Who’s Got Next? is a bi-weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Twice a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are in the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Introduction

The top unsigned prospects committing and a new section unveiling is just a couple of the highlights on the first ever Friday edition of the Who’s Got Next? column. We take an inside look at why the guys committed and the impact on the class rankings as well as what it means for the Class of 2012 and how prospects are affected by the coaching carousel in college basketball. We also analyze a top ten 2011 recruiting class and take an in-depth look at how a school that made the Elite Eight last year will try to replace the potential number one draft pick.

What They’re Saying

NCAA President Mark Emmert speaks out on the issue of one-and-dones.

• NCAA President Mark Emmert on one-and-dones: “I think it creates difficult problems inside universities when we’re trying to promote an emphasis on (players being) students as well as athletes.”
• Senior Trevor Lacey (#37) on committing to Alabama: “My relationship and trust with [Alabama coach Anthony Grant] set the Crimson Tide apart. I also feel the University of Alabama will provide the best opportunity for me when basketball is over. I love the people in Alabama.”
• Senior Nick Faust (#38) on why he stuck with Maryland: “Coach [Mark] Turgeon’s goal is to win a national championship and I would play a big part in that immediately.”
• Senior Jamari Traylor on committing to the Jayhawks: “It’s a good fit for me. I really like Coach [Bill] Self and coach [Kurtis] Townsend. I really like the players. On my visit I saw the campus and everything I knew it would be a good place for me.”
• Senior Sidiki Johnson on Arizona’s incoming recruiting class (which he is apart of): “We are a good class, every player brings something valuable to Arizona next year.”
• Senior P.J. Hairston (#12) on his reaction to Duke not spelling his name correctly: “I’m like, ‘OK. How can I go here? You can’t even spell my name right.’”
• Junior Devonta Pollard (#40) on climbing the rankings: “It makes me feel good. First of all it shows me that I’m not just working hard to be working hard. The work is paying off and I’m improving and I can see that.”

What You Missed

The top unsigned prospect left, shooting guard Trevor Lacey (#37), committed to Alabama Wednesday.

Lacey Stays In-State, Commits to Alabama. Class of 2011 shooting guard Trevor Lacey (#37) committed to the Crimson Tide Wednesday (to see why, check out the “What They’re Saying” section above) over Kansas and Kentucky which gives Alabama its second top 50 shooting guard along with Levi Randolph (#31). He has said all along that playing time and the school’s fan base would be two factors in his decision and it seemed like he really warmed up to the Crimson Tide crowd when they chanted his name at the Alabama vs. Miami (FL) NIT game, just one of multiple visits he made there. Lacey, who was the top unsigned prospect left on the board, will be joining small forward Rodney Cooper, power forward Nick Jacobs and center Moussa Gueye in addition to Randolph in Tuscaloosa. Alabama head coach Anthony Grant has done an excellent job reeling in top in-state talent as Lacey, Randolph and Cooper are all Alabama natives. The addition of Lacey also gives the Crimson Tide the #9 class in 2011 because of how well he will fit into their system. Lacey is a great shooter who has outstanding range and consistency and can both catch and shoot and shoot off the dribble at a high level. He can also shoot coming off a pick and with guys in his face. The bottom line about him is he won’t wow you with his athleticism but he does have good size and strength for the two-guard and he can put up big-time numbers.

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Have you heard this one before? New York Times. John Calipari.

Shots fired.

[That’s a favorite of the Twitterati.]

In Wednesday’s online edition of the New York Times there appeared an article written by Harvey Araton about Kyrie Irving attending the live NBA Draft Lottery rank-order show and about how Irving could go as the first overall pick to Cleveland. In the piece, Araton makes a point to mention that, according to Kyrie’s father, Drederick, Kyrie’s decision to leave school after a single college season (one in which he played in a mere 11 games due to injury) did not represent a “long-planned escape from the often unholy alliance of Division I sports and academia.” In other words, the father is asserting that Kyrie isn’t just leaving school early to avoid college nor is Kyrie abandoning his plans for obtaining a degree. The elder Irving is a financial broker on Wall Street, and Araton quotes him as saying, “Everybody in my family has gotten their degrees, their master’s. We value the education aspect of it with Kyrie.”

