Dear intrepid athletic director, are you tired of this whole basketball thing? Are you sick of the effort it takes to field a competitive team, year in and year out? Well, have I got news for you! Thanks to the tireless research performed by the athletic department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a new, state-of-the-art method has been developed that can decimate even the most proud of basketball programs. Yes, even those with a National Championship in their past! So without further ado, here are the 7 easy steps to destroy your basketball program:
Step 1: Fire Your Head Coach Midseason
So, imagine that you’re midway through the season and things are going okay for your basketball team. Sure, they’re on a three-game losing streak, but they already picked up a couple of impressive wins on the season (including against a future 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament), and they’ve convinced some people that they’re the best team in the conference. If you’re going to wreck the program, obviously that won’t do. So what’s the best thing to do to create some instability? Fire your head coach, clearly. Ideally, your team will go on a small losing streak at some point, which will make the firing appear at least somewhat justified, so jump on the opportunity if it ever comes up. When asked why you’re making the move halfway through the season instead of waiting for the end of the year like literally every other team, just claim that this will give you more time to find the right person for the job. Don’t actually take that time to do anything, though.
Step 2: Made an Odd Choice for Interim Head Coach
Now, this step takes some planning ahead, as the odd choice probably needs to be on the coaching staff already. After all, if you just handed the reins to some random guy walking around campus, your plan would be too obvious and some might try to stop you from achieving your ultimate goal. This shouldn’t be too hard, as it’s pretty easy to have a guy on the coaching staff who got the position for recruiting purposes and is still in the process of learning the job. Make sure that’s the guy you pick. It will be tempting to select the guy (or one of the three guys) who looks like they’re close to being ready to being a head coach in their own right. Avoid that temptation. The last thing you want is to put a guy in that spot who might be able to stabilize things and potentially stay the head coach in upcoming season. Instead, you want someone who is clearly not going to get the job, so you can move on to the “national coaching search” portion of your plan. Bonus points if during this step you manage to upset the only coach on your staff that has any sort of direct link to your glory days.
Step 3: Publicly Try (and Fail) to Hire a “Name” Coach
Over the course of the rest of the season, occasionally float some big name candidates to get people excited, no matter how unrealistic they are. Rick Patino? Naturally. Mike Brown? Hey, he’s unemployed right now! Jerry Tarkanian reincarnated? Sure, why not! This will help set the expectations for the type of coach you’ll end up with.
When the offseason actually starts, put out some feelers to see if any coaches at high-profile schools might be lured away at the right price. If you happen to get any interest, attack it with full force and don’t let it even cross your mind that they might be using you for leverage with their current school. During this time, make sure to let as many details about your negotiations slip out as possible. You’ve heard the old saying “loose lips sink ships”? That’s what we’re going for here, after all. Naturally, this whole pursuit isn’t going to actually lead anywhere. That’s okay; this is all about raising expectations.
Step 4: Settle on an Unheralded Choice Instead
Once you’ve sufficiently convinced your fan base (and your boosters!) that you’re going to hire a big name to right the ship, turn your attention to the candidates who you might actually be able to hire. Given that you’ve spent much of your time so far on other coaches, you’ve probably missed out on some of the best candidates that might have actually been available to you. Oh well! At this point, bring in the best of what remains. Ideally, all of your candidates are the types that some of your fans can talk themselves into (“They’ve been successful everywhere they’ve been”, “They just made the NCAA Tourney”, “They have some vague connection with a great coach”), but enough red flags that the rest of your fans can point to and worry themselves (“They’ve only coached in lower conferences”, “They don’t have much experience”, “They’re kind of a jerk”). It’s good to keep your fan base divided during this process. Once you have a pool of candidates, pick the one who is the polar opposite of your previous coach. This will probably cause a mass exodus from your talented roster, as they were wanting to play for a coach like the one you fired, not the opposite of that.
Step 5: Take Two Weeks to Actually Sign Your New Coach
So you have a new coach who is excited about coming in and the fan base is starting to get on board with the idea of him. Now it’s time to drag the process out even more to make everyone, including your new coach, more uncomfortable. The best way to do this is to make the new coach’s contract hard for whoever is giving the final approval to sign off on it. Can you make the coach’s salary reliant on non-guaranteed funding sources from boosters? Sounds good. Can you remove any APR requirements for the coaches because, as you casually mention during the final approval process, you’re probably going to end up with APR penalties in the near future? Perfect. The longer this process takes, the more likely that your new coach will end up with buyer’s remorse, as there’s basically nothing he can do at this point until the contract is approved. This sets the table for the next, trickiest step…
Step 6: Lose New Coach to another School a Week Later
If we’re being honest, this step requires a lot of luck, but if it works, it could singlehandedly set your program back years. If you did the last step correctly, your coach is now already feeling a little disenfranchised from you and your school and is already wishing that he had made a different decision. Naturally, that means if something else comes up – like, say, his dream job – he’ll pursue that opportunity at all costs. If he gets it, you’re basically back to where you were after you fired your head coach in step one. The only difference? There aren’t many options left out there. As a bonus, your department is $1,000,000 richer than it was a couple of weeks ago!
Step 7: Hire Whoever’s Available at this Point
Things should be pretty much in shambles when you get to this step, as your fans aren’t happy, your boosters aren’t happy, your players aren’t happy, and your conference isn’t happy. Oh, and you still don’t have a head coach. Your job now is no longer to look for the right guy for the job; just find whoever is left (maybe that guy from New Mexico State you didn’t hire in step 4). Hire that guy to come in and coach a team with only a handful of players left on the roster and not much time left to fill out the team through recruiting. Your work here is done.
In all seriousness, this has been a ridiculous sequence of events for UNLV, which has made their program look like it had the so-called “death penalty” applied to them. It’s obviously bad for them, but it’s also terrible for the Mountain West Conference as a whole. The MWC needs UNLV to be competitive, as they’re one of the only teams with any sort of national recognition, one of the only teams that can put together a really solid out-of-conference schedule, and one of the only teams that can consistently bring in the sort of talent to actually be competitive on a national stage. Instead, it seems likely that they’ll be hurting for at least this upcoming season, if not more down the road. Good luck, Marvin Menzies. I hope that you’re up to the task ahead of you.