sean doesn’t need my defense any more than he needs the haters here, but i’ll still offer some facts, opinions, educated guesses, and hunches from a registered user:
fact: every distance coach since larsen at ucla was on a one year contract, from eric petersen, to johnny gray, to forest braden, to elizondo.
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educated guess: i’d bet this applies to 99% of the assistants in the sport of t&f (ncaa).
hunch: despite the iowa coach’s extension, my hunch would be that 90% of head coaches in t&f are one year contracts.
fact/educated guess: maybe 9/10 freshman athletes who go to faraway universities consider/want to come home after one year. the fact part of this is that it’s true (or close, since i haven’t done the actual math) at least with all the h.s. athletes of mine who’ve gone away to college, though not necessarily all at the d1 level.
fact/educated guess/maybe opinion: regarding the legacy “built on two families”: that’s a load of b.s., because the fact is that many coaches would have still found a way to either completely screw them up, or not coach them anywhere close to their full potential. anyone who’s been in coaching for a while knows this to be true.
fact/educated guess/maybe opinion, pt. 2: brosnan worked harder (and likely smarter) than most h.s. coaches, myself included (can’t say if this is true with college coaches). most h.s. coaches are uncomfortable admitting that someone else is working harder than them (or smarter than them), so it’s easy to point at luck, criticize egos, make accusations of cheating (recruiting, etc.); unfortunately, we see some athletes do the same when they get beat, so this shouldn’t surprise anyone with coaches…
educated guess: i actually doubt brosnan had to recruit illegally (or even unethically, for those who may argue the slippery slope of “everyone else is doing it”) at either the h.s. or collegiate level; success tends to speak for itself, and build on itself. that said, i don’t mind confirming what an earlier poster said about the hawthorne program in the 80s, fake addresses and all. pretty sure long beach poly’s heyday had the same issues, not to mention any private school powerhouses here in california with other sports.
educated guess, pt. 2: i don’t mind admitting that i’m very unfamiliar with the rules of the transfer portal, but if i knew i was planning on entering it, wouldn’t i also have a good idea on exactly where i want to go? it seems silly to find something nefarious in a college-aged athlete to decide “within hours” of entering the portal, when the decision was probably made before. and to expect multiple athletes in the age of social media to not talk about it together beforehand seems a little naive (fact: unlike in my age where you likely didn’t meet your teammates or roommates until day 1 of practice/school, today they all know each other long before school starts).
fact/educated guess/i’d bet the farm: most–but not all–of the posters on this thread have limited–or no–experience coaching at any level. as always, tough to wade through the typical letsrun $#!+ to find level opinions of brosnan, pro or con…
opinion: i think ucla’s made a mistake here; as an alumnus, i was excited about the hire, and i’ve been excited about the progress; yes, you can probably cherry-pick or spin stats to argue there wasn’t any progress, but i’ve talked to a few of the athletes and a few of the athletes’ h.s. coaches, and i’m comfortable with my opinion that there has been progress…
that’s my story and i’m sticking to it,
cush