Calipari Is Characterized As Someone Who Devalues Education Because He Embraces One-and-Done Players, a Logical Fallacy Not Many Critics Will Own Up To

Here is Araton’s next sentence in the article:

“Had they not, Kyrie would have been with John Calipari at Kentucky last season, where [Kyrie’s] godfather, [Rod] Strickland, works as an assistant coach.”

Uh…beg pardon? Let’s make sure we got that straight. Using Araton’s own words, what he said there was, “Had they not cared about the education aspect of it with Kyrie, Kyrie would have been with John Calipari at Kentucky last season, where the godfather, [Rod] Strickland, works as an assistant coach.”

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1. Less than a week after he announced that he would be leaving Arizona, Lamont “Momo” Jones announced that he would be transferring to St. John’s. The move is not particularly surprising, as Jones had stated that he intended to move closer to home and the options in the New York metro area for a player of Momo’s pedigree are pretty limited. He could potentially play for Steve Lavin next year if the NCAA grants him a hardship waiver, since he reportedly transferred to be closer to his family due to his grandmother being sick. With Jones joining a very talented incoming freshman class, Lavin may have a team that could compete for the Big East championship in the next two or three years.
2. Earlier this week we took some shots at the ACC/Big Ten Challenge based on the fact that there were only two compelling match-ups. Yesterday the match-ups for the Big East/SEC Challenge were announced and we have to say that we were pleasantly surprised. The top match-ups in our eyes are St. John’s at Kentucky, Vanderbilt at Louisville, Florida at Syracuse, Arkansas at Connecticut, and West Virginia at Mississippi State. A few of the other games are also worth watching, but you can bet that all of these will be featured as “must watch” type games on our Set Your Tivo feature when the games come around.
3. Yesterday was one bad day for Wake Forest, as the female student who accused Gary Clark of sexually assaulting her while Jeff Teague guarded the door went on NBC’s Today Show to discuss the incident as part of a feature about how universities respond to sexual assault charges. The more damning accusation for Wake Forest was that officials at the school did not take her claim seriously and urged her not to press charges with the Miami Police Department, and instead let the school handle the matter internally. Wake Forest and the lawyers for the players have issued statements saying that the facts of the case are being misrepresented. We imagine that this is a story that will continue to develop during the summer and probably get uglier.
4. In an article yesterday in the New York Times about the Cleveland Cavaliers landing the #1 pick (likely Kyrie Irving), Harvey Araton discussed Irving’s family and how much they stress the importance of education. That isn’t a particularly big deal until he writes this: “Everybody in my family has gotten our degrees, our master’s,” said the elder Irving, a Wall Street financial broker who left a job at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center six months before 9/11. “We value the education aspect of it with Kyrie.” Had they not, Kyrie would have been with John Calipari at Kentucky last season, where the godfather, Strickland, works as an assistant coach.” We are not going to pretend that Kentucky is considered on par with Duke as an academic institution, but you don’t necessarily have to be a Wildcat fan to take issue with that passage.
5. Now that nearly all of the top recruits have committed to a school (any time you’re ready, DeAndre Daniels…) the recruiting analysts at ESPN put together a series of posts looking  back at this year’s class of recruits. They break them down by instant impact players, biggest surprises, and predictions for the class. We recommend keeping those bookmarked (or better yet, keep this post bookmarked) to look back at in a few years to see how accurate the recruiting analysts were.

