 10, and has only been on the bubble once (and they even won a tournament game that year).


But, there's always a but. Wisconsin has been a four seed or better four of the past five seasons, yet made the Sweet 16 only twice in that stretch (and no Elite Eight appearances). All four of those years, the Badgers lost to a lower seed (including losses to 10 seed Davidson and 12 seed Cornell). Wisconsin fans aren't dissatisfied, exactly--at least the ones with a memory that extends beyond the Bennett years--but there is surely some disappointment.


Much has been made of Ryan's ability to make something out of nothing in terms of talent, but that's always been a bit overstated. To be sure, Wisconsin doesn't recruit like Michigan State, much less North Carolina or Kentucky. Still, the Badgers have done all right for themselves over the years. From 2006-08, Wisconsin had six recruits rated four stars or better by Rivals, and many of their names will be familiar: Hughes, Bohannon, Leuer, and Nankivil, along with Rob Wilson and Jared Berggen. The Badgers made were ranked in the Top 25 for their 2006 and 2007 classes. There have been some hidden gems in those years, such as three star Jordan Taylor, but the backbone players of these quality Wisconsin teams had a pedigree; Ryan hasn't been recruiting scrubs.


That will be put to the test starting next year. After averaging two four star recruits per year from 2006-08, Wisconsin has averaged only one from 2009-11. That is not a death sentence (how many four star recruits does Butler get?), but it does mean that Ryan will be working with even less raw talent than usual. It also means that the ceiling might be a little bit lower; a Sweet Sixteen with the guys listed above may have been a letdown, while a couple of Sweet Sixteen appearances over the next few years might be tapping the team's full potential.


Much has been made about Wisconsin's style (every team has a chance to beat them with some hot shooting, since there are so few possessions per game) and their struggles away from the Kohl Center (real but overstated) as ultimate limitations. In other words, these failures are baked into the cake by Bo Ryan, and the style necessarily ends with disappointment in the tournament. I don't think Wisconsin is predetermined, Final Destination style, for tournament failure under Ryan. But suppose they were: would Wisconsin fans today take the deal offered by Mephisto in the opening paragraph? I'm sure they'd think about it a lot longer today than they did before Ryan arrived.

Bruce Weber is Staying At Illinois, and That's Probably OK

Rejoice, Illinois fans; Bruce Weber is still yours!

OK, the reaction to this news amongst Illinois fans, at least from what I can tell, is something less than the reaction Purdue fans had to the Matt Painter news yesterday. That's what a few disappointing seasons will do to a fanbase, and understandably so. 

But with Athletic Director Ron Guenther likely serving his last few months in office and with a young team perhaps particularly susceptible to transfer risks, this was not an opportune time for a coaching change (not to mention: many Illini fans are still furious that Bill Self spurned them for Kansas, because of what it said about the relative status of their program. What would it say about the status of Illinois if Bruce Weber left for Oklahoma?)

There are lots of costs that come with a coaching change. Recruiting relationships must be reestablished. Buyouts must be proffered, both for the old and the new coach (though if Weber left of his own accord, of course, this wouldn't be a problem for Illinois). There's no guarantee the old players will respond to the new coach, or that they will even stick around to find out.

And then there's the problem that we still have no clue what makes a coaching relationship a success. Michigan can sign the most successful coach in West Virginia history and the architect of spread football, and suffer their worst three year stretch since the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping. Auburn grabs a 5-19 coach from Ames and wins a national championship and wins a national championship two years later. USC signs an NFL washout and constructs one of the most frightening college football dynasties of all time. These things are more art than science. About the best thing athletic directors can do is make a sufficiently safe selection that they aren't blamed too much if things don't work out. The AD that hires Brad Stevens away from Butler will have instant failure insurance. That's worth almost as much as success itself.