Michigan Thursday: Makes a Jerry Kill Type of Hire

Sometimes I don't understand college athletics at all.   Mike Rice thinks he can abuse his players physically and verbally and get away with it.   He was suspended and fined.   He didn't get fired for his actions he got fired for the reaction.    He should have been fired when the AD first saw the tape, 3 months ago.   By the way, the AD is going to keep his job because he got Rutgers to the Big Ten and saved his bankrupt athletic department.

The PAC 12 head of officials thinks he can "joke" about giving out technical fouls. The only person that thought it was a joke was the Commissioner of the PAC 12 who doesn't want to fire him. 

Auburn won a National Championship in football a couple of years ago with a QB whose dad was openly shopping his son to the highest bidder.   The NCAA couldn't find anyone that would talk on the record, so there wasn't any penalty.   Now the news comes out, Auburn paid players to stay on the team and fixed grades so kids would be eligible for the NC game.    How legit was that win? It wasn't. 

Then Minnesota does what Minnesota does, they fire their current coach and try to hire a big name.  The big names say, "no thanks" they get nervous and go out and hire somebody willing to take the job.   When they fired their football coach a couple of years ago, the AD said they wanted to make a "Tubby Smith type of hire".  Those candidates said, "no thanks" and they hired Jerry Kill from Northern Illinois.   Now, they fire Tubby Smith (who was hired this week by Texas Tech) and hire Rick Pitino's son (Richard Pitino) out of Florida International. 

Let's review resumes for a minute:

Tubby:
Years Head Coach: 21, with 18 years over 20 wins or more
NCAA Trips:  17 - with an NCAA Championship in 1998 at UK.  3 times at Minnesota and 2 NIT's.

Richard:
Years Head Coach:  1  (18-14)  His team finished 5th in the Sun Belt at 11-9
NCAA Trips = 0

At least his dad is a famous coach, I guess John Wooden's grandkids weren't available.   From a big name standpoint they got the last name right, just a little miss on the first name.  BTW: Tubby was 21-13 this year at Minnesota. 


Thank Goodness for the Michigan and the Final 4!