1. The Big Ten is considering a proposal where it would increase the amount it “pays” scholarship athletes (ok, it is really more like a stipend). The basic idea behind the proposal is to cover “living expenses”, which have been estimated at between $2,000 and $5,000 per student-athlete per year. According to reports, NCAA president Mark Emmert back this proposal, which is interesting because at $300,000 per year for just football and basketball it would create a major divide between the big and small schools. Gene Smith, the athletic director at Ohio State and chairman of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, has come out and essentially said that small schools will just have to deal with being small schools while letting the big boys play a different game. We have a feeling that this could become a very heated discussion in the near future.
2. Every year it seems like a rumor starts about a major college basketball coach leaving the sanctity of a college campus for NBA riches. Bill Self was asked about this on a local radio show and said that he had “a better job than two-thirds of the NBA jobs right where I’m at, at Kansas.” Of course, some Kansas fans have taken this to mean that there are ten NBA jobs that Self would leave Lawrence for if he were offered that position. Personally, we think that is a little paranoid, but if our last coach did this maybe we would be paranoid too.
3. After several months of speculation former Kansas State forward Wally Judge has decided that he will be transferring to Rutgers. Judge, who came to Manhattan with high expectations as a McDonald’s All-American, struggled at times to live up to expectations and averaged a meager 4.0 points and 3.2 rebounds per game. Despite his limited production at Kansas State there were plenty of teams interested in Judge due to his athleticism. Judge will have to sit out next season, but will be able to join what should be a solid Rutgers squad thanks to some solid recruiting by Mike Rice recently. If Judge is able to live up to his potential, the Scarlet Knights could surprise some teams in the Big East in a few years.
4. Trevor Lacey, one of the last big-time recruits in the class of 2011 who had not committed, announced yesterday that he would be staying in-state to play at Alabama. Lacey chose to go to Alabama over his other three finalists that included Auburn, Kansas, and Kentucky. As you can imagine, Wildcats fans were not too happy that Lacey turned them down, but just because he went to a relatively weak program in Tuscaloosa does not necessarily mean that he cannot be successful according to John Clay. Now, the lone remaining uncommitted star in the class of 2011 is DeAndre Daniels, who was supposed to announce yesterday, but decided to postpone his decision another day. Daniels is reportedly considering Texas, Kansas, and Oregon although there are some rumors that he is also looking at Duke and Kentucky.
5. The teams that will participate in the championship rounds of this season’s “Legends Classic” were announced yesterday and will feature Texas, Vanderbilt, NC State, and Oregon State. For the record, we would like to reiterate our stance against having a fake tournament where preordained teams advance whether or not they win. As for the actual tournament, Vanderbilt should be the heavy favorites here especially this early in the year (November 19th and 21st) although Texas should have some decent talent that could make thing interesting. The other two teams are only notable for their head coaches with Mark Gottfried and Craig Robinson (aka President Obama’s brother-in-law) coaching NC State and Oregon State, respectively.

Who’s Got Next? is a bi-weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Twice a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are in the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Introduction

From an important commitment Monday to an important commitment today, we’re bringing you everything you’ve missed in the past week in the world of recruiting including new developments in a top ten prospect’s recruitment, the meteoric rise of a somewhat unknown recruit, more rankings being released, a challenge issued to two powerhouse programs on Tobacco Road, and how an ACC program’s recruiting class is falling apart.

What We Learned

Class of 2012 power forward Perry Ellis (#10) might stay in Wichita.

Wichita State Has a Realistic Shot at Perry Ellis. Class of 2012 power forward Perry Ellis (#10) has long had the same list of six schools (Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky, Memphis, Oklahoma, and Wichita State) that’s he interested in, but lately, it seems as though there has been some movement as to who his favorite is. The latest shift involves Wichita State after they hired assistant coach Dana Ford, who has a longstanding relationship with the Ellis family. Ford has watched Ellis play since his first middle school game and even worked out with Ellis several years ago when Ford was a Shocker intern. The WSU coaching staff also met with Ellis and his family last Wednesday and emphasized how much they wanted to keep Perry in Wichita (Ellis attends Wichita Heights HS). Some other news involving Ellis includes the fact that Minnesota is now starting to recruit him and head coach Tubby Smith called him on the phone recently. A source very close to the situation also says that they suspect Kansas and Kentucky are two of the front-runners in Ellis’ recruitment.

