2019 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion

No body wants to stay where they are not wanted.

Illinois was a weak program when Wayne got there, got no support from the admin when he was there, and left it better than when he arrived.

Ilini was a no where program and are below average for a P5 program today.

Colorado has better etter athletes to recruit from than Illinois. Lot more family activities than Tennessee.

Give him a chance.

Watch out for mosquitoes and livestock smells.

That certainly was creative but... wrote:

Time to get creative? wrote:

How about Bob Larsen as Stanford head coach? That would be an interesting hire. He must be about 80 now and may not want to get back into the college game. If I was the Stanford AD I would reach out and at least have a conversation with him.

I'd guess Coach Larsen, would be flattered by the offer but is no longer interested in coaching at the collegiate level. Great coach and leader though!

Dlong5 wrote:

One of them was the US #1 400m hurdler female too. She told her she can finish the semester but must transfer for spring. Tennessee has been mediocre at best under her

That was a sketchy move by BAS but to be fair none of those girls ended up being successful. None of them ever qualified for NCAAs. I think only one of them would have ended up ever scoring a point in the SEC and that was not the US#1 hurdler. They did release those girls and they competed the very next semester at other schools.

Most times when scholarships aren't renewed, it's done at the end of the year where the girls have less time to figure out their next plan. If those girls had a bad year as freshmen (as predicted by BAS), they were not going to be able to get better scholarship offers than they were able to based off of their high school PRs when they transfered out of Tennessee.

They don't realize it, but she helped them. I have less respect for the girls that cried to the media about it than I do for BAS, and trust me I don't have much respect for BAS.

Chaos Theory wrote:

More movement in Westwood. The west coast is a carousel of coaching right now, like never before. USC and UCLA looking for jump coaches, throws coaches shuffling, CSUN, Stanford, UC Davis all looking for directors. ASU looking for a couple of coaching positions. In all this movement however, very little west coast coaches are mentioned for these hires. It is strange times in these streets. that is just the D1 schools.

Haha. To be fair, most people on this thread don't know what they're talking about and post names as speculation. There are plenty of Californian candidates applying for these jobs.

I got relatively lucky in getting my D1 job. Right place, right time and all that. However, DO NOT go D2 under any circumstance if you really want to end up in D1. Especially a Power 5 job again. Usually when you get out of D1 it is very hard to get back in unless you are absolutely destroying the D2 scene (think Adams State and others). Now I know there are a lot of D2 coaches on here and I am sorry if that sounds harsh. Also people know of someone who went from D2 to D1, but it really isn't that common enough to suggest it at all. IF you really did volunteer at a Power 5 conference, then why don't you ask your colleagues there for their advice and endorsement? Keep putting yourself out there. Something should open up soon. Get to know more people. Unfortunately this job doesn't really hire based off of merit probably 80% of the time.

You make a thoughtful response, and I do trust the sincerity of your overall opinion. A couple of responses to yours:

It is disingenuous to argue that the girls would have a better chance to get a scholarship in the middle of the season (after not even being allowed to train with the team or use the facilities in the fall) then at the end of the season. There are far fewer scholarships available at midyear.

It's one thing to fire the previous coach's staff when you are hired as a head coach. That's sketchy. It is quite another thing to fire his athletes, before they have even been given a chance to show what they can do. That's unethical.

If it is fair to point out BAS's prediction that the freshman scholarship athletes she kicked off the team would not improve enough to score a lot of points in the SEC and NCAA meets was proven correct, then it is also fair to point out that her prediction that the sixteen scholarship athletes she took to the NCAA meet this year (at least two of whom were also US#1's in high school) would do any better was proven quite incorrect.

So she has proven to be at best a mediocre judge, and an inept developer, of talent. We can debate whether that excuses her lack of ethics.

Jason Davis is the Head Coach at Marietta in Ohio.

I'm going to guess you're a white male? well, you're fvcked, buddy.

And BAS did right by getting rid of that crappy 400 h that never did anything at Pitt. She would have been crushed worse in sec. so dad, please go away. No one wants to hear about your daughter. You wore out your welcome and only proved BAS was correct.

WinnytheBish wrote:

Chaos Theory wrote:

More movement in Westwood. The west coast is a carousel of coaching right now, like never before. USC and UCLA looking for jump coaches, throws coaches shuffling, CSUN, Stanford, UC Davis all looking for directors. ASU looking for a couple of coaching positions. In all this movement however, very little west coast coaches are mentioned for these hires. It is strange times in these streets. that is just the D1 schools.

Haha. To be fair, most people on this thread don't know what they're talking about and post names as speculation. There are plenty of Californian candidates applying for these jobs.

“To be fair” - you are the latest UCDavis coach! Coach Peterson or whatever.

Typical British writing the whole time you’ve been complaining on here

I entirely agree that BAS is loathsome. I just feel it's important to defend the tough decisions that coaches sometimes have to make. Did BAS go about it the wrong way? Yes. But it wasn't necessarily an evil decision. Media outlets were calling for her firing and that crosses a line.

