WE’VE REACHED A NEW LOW IN FIRING

By Chris Spatola

@chris_spatola

March 26, 2013

It’s never easy to be the guy who follows the guy.  In the case of UCLA, it’s apparently not easy to be the guy, who followed the guy, who followed the guy, who followed….well you get it.  UCLA has had eight head coaches since John Wooden applied his wizardry in Westwood.  In his 27 years at UCLA, John Wooden went 620-147 and won ten national championships.  Since Wooden’s retirement, the eight men who followed him have combined to go 852-349 with one national championship (Jim Harrick).

In the case of Ben Howland’s 10-year tenure, his team’s won four regular season championships, went to seven NCAA tournaments, including three consecutive final fours, and had the longest coaching run at UCLA since Wooden’s retirement in 1975. 

And yet, as UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said via teleconference Sunday night, “Now was the appropriate time to make the change and get a fresh start.” 

In light of some of the turmoil in Ben Howland’s program, especially over the last couple years, a “fresh start” is not an outrageous reason for going in a different direction.  UCLA was 53-46 in the three seasons preceding this one.  At least eleven players have transferred out of the program over the last five seasons.  As well, an unflattering article in Sports Illustrated last season made the case that Howland had lost control of Reeves Nelson and subsequently the team.  While last year seemed like the year Howland would be fired, as most speculated, Guerrero decided to give Howland another year, perhaps in light of the top recruiting class Howland scored which included stand-outs Shabazz Muhammad, Kyle Anderson, and Jordan Adams.

Guerrero instead waited until this year to fire Howland, a year in which UCLA was the Pac-12 regular season and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament, playing without one of their marquee freshman Adams, who was hurt in the Pac-12 tournament. 

In firing Howland this year, as opposed to last year’s more tumultuous season, Guerrero perhaps showed his hand, and the growing mindset of many athletic directors in today’s college sports business - it’s not what you have, it’s what you can sell. 

Glossing over the relative success Howland had, a .685 winning percentage and three final fours, Guerrero instead emphasized the depleted interest and excitement surrounding the program.

“We need to generate as much fan support as possible and get people in the seats,” Guerrero said, acknowledging that his search would earmark coaches “who can play a fun brand of basketball, but also a quality brand of basketball.  We don’t want to bring in a coach who is going to average 50 points a game.”  Well ok, then. 

After much criticism, Howland changed his stlye of play this season to a more up-tempo pace and the Bruins scored 74 points per game.

Guerrero, a former baseball player at UCLA, continued, perhaps channeling his inner coach, “We pushed the ball a lot more [this year] and scored at a higher rate, and I know that our fans liked that.” 

Times they are a-changin’.  More and more we have heard athletic director’s pontificate about how coaches should change their style of play to better appeal to fan bases. 

Ben Howland played the game, has studied the game, and has been coaching the sport of basketball for over 32 years employing the very system that has won him nearly 400 games as a head coach – 233 of those wins coming at UCLA.  Yet, to keep his job, he’s forced to forego that background and employ a system that “will excite the fan base”?

Athletic directors have every right to fire a coach for any number of reasons, and do.  Dan Guerrero has every right to hold the UCLA basketball program to the highest of standards.  Firing Ben Howland last year because of the apparent dysfunction in his program made all the sense in the world.  Firing Howland this year, albeit a year late, is well within Guerrero’s purview if he feels the standard of UCLA basketball, which has faded but was set many, many years ago by John Wooden, is not being met then by all means fire your head coach.  But we are entering uncharted waters, embarking on a slippery slope – insert whatever clichéd metaphor you’d like – when athletic directors start counseling coaches on what systems should be run.

The firing of Ben Howland represents a new low for the coaching profession.  It used to be black and white – win enough games or your fired.  Run afoul of NCAA rules and you’re fired.  Be drunk at a frat party on campus and you’re fired. 

Based on the bulk of Guerrero’s press conference however, he was not firing Howland because he was 81-51 in the last four years, he was firing Howland because in those four years his teams only scored north of 70 points a game on average once.

The message is quite clear – it’s not that your program has had a transferring epidemic, or that two of the players in your top freshman class had to sit out the start of this year over NCAA issues.  It’s not even solely about you not making the sweet sixteen in five years.  And it’s definitely not about you being 25-8 this year and winning the Pac-12 regular season.  It’s not what you have – it’s how you sell it.