Mitch McGary is Becoming a Top 2012 Talent. This time of year last year you probably didn’t know who class of 2012 power forward Mitch McGary was; well now he is one of the best players in his class. McGary has become significantly better in all parts of his game over the past 12 months and is a force to reckon with both inside and out. He is a tough, strong, big man to handle in the paint and has the ability to step out and score on the perimeter. However, the biggest reason he has received much more attention lately is because of his incessant motor and the fact that he has gotten his grades in order. Now that schools don’t have to worry about whether he will qualify or not, programs such as Duke, Kansas and Kentucky are in near-constant contact with him. He says that his recruitment is wide open and that he will likely wait until late in the process to make his decision. He also says location isn’t a factor in his choice. As of January, before top programs began taking notice of McGary, he had visited Purdue, Indiana, Illinois and Marquette.

Maryland’s Recruiting Class is Falling Apart. Many people wondered what would happen to Maryland’s recruiting class when the Terps found their new coach and whether their commitments would stay with Maryland or seek releases from their letters of intent; well now we know. The Terrapins have lost every recruit in its Class of 2011 after the university granted shooting guard Nick Faust (#38), point guard Sterling Gibbs and power forward Martin Breunig releases from their signed letters of intent. To make matters even worse, just days after his release was granted, Gibbs committed to the Texas Longhorns (read more about this in the “What You Missed” section below). However the Terps still have a shot at Faust, who is now the second highest rated uncommitted prospect and still likes Maryland (Check out the “What They’re Saying” section below to find out why), and Breunig, who visited Washington Monday night. Keep in mind Faust and Gibbs are good friends so Gibbs’ commitment to Texas might push Faust away from College Park. This coaching change is also affecting Maryland’s 2012 class since small forward Justin Anderson (#45) said Sunday in a text that he isn’t sure whether he will open his recruitment back up. On the brighter side of things for Terps fans, head coach Mark Turgeon picked up Class of 2012 shooting guard Seth Allen who is a prolific scorer and can get the ball in the basket from anywhere on the court.

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If you are interested in participating, send your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com as we will be updating these posts throughout the day.

General News

• Momo Jones will leave Arizona Wildcats, destination unknown: “So Jones will likely head back home, and might avoid sitting out a year by filling out a waiver due to a sick family member, Goodman says. An easy to guess destination for Jones is St. John’s, which is close to home and has former Rice High School coach Moe Hicks acting as director of basketball operations. With the news, Arizona now stands on par as far as scholarships go, making for no screwy situations in Miller’s over-recruiting.” (Arizona Desert Swarm)
• Lamont Momo Jones to transfer to St. John’s? (possibly): “Jeff Goodman tweeted earlier this evening that Arizona Wildcats starting point guard Lamont Jones – better known as Momo – will be transferring from the Wildcats program. AND that Momo Jones might seek a waiver to play immediately due to family illness… and he’d look to play for the St. John’s Red Storm. That’s just a rumor from sources, but in college ball, sources often know what they are talking about. Adding credence to the rumor: Jones is from New York, and played under current St. John’s Director of Basketball Operations Moe Hicks when Hicks was the coach at Rice High School in the Bronx.” (Rumble in the Garden)
• Report: Maryland Hires Dalonte Hill: “InsideMDSports is reporting that Kansas State assistant Dalonte Hill has accepted a job as an assistant coach on Mark Turgeon’s staff. No official word yet from MD, but you’d think they have to announce the full staff soon.” (Testudo Times)
• Star Baltimore Guard Nick Faust Recommitts to Maryland: “It’s Faustival 2011, everybody! Maryland’s star recruit, Nick Faust, had asked out of his LOI with the Terrapins’ two other recruits after Gary Williams retired. But now it appears he’s back in the fold.” (Testudo Times)
• Sterling Gibbs to Texas Provides Another 2011 Point Guard: “It’s been a long time since there was any good news coming out of the Texas basketball program. Well, if you aren’t Rick Barnes, that is, who received a recent $200k raise. Since late in the second-round tournament game against Arizona, everything has seemingly been downhill, culminating in the losses of Tristan Thompson, Jordan Hamilton, and the unexpected departure of Cory Joseph to the NBA draft. Monday evening, former Maryland commit and Rivals three-star prospect Sterlilng Gibbs gave suffering Longhorn roundball fans something to feel good about after a difficult two months.” (Burnt Orange Nation)
  