Most of the girls she cut were walk-ons. That happens everywhere. We don't know if the scholarship girls were causing trouble and were bad for the team culture. And she made the decision a few weeks into practices - if the girls were extremely fit then BAS would have given them a chance.

If the girl who ran 59 in the 400h in high school (Morgan Harvey) ran a 62 in her first season at Tennessee, she wouldn't get more than a 25% scholarship when trying to transfer between freshman and sophomore year. I bet Pitt gave her pretty close to 100%, if not 100% when she transferred mid semester her freshman year.

Morgan Harvey only scored once in her career in the 400H at the ACC meet. 8th. PR is 59-low.

She didn't belong in the SEC, BAS knew it and dropped the dead weight when she got there. Tough business, but BAS was making moves trying to win and at UTK you get fired if you lose.

Musical Chairs wrote:

Fremont Thunder wrote:

I heard Vin turned it down. It’s between Mike Smith and Beth Alford-Sullivan. McGuire is still in the picture. And Franklin is out of the picture all together.

What would be really interesting is if Smith went to Stanford, and Franklin went to NAU. UNM recently slashed a bunch of money from budgets. NAU is basically a better funded, better town, all around better version of UNM.

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I am fine with Stanford hiring Mike Smith. If he doesn't get it, my next choice would be Mike McGuire.

Exactly. People criticize BAS for lack of results and they throw temper tantrums when she has to make tough decisions to give the team the best chance at winning. Do you want Tennessee to be a D3 program in that everyone can participate?

She hasn't recruited very well and she hasn't developed any of the talent they brought in. There is plenty of ammunition to call out BAS for that. The scholarship thing is a huge over-reaction and I feel more attention should be to the fact that she can't coach.

For example some people say she's an evil person but produces results and therefore deserves a shot at Stanford. That's false. I wouldn't call her evil but I would never say she consistently produces good results. Penn State was happy to see her leave. Their director now also stinks, but that's Penn State's fault for not hiring someone better after BAS left.

But did she replace her with an SEC scorer?

Well, if you entirely agree with me that BAS is loathsome (I actually said she was a disgrace) but feel that you have to defend the tough decisions she had to make, and argue that we have to rely on facts first, what is your factual basis for saying she is loathsome?

My basis is that it is unethical for a coach to treat freshman scholarship athletes like adult at will employees, and fire them without cause.

You are correct to point out that her critics ( like me ) should rely on facts first. I contend that my above statement is a fact.

Your defense of her (we don’t know if the scholarship athletes were causing trouble and were bad for the team culture) is speculation. BAS could have said as much, and she hasn’t.

Hey all. I rarely post on here, but what the heck, right? It's rather nice to be mentioned along with some of the coaches on here. I guess it means I have truly arrived in my career. I do want to make it clear, however, that I am not relocating from Ohio for any jobs this summer. I am going to stay at Marietta and continue building the teams there. Please refrain from speculating as to my next move as there isn't one on the horizon for me, my wife, or my son.

I hope you all have a great Fourth of July. Here's to all of us becoming better coaches than we already are. Happy running!

JD

Chaos Theory wrote:

More movement in Westwood. The west coast is a carousel of coaching right now, like never before. USC and UCLA looking for jump coaches, throws coaches shuffling, CSUN, Stanford, UC Davis all looking for directors. ASU looking for a couple of coaching positions. In all this movement however, very little west coast coaches are mentioned for these hires. It is strange times in these streets. that is just the D1 schools.

So Danny Williams is out at UCLA. Was that his idea, or did Avery Anderson end it? It seemed like a weird move, both for Danny and by Avery, from the start.

u2bcw wrote:

Well, if you entirely agree with me that BAS is loathsome (I actually said she was a disgrace) but feel that you have to defend the tough decisions she had to make, and argue that we have to rely on facts first, what is your factual basis for saying she is loathsome?

My basis is that it is unethical for a coach to treat freshman scholarship athletes like adult at will employees, and fire them without cause.

You are correct to point out that her critics ( like me ) should rely on facts first. I contend that my above statement is a fact.

Your defense of her (we don’t know if the scholarship athletes were causing trouble and were bad for the team culture) is speculation. BAS could have said as much, and she hasn’t.

Who knows whether she's a bad person? My guess is, just like all of us, she's got her good and bad qualities. But dropping a kid she evaluates as not worthy is not unethical. Its regrettable but keeping kids she doesn't believe she can win with results in her getting fired. Her mandate is to win and if UTK felt she was too harsh they wouldn't have approved dropping the kids (and you can believe they did sign off on the moves). As to the other poster's question did she replace the bad kids with better kids--Nope, doesn't look like it. But inability to recruit/develop is a different discussion from whether the move to drop the Morgan Harveys was right. It was.