Stop Asking About Coaching Jobs During the Season
As the Final Four weekend plays out, off the court there is once again the presence of something that just adds to the already adversarial relationship that coaches and players have with the media. It shouldn’t be this way, but that’s the reality, and we have Exhibit A of why that is this weekend. That leaves me with a simple request of those in the media.
Stop asking coaches during the season if they’re interested in a job that’s open. Stop it right now.
It’s a waste of time and energy and accomplishes nothing practical.
All weekend long, media have been asking Billy Donovan about the Kentucky head coaching vacancy. They’ve been hanging on his every word, looking for something that might remotely hint at where he stands. They keep asking him questions designed to get at that, while he does his best to deflect the questions. That only accelerated once reports came out that Kentucky is ready to offer Donovan a great deal of money in an attempt to lure him to the school where he was once an assistant coach.
And now, it’s at the point of being a joke. We’ve seen this play out before, most notably four years ago when Roy Williams snapped at Bonnie Bernstein when asked about the North Carolina vacancy right after his team lost in the national championship game. That wasn’t a good result, and this time around it’s not likely to be any better. Donovan isn’t going to hint whether he’s staying in Gainesville or bound for Lexington – there’s a better chance of Greg Oden coming back to school next year than that happening – and at worst, he’ll snap at someone from the sheer frustration of being asked about this again and again.
Let me answer all the questions right now for you, to save your breath. Then I’ll tell you why asking coaches about jobs during the season is a waste of time.
Donovan has probably thought about the Kentucky vacancy. He surely doesn’t live in a vacuum and knows the job is open like the rest of us, and that his name is being bandied about regarding it. It’s only natural; as someone who’s involved in the game, he probably also thought about other vacancies as they occurred, if only to think, “I wonder who might get that job” like many of us do. It’s also his job as a coach to keep the focus for his kids on the task at hand, which is winning basketball games and ultimately a national championship. That’s also the more immediate item, the next game on the schedule; any possibility of the Kentucky head coaching job is a few games away, if you get the metaphor.
That he’s thought about it means nothing. I think about these vacancies, too – that doesn’t mean I’m interested in going for the job. It means nothing more than that, but no one will believe it – and therein lies the rub.
Donovan isn’t going to say he is thinking about it, and for good reason. If he did, the media would have a field day and make that the story, not the games at hand. He would be in a no-win situation. The media would roundly blast him, saying he’s not focused on helping the team win a national championship because he’s too busy thinking about the Kentucky job. That would only be accentuated if the Gators lose, but it wouldn’t change if they win – then the message will be that he successfully auditioned for the Kentucky job and that his celebration would be knowing he would soon have it. It wouldn’t be that he did the best job he could and it led to a national championship because he wants to win as a competitor. In other words, he can’t win for losing.
When Nick Saban got the Alabama head coaching job, he was mercilessly blasted in the media and by people like Don Shula as a “liar”. But one can hardly blame him for denying interest in the job when asked during the season about it, for the very reasons described above. He’s in a no-win situation because either way, the media will run with what they will and nail him one way or the other. If he said all along he was interested in the job, was a candidate for it or even, God forbid, disclosed that he interviewed for it, he would never have heard the end of it. There wouldn’t be one story after another praising him for honestly answering their questions.
The same can be said for asking players during the season, or even right after it ends, if they will declare for the NBA Draft. It’s a standard practice, but the answers always seem strikingly similar – along the lines of, “I’m going to sit down with Coach, talk it over with family and make the best decision for me at a later date”. We think the player is talking from a script – and to be sure, many athletes and coaches do that – but we can’t blame him for not giving a straight answer even though his mind is likely made up one way or the other. If a player says he’s leaving for the draft as soon as the season’s over, he’ll be blasted for being selfish and only thinking about the NBA. Let him say he might stick around, and no one believes him anyway, then he’s later made out to be a “liar” or to have led people to believe he might stick around for at least another year.
Anyone with a little sense knows this and isn’t surprised by the answers to questions about coaching vacancies or declaring for the NBA Draft during the season. They know better to expect anything else. Asking about them even more just continues to drive a wedge between them and the media, making the relationship even more adversarial. It shouldn’t be that way in the first place, but it is, and things like the constant asking about the Kentucky vacancy this weekend is only adding to it.
