Calhoun’s Return: Comparing Him to Other Senior Citizen Coaches
Posted by rtmsf on September 1st, 2011Jim Calhoun‘s non-announcement announcement that he plans to return to the Connecticut sidelines for the 2011-12 season was no shocker to anybody. If it wasn’t the interminable wait for a ‘final’ decision that tipped you off, it was the well-placed leaks from key recruits and their families; if you still weren’t convinced, surely the announcement that superstar center Andre Drummond had chosen to reclassify to the Class of 2011 and play for the Huskies this coming season clinched it. Regardless of when you believed he’d be back, Calhoun will coach his team this season at the rather ripe age of 69 years old (he turns 70 next May) and, despite some health issues in the past, he shows few signs of slowing down. And, in fact, his team will be on the short list of contenders after North Carolina and Kentucky most likely to cut the nets down next April in New Orleans.
Why Would Calhoun Give This Up?
We know that with his third national title last season, the curmudgeonly coach passed Kansas’ Phog Allen (66) as the oldest coach to win a college basketball national title, but with a stacked team returning and a few more gray hairs on top of his head, it got us wondering who his senior citizen peers are within the other sports. Here’s the list of oldest coaches to have won a title in each of the major team sports:
- MLB – Jack McKeon (2003), 72 years old
- NCAA Football – Bobby Bowden (1999), 69 years old
- NCAA Basketball – Jim Calhoun (2011), 68 years old
- NFL – George Halas (1963), 68 years old
- NHL – Scotty Bowman (2002), 68 years old
- NBA – Phil Jackson (2010), 64 years old
