What happened to Georgia State University XC Head Coach?

Position re-posted Jan 7 on NCAA website,

Guess they were not happy with firt pool of applicants and reopened it.

hat is the status of hiring a new XC/distance coach?

Sprints coach is in charge of writing the distance workouts. It is a train wreck.

Are they interviewing for a new Head Cross Country Coach or will sprint coach just do it all?

Almost indoor wrote:

What is the status of hiring a new XC/distance coach?

It's very simple. The status is that since the administartion isn't serious about hiring a quality coach, no quality coaches will apply. The athletes will suffer.

yeah that would never work

What is the real problem here? Has the program lacked coaching staff that are passionate and knowledgeable OR because of the administration? There must be people out there that want to see this program turn around and develop these student-athletes into the future, but this thread stating it is a "mess" might be scaring them away. Please explain what is the root cause of the mess.

explain wrote:

What is the real problem here? Has the program lacked coaching staff that are passionate and knowledgeable OR because of the administration? There must be people out there that want to see this program turn around and develop these student-athletes into the future, but this thread stating it is a "mess" might be scaring them away. Please explain what is the root cause of the mess.

Agreed, I know of some well qualified coaches that would be interested in turning that program around. What is the deal there?

Doubtful they are too interested in hiring "qualified" coaches if Kamp was tops on their list over the summer.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Sounds like you are all starting to get it, and in essence how "big time" D-I athletics work. Get this through your head, they don't care about you, only about where your sport fits into the equation and what it brings to the table, or takes away from the table with regard to the revenue sports. Sorry, but that's just how it is.

Pounce wrote:

Ding. Ding. Ding. Sounds like you are all starting to get it, and in essence how "big time" D-I athletics work. Get this through your head, they don't care about you, only about where your sport fits into the equation and what it brings to the table, or takes away from the table with regard to the revenue sports. Sorry, but that's just how it is.

Okay, you stated the obvious. Now what are the problems with the program? The operating budget isn't that bad, more than would have been guessed.

Where is the problem?

How do you know their operating budget?

agreeeed wrote:

Okay, you stated the obvious. Now what are the problems with the program? The operating budget isn't that bad, more than would have been guessed.

Where is the problem?

The problem starts with the idea that the program wasn't broken, so why did the administration try to "fix" it by forcing successful coaches out. Then, the remedy is a gender hire of a coach with a less than stellar record. By the way, it IS NOT a fully funded program on the men's side. With a sprint coach as the head of the program, a distance coach can expect at the most, 1-2 scholarships to build a distance program that will have their name attached to it? So if you are looking for red flags, we'll start there. Any coach worth their weight would sniff out those kinds of problems before they even thought about applying. It looks like most have...and that is why it was re-posted. It's a shame, I too share the belief that it could be a pretty decent mid-major if allowed to develop, but with football being added, well,...

Good info. As an outsider to the program, it was not obvious that the former coaches were forced out.

Operating expenses can be found for every university and sport in the county here (at least those who receive federal aid):

http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/

Hopefully GA State can get it figured out.

Some of what has been said is correct, however, the job has not been "reposted." The job did not open up until sometime (can't remember the exact date) in December. It was posted on the GSU HR website shortly after the coach resigned. Because of the winter break things slowed. The athletic department offices were closed for much of this time. The job finally showed up on the NCAA website last week. Obviously they were slow in getting it on the NCAA website. A surprising number of qualified coaches have applied. Some pretty interesting applicants too. The question now is will they give these coaches an interview or even a call back.

huh? wrote:

A surprising number of qualified coaches have applied.

Who?

I spoke with the sprint coach and they will keep 7 scholarships for distance in the women's program. I also spoke with a couple of the athletes and I heard that things are going well. They just need more help with managing such a large group of athletes.

Interested in GSU wrote:

I spoke with the sprint coach and they will keep 7 scholarships for distance in the women's program. I also spoke with a couple of the athletes and I heard that things are going well. They just need more help with managing such a large group of athletes.

Notice the lack of mention of how much scholarship would be allotted for THE MEN. The old "throw a ton of money toward the women's distance trick" is getting a little played out by head coaches in our sport. For those not informed, you see this a lot in combined programs. The head coach-(always non-distance) will say to his assistant, "I can't give you a lot on the men's side, we are really going to have to be frugal there and take the best talent for the money, but I CAN give you as much as you could ever want on the women's. If you pay attention, you'll always see that the majority of the men's money is in his/her event group-especially if it is a sprints head coach.

Young/naive coaches especially eat this up. Sure, it's nice to be able to build up your women's team, but if you think about it, it was never going to be hard to do it in the first place, especially if you are just going to throw money at the situation. Most athletic departments fully fund women's programs anyway, because they HAVE TO in order to balance out against football. If you want the truth, in many programs, there is always money left over on the women's side because there aren't enough quality athletes to give it to. Even when coaches are very liberal with the amounts given out, you still end up with hs girls getting good money for 5:15 & 19:30 efforts, while a hs boy wouldn't even get an invitation to walk on with an equivalent effort!

Just something to consider when you take a position. It doesn't matter that you have 10 scholarships for the women's team, and 1 for the men. At the end of the day, it is the coaches name attached to those results. It really pays to make sure that you accept a position that sets you up to have success, otherwise it could get miserable very fast.

So what is the deal with GSU? Why did the two coaches before Kamp leave? Were they fired? Giving unrealistic parameters?

The program appeared to be doing quite well prior to Kamp.

Any insiders that know what happened with the previous coaches before Kamp?