JJSaySay wrote:
Rover the Dawg wrote:Capt. America said it very well. A coach SHOULD be judged by how the athletes under their care improve. However, the world of coaching is not a level playing field. Every program allocates their resources differently and has different environments to deal with, etc. Unfortunately, the people who do the hiring (and way too many people even here) do not have and/or take the time to really evaluate coaching talent, they just take a quick look at some stats and make a judgement.
Perfectly said. DI teams are not at all equal nor are the conferences in which they compete.
This p*ssy attitude is why I have read some bios of D-I coaches that have been at a given school for 20+ years and proudly announce that they have had 3 national championship qualifiers, not All-Americans, just people that got into the meet, went out in the first round, and didn't score.
Meanwhile, yes they may have started at a paltry 45k, but over the 20+ years they have built a nice retirement, and their salary has crept up to 70-80k range, which, don't get me wrong isn't that much, but in the coaching world it is comfortable, and VERY good for a non-producer.
Why don't you guys that won't hold coaches to performance standards get it? Even if you are at one of those "schools that aren't on a level playing field," i.e. a mid-major or small private D-I, it's up to the coach to build it or go get it if it doesn't exist. Yes it's true, you may not be able to land recruiting classes like Oregon, Ok State, or Wisco, so you have to work harder, maybe even 2x harder with the 2nd & 3rd tier recruits that you DO land. If you don't have a ton of funding, you have to go out and squeeze it out of the community that you are in, and yes, I realize it can take YEARS.
Before you dismiss me as someone who doesn't know what I am talking about, let me say that I WAS a D-I coach(happily stepped aside to pursue another career) at a small mid-major, and I did those things that I have talked about above. I can tell you in my short career(less than ten years) I was able to easily produce close to 15 national qualifiers, and yes a good few also pulled in All-American accolades, and I felt that I wasn't good enough because I didn't compare myself to the lowest common denominator, I focused on what the best were doing.
Last bit of my rant is to just say that to all you out there that are still in the biz, stop looking around with the poor me attitude. I went to a talk once by the greatest that ever coached in our sport, Coach McDonnell. He talked about the beginning at Arkansas, in the early 70's when he took over, and how he had NOTHING! Track and CC were absolute after thoughts by the athletic dept. In effect the program would be a weak mid-major by today's standards, with roughly 10,000 students, not a full compliment of scholarships, and NO facilities at all. Some people think that his greatest legacy are the 40+ national championships, but if you ask him, it's the program he built, that you see when you go there, from nothing. End of rant!