|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Patience is a virtue for coaches
Posted: Tuesday November 23, 1999 08:23 PM
By Gene Racz, Special to CNN/SI Syracuse University chancellor Kenneth Shaw and West Virginia coach Don Nehlen had identical messages for disgruntled fans last week: Get a life. Shaw's directive came on a local call-in radio show when he was defending Orangemen head coach Paul Pasqualoni who has drawn heavy fire since losing to Rutgers 24-21 in overtime on Nov. 13. RU was a 30-point underdog. The situation grew so venomous that Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim even saw it necessary to speak out on behalf of his colleague who not only has won the Big East title for the past three straight years but who also is bowl eligible at 6-4 with one game remaining game in Miami this Saturday. "Somebody wake up here," said Boeheim. "You've got to go on the records and not emotions. If you fire Paul Pasqualoni, then you have to fire every other coach in the Big East because he just beat them three years in a row." Boeheim is onto something. Down in Miami, fans are calling for the head of Butch Davis, who has engineered an impressive turnaround of the program despite NCAA sanctions which took 31 scholarships from him over a period of four years. The Hurricanes are 6-4 with home games against Syracuse and Temple remaining. Davis called the clamor part of society's tendency toward "immediate gratification." Over at West Virginia they want Nehlen's head for having a rebuilding year. The Mountaineers are 3-7 but have gone to bowls in five of the last six seasons. Before a home game against Navy earlier this season, an airplane flew over Mountaineer Field in Morgantown dragging a banner that read: Don Nehlen Must Go. "It seems that wherever you coach there are 50 or 60 people who don't have a life," said Nehlen. "I think it's probably a little worse nowadays with the call-in radio shows. I don't think a lot of people understand how difficult it is to win, and that a play or two here and there can decide a game. Scheduling also has so a lot to do with it. I think coaches might need to do a better job explaining these things to their constituents." Rutgers coach Terry Shea narrowly escaped the ax this season after going 1-10 which brings his four-year mark with the Scarlet Knights to 8-36. Shea had the benefit of an empathetic athletic director in Bob Mulcahy whom Shea says has worked "side by side" with him to try to turn the program around. "Too many A.D.'s don't know how tough it is to get it going and only a handful of them know what it's like to recruit," said Pittsburgh coach Walt Harris who's Panthers can become bowl eligible for the second time in his three years with a win over West Virginia. "Talk radio -- all that is is rumor," added Harris. "They want to make it as exciting as they can and they're not concerned about what the coaches or their families are going through. Everyone feeds off the negative comments. As a coach you'd be naïve to think everybody is out for your own good. The best thing you can do is not listen to it." Four teams in the Big East are currently bowl eligible and a win by Pittsburgh this Saturday would make it five. Virginia Tech is on track to go to the Sugar Bowl with head coach Frank Beamer, who by the way, was on the hot seat himself after his sixth season in 1992 with the Hokies. "I think it's ridiculous that they would want to fire Paul Pasqualoni," said Boston College coach Tom O'Brien who has turned the Eagles around at 8-2 with one game left at Virginia Tech. "It turns my stomach to see some people calling for the job of someone like Carl Torbush at North Carolina," O'Brien added. "Mack Brown was 1-10 his first two seasons there and was able to continue for two or three years before he got things going. As a coach you're going to have your ups and downs. We can't all be good at the same time. "With talk radio all the expectations are higher. I think the 90s are different from the 80s in that respect." Pasqualoni couldn't agree more. "Yeah, it makes it louder," he said. "Talk radio generates a lot of interest. It gives a little more exposure than it did 20 years ago. And obviously, Jim Boeheim has been through many more years of it than I have. He's got more of a feeling for it, and he tried to put my situation in a realistic perspective for the fans."
Coaches of the yearMost of the Big East coaches named Boston College coach Tom O'Brien and Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer as their two leading candidates for Big East Coach of the Year. Beamer is a natural with the Hokies poised to go to the Sugar Bowl, but he says he would vote for O'Brien who took over a program in 1997 that had been rocked by a gambling scandal. After two straight seasons of going 4-7, O'Brien and his Eagles are headed to either the the Gator Bowl or the Insight.com Bowl. "I don't think anybody has had to do this in college football -- to come into a program that was as fractured as this one was three years ago," said O'Brien. ""What these kids have accomplished this year is hard to believe. They have hearts about the size of oceans. They refuse to lose." Gene Racz covers the Big East for Gannett (N.J.) newspapers. Check back Dec. 22 for his latest version of Big East Insider.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