• George Washington Wants To Play Georgetown: “First it was Maryland AD Kevin Anderson clamoring for a piece of Hoyas action, and now, incoming George Washington AD Patrick Nero wants the Hoyas to face off against our friendly yet not as intelligent neighbor in Foggy Bottom. According to the DC Sports Bog, GW would like Georgetown to get involved in the BB&T Classic Basketball Tournament so that DC could have its own version of the “Big 5″” in Philadelphia.” (Casual Hoya)
• Cal Introduced as Dominican Coach: Coverage of John Calipari’s conference where he was announced as the coach of the Dominican Republic national team. (Kentucky Sports Radio)
• Vee Sanford is visiting Dayton today: “Former Lexington Catholic guard and Billy Gillispie recruit Vee Sanford is visiting Dayton today. He also plans to visit Loyola-Chicago and Marshall. Sanford spent last season at Georgetown University where he averaged 2.4 points in 6.6 minutes per game. Sanford decided to transfer because of the lack of playing time and the lack of opportunities to earn more.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)

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1. Coaches, administrators, and fans have been critical of unscrupulous agents for a long time, but were limited in their ability to get back at them. That group may now have a legal method to do so in the state of Texas as the state legislature has sent a bill to Governor Rick Perry proposing that agents and their runners could be charged with a felony and face up to 10 years in prison if their actions lead a college athlete to lose his or her eligibility. The details on how this law would work are not clear and we cannot even imagine how ridiculous these cases could get (many top agents are also lawyers) if they ever go to trial, but it’s certainly worth tracking in the coming months.
2. It is always unusual to see a coach who once worked on a big stage take a step (or two) down to continue coaching at a lower level. In the case of Jim O’Brien the cause is a little more clear. As many of you may remember, O’Brien, who had previously coached at Ohio State and Boston College, was forced to leave the former after the school was accused of multiple NCAA violations and was hit with severe sanctions including having their 1999 Final Four run vacated. In addition, O’Brien also received a two-year show-cause penalty (he pocketed $2.4 million from OSU after a judge ruled that he had been wrongfully terminated, however). O’Brien will be returning to Boston to coach at Division III Emerson College. We doubt that O’Brien will ever get back to being a head coach at the Division I level, but he is one of the few coaches that that has been hit with a show-cause penalty that has received a head coaching job at the NCAA level with Morgan State’s Todd Bozeman still being the only one who got a Division I job. Bruce Pearl might want to keep that in mind going forward.
3. On Thursday a segment on NBC’s Today Show will air (estimated at 7:45 AM ET) in which a (former?) Wake Forest student will speak about an alleged sexual assault involving members of the Wake Forest basketball team that occurred hours after the team was eliminated in the first round of the 2009 NCAA Tournament. We are not sure if she will name names on-air, but luckily their attorney already has: Mike Grace stated that former Demon Deacons Jeff Teague and Gary Clark were accused on that fateful night in Miami, but both players were completely exonerated by both the Miami-Dade County police and the Wake Forest code of conduct hearing council.  It’ll be interesting to see how this student spins the interview in light of this new information on Thursday morning.  Quick sidenote: leave it to Andy Katz (link above) to drop recruiting news into a story about sexual assault — another former Wake Forest player accused of assualt, Tony Woods, is reportedly close to transferring to Kentucky.
4. The schedule for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, which has grown in popularity in recent years, was released yesterday. Looking through the schedule we have to say that it’s underwhelming. Outside of the Duke–Ohio State and UNC–Wisconsin games few of the games look particularly interesting. We’re sure that ESPN will find a way to hype it up as being a series of great games, but don’t fall for it. There are three other games that might be worth watching (Miami–Purdue, Illinois–Maryland, and FSU–Michigan State), but other than that most of the games are close to unwatchable. This could be because the ACC is experiencing a bit of a dry spell, but the organizers need to find a way to keep this fresh (switching conference match-ups?) or these type of events will lose the public’s interest very quickly.
5. Doug Gottlieb takes a look at some of next year’s impact transfers (ESPN Insider required) and we have to say it is a pretty impressive group. Maybe we are forgetting how good prior transfer classes were or overrating the current crop (most of these guys left their prior programs for a reason), but this seems like an exceptionally talented group. Keep this group in mind when you are trying to figure out what impact the newcomers will have on college basketball next season instead of just focusing on the freshmen.

