A big poker âtellâ will be if Hill allows Fearne to actually fill the assistant role that Fearne occupied and to a lesser extent the open schollie but the portal makes that less of an issue.
If no one is hired to fill Fearnes position then Hill saves head coach money plus top assistant money ( for our budget) for a year and goes into next hiring cycle with more ammo and more schollies.
I would say Fearne is up against it but I am pulling for him but I like underdog storyline.
This debate has devolved into an inordinate amount of conjecture. The truth is, we donât have good reliable information on who was interviewed, so we donât know if we had âbottom of the barrelâ candidates or if we had legitimately good options available.
We also donât know why we werenât able to close on any particular candidate. Whether it was money or resources, or HIll being stubborn about staffing.
What we do know is that the posted salary for the job was $650K, and that the median salary for an AAC coach is about $1.1MM.
Saying Mike handled this appropriately really should only be reserved for someone in the know about who the viable candidates were and how this all actually went down. I doubt there is a single person on this board who knows who was a legitimate contender and why they are not our coach.
As far as a depleted roster, there shouldnât be a legitimate coach around that has so little confidence in his and his staffâs ability to recruit that they wouldnât take over a team because of a few transfers. I mean, we are really digging deep to make excuses now. Personally, when I take on a new challenge, I like to have the luxury of assembling my own team when itâs available to me. It ensures you have people who have the right work ethic, complementary skills, and who are buying into your culture. Anyone who has the opportunity to build the team that they want and view that as a bad thing - that is an enormous red flag for me, especially at a university like ours heading into the AAC.
We should just stop discussing. Some people are going to defend MIkeâs actions no matter what, some people are going to condemn them no matter what, and the truth is none of us have enough information to have a fully formed opinion beyond the fact that we undoubtedly did not allocate significant resources to this job to make it attractive to a top tier candidate, or even to make it in the same general pay range as a similar position. Those facts are undisputed.
Do we really know that this is what we were offering? That was Ronâs salary but I only saw that number on Twitter for this hire.
Someone said it was on the official job posting. I donât have a screen cap though.
This forum is a bunch of people speculating on what some people speculated was happening or has happened. Then some got mad about the speculation and others speculated that those people are wrong. I know that we will have a coach and team next year. We can all speculate how that team will perform. I speculate that some will be right and others wrong. I also know for sure and donât need to speculate, whatever happens some folks on this board will be complaining.
Didnât see that but if that was in the official job posting I would think that would be very dependent on who the candidate is. Probably just a low end but that is just more speculation by me.
Norlander was a source that reporting our offer was on the low end of the AAC, whether anyone chooses to believe that or not is up to them but it is coming from national reporters.
Have been told the NIL situation isnât great, and given Charlotteâs moving into the AAC, salary pool is also on the low end.
(tweet posted earlier)
Yeah, I just donât see why we ever considered anything but making Fearne the interim for 23/24. Too many cards against us. Letâs save up and make a statement hire.
I agree and had thought that would have been a reasonable option when I heard Sanchez resigned. Our bungled public search seems to have ended in a way that can only hurt our future prospects.
I was initially on board with grabbing someone like Mack. But when that didnât pan out I was okay with letting Fearne have his shot. Really no other good options.
If he does not work out though, Mike has got to be ready to make a statement hire. We have to fix basketball. It cannot be allowed to wallow in the basement of the AAC.
0 voters
clt asks what was the best option for Hill?
Actually a moot point. Fearne is THE coach for 2023-24.
I donât know you but I will gladly buy you a beer at any sporting event of your choosing. I blocked Tim a long time ago and enjoy my time on this board MUCH more while being able to skip over his consistent negativity.
I need to figure out how to do that! Thanks
National reporters never throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks especially in a down period on their news cycle. Sure⌠In the media, saying the wrong thing is ok as long as you are saying something to stay relevant.
List of coaching salaries:
Looking at that list I think itâs a total cluster of a situation we canât afford to pay a basketball coach 1 million a year⌠somehow Loyola Chicago, Colorado St and Iona can but we canât??
One thing that should be considered with the timing and potential candidates is that we were the only coaching vacancy at the time, at the end of next season, how many coaching vacancies are going to be open that offer better opportunities than what we have, how many schools are we going to have to compete with to get a coach like Richey or McCollum next year, this may have been a lost opportunity
Forgive my ignorance, as I havenât been following this as closely as some of yâall, but how does what we were willing to pay compare to what else is out there? I, perhaps incorrectly, assume we were already paying well compared to some of the places where we discussed taking coaches from - Furman, UNCA, etc. with more money on the way upon moving to the AAC. Also, the fact that he left for a new job is better for us financially than Sanchez getting fired.
Good luck to Coach Fearne, I guess at least weâll be a lot more fun to watch.
The comments are based on how well we are paying compared to our AAC competition. So while we are offering good sized raises to some of these candidates, itâs not as much as our new league pays.
For instance, throwing out Kelvin Sampsonâs $3.1mm since Houston is headed to the Big 12, there are still some well paid coaches in the AAC:
Penny: $2.35mm
Rob Lanier (SMU): $2mm
Konkol (Tulsa): $1.3mm
Hunter (Tulane): $1.2mm
And on down to lowly ECU, which was paying Schwartz $900m
Brian Gregory got fired at USF and he was getting $1.6mm.
We were paying Sanchez $650m, which was decent for CUSA, but doesnât compare.
Rumor is we were only offering $750m. That isnât gonna cut it in AAC.
In fairness, those AAC schools are getting about $8mm each from their football TV deal, and we wonât be getting anywhere near that for years if ever. So itâs not apples to apples in terms of budget. That football disparity is manifesting itself in basketball too. So is not earning any NCAA tournament credits since before my oldest son was born.
We are in a chicken and the egg situation. We need money to help us achieve success, but we arenât going to get any more money unless we are successful. Short of that we need a deep pocket benefactor - and no, that isnât Poggi.