In the past week the salaries of Rick Barnes and Lon Kruger have drawn criticism from their respective state legislatures particularly in the case of Barnes. Throughout the country the fact that many coaches at top programs draw in CEO-like salaries has been a hot button topic in recent years especially with the prolonged downturn in the economy measured either in big picture economic terms like CPI or the more palatable unemployment numbers. That was never more clear than two years ago when Ken Krayeske challenged Jim Calhoun about his salary in the setting of the state’s budget deficit.

One of the points that Calhoun makes, which has been overlooked as people have focused on “not a dime back”  jokes, is that many of the top programs bring in millions of dollars to their universities and are not subsidized in any way by taxpayer funds even though they are at state universities. That, in itself, should be enough to combat questions about whether the coaches have the right to take in that type of salary. Many of the top programs appear to be bringing in enough money so that the coach’s salaries are at least fiscally possible and some would argue reasonable although many may also express moral qualms at the way that salaries are distributed much like they do with CEOs and their disproportionately large salaries.

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The old saying goes that it’s not the name on the back of the jersey that matters, but the one on the front. How about the one on the envelope?

Last year P.J. Hairston found himself with a choice that most basketball-playin’ high school kids would kill to have to make. The star 6’5 shooting guard prospect from Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia had offers from all sorts of Division I programs and had narrowed his choices down to Duke and North Carolina. Not a bad spot to be in, eh? To many kids growing up in ACC country (and beyond), that’s the dream.

It Bodes Well For UNC That Hairston Appreciates Attention To Detail (J. Wolford/G'boro N&R)

He chose North Carolina…and Duke helped him with the decision. Hairston recently told the Greensboro News and Record that one of the reasons he chose the Tar Heels is because Duke often misspelled his name on the mailings they sent him. “Every time they sent me a letter, they wouldn’t spell my name right. And I’m like, ‘You can’t even spell my name right. How can I go here?’ I’m trying to figure out how that’s so hard.”

It’s a legitimate point. Hairston obviously had enough affection for the Duke program to have them in his top two despite repeated screw-ups of his name on the mailed materials. Hairston admits that there are other reasons he chose Chapel Hill over the Blue Devils, but this couldn’t have helped. Mike Krzyzewski — get ready for a huge scoop, here — still has a cadre of top-notch prospects coming to Durham next season, so you won’t catch Duke fans bemoaning the loss of any one recruit. Last we checked, though, Coach K doesn’t like finishing second to anyone — especially UNC. Knowing that a series of inexcusable clerical errors may have cost him the 12th-ranked player in the country means there’s a good chance that the guy addressing the envelopes is getting his backside gnawed on by the big boss over this one.

This is especially funny considering that at the same time Duke was recruting Hairston and getting his name wrong, they were also in the process of successfully courting another prospect from Virginia, namely 6’6 small forward Michael Gbinije, the 28th-ranked player on the ESPNU 100. So…”Gbinije” they got right. But not “P.J. Hairston?”

Remember, recruiters: God is in the details, and therefore so might be your shooting guard. Somebody at Duke couldn’t get the small detail of P.J. Hairston’s name right, and that’s one reason why you won’t see him suiting up in Blue Devil colors with fellow newcomers Dustin Rivers and Marshall Plumley next year.

Much of the talk last week about Gary Williams’ replacement centered on the relative attractiveness of the Maryland basketball head coaching position.  It was interesting to see where people fell on this.  Some folks viewed the job as a borderline top ten slot, citing its rabid fan base, its top-tier facilities, its conference affiliation and its location in a recruiting hotbed as evidence supporting that contention.  Others suggested that the position was really more in line with a top 25 ranking, a place where fans have unreasonable expectations and league affiliation (read: Duke and UNC) actually hinder the program’s status more than it helps.  It’s an interesting debate, and it got us thinking about how we would rank the top twenty or so jobs in college basketball as of today.

It Says Here That Duke is the Top Job in College Basketball

After thinking about it for a few days, we broke the twenty out into five groupings, as shown below.  We view the jobs within each grouping as roughly equal to each other, using the inexact criteria that coaches would be unlikely to jump ship within a grouping, but would be heavily enticed to do so in a grouping above theirs.  Note the word, “inexact.”  Each individual has different motivations and will make professional decisions on criteria distinct and separate from ours (e.g., Billy Donovan turning down Kentucky twice, and Jay Wright/Jamie Dixon turning down Maryland).  But this analysis doesn’t take the current coach into consideration; this is meant to be an examination of the attractiveness of the job itself.  Feel free to tell us how stupid we are in the comments below.

Coaching Pinnacles

These five positions are destination jobs that guarantee big paychecks, huge followings, and, unless an elite NBA job comes calling, an expectation of long-term stability.  They represent all but one of the top six programs of all-time, and the daily pressure on each of these fellows to succeed at the highest level is among the most excruciating in collegiate sports.

1. Duke. Possesses unbelievable facilities with a national brand synonymous with long-term, sustained success.  Every college coach in America would give this job a glance if offered.
2. Kentucky. The only reason UK isn’t #1 is because dealing with the expectations of the always-rabid/sometimes-insane fanbase turns some coaches off on the job.  Otherwise, everything you need to succeed is in place.
3. North Carolina.  Only slightly less rabid of a fanbase than UK, but equally remarkable in resources, national support and pedigree.  The only negative is a prevailing sense of the coach having to be a Carolina “insider” to succeed there.
4. Kansas. Certainly few complaints here, buf it the top four jobs were available in the same year and three elite coaches were in the running, KU would be the odd school out of that musical chairs equation.
5. UCLA. Sigh… this job is still elite regardless of a juxtaposed fan base that on one hand is apathetic while on the other expecting Final Four and national championship banners every year.

The Football Schools of Eternal Comfort

Don’t Worry, Be Happy…

These three jobs are roughly interchangeable.  They represent most of the amenities and professional respect of the above five positions with approximately 1% of the same pressure to perform.  Their coaches make massive amounts of money, have great facilities and enjoy fertile recruiting bases, but basketball remains a distant second banana on these three campuses and is unlikely to change soon.  So long as their teams don’t completely tank, they have better job security than just about anyone.

6.  Ohio State. OSU moves ahead of the other two in this grouping because the fans are generally more supportive of its program than at UT or UF and everything else — resources, recruiting, etc. — is pretty much a wash.
7.  Texas. Retirement job.  The pipeline of talent is such that the Texas coach can win 20-25 games every year in perpetuity with an occasional NCAA run and the vast majority of UT fans will be satisfied, even happy, with their program’s success.
8.  Florida. Why take a Kentucky job with ridiculous levels of expectation and pressure on an annual basis when you can coast with good teams year after year after year after year at Florida?  The theme among all of the schools in this grouping is long-term comfort without constant pressure to win a national title.

The Third Tier of Hope & Optimism

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