April 2005 – This Month in Coaches Advisor

In this issue:

Technology – If ever there was a time to buy a computer system with all the bells and whistles – now is the time!

Recruiting – Basketball coach hangs ‘em up because she can never hang up!

Technology –  Buying a computer in the Internet Age

Last November I needed to buy a new computer. Mine was slowing down, did not have a writeable CD drive,
lacked horsepower to watch Video streams. In short, my computer could not keep up with the technology I needed and was adapting to.

There are a lot of places to purchase a computer and many options that you need to sort through the – MUST HAVE – NICE TO HAVE – REALLY DON’T NEED – filter. Since I knew a guy that had owned a ComputerLand PC Computer store for over 10 years,  I figured I’d ask him.

Well as it turns out, the guy still had the fire that led him to temporarily retire from coaching in 1984 to enter the computer business in its infancy. Two days later I get an email from Dell.com with a shopping cart for me to review. For about $1,150 I had a flat-screen monitor, 80 GIG hard drive, CD/DVD drive, fast performance and the comfort of the Dell service guarantee. I made the purchase in December of 2004 and have been happy.

A lot has changed in this past few months; mainly the prices have dropped even more! I was recently surprised to find that this guy, who had grown accustomed to constant price reductions during his 18 years the PC “hardware” business was in shock to find a very similar system to mine for about
$600. Amazing! The real benefit to this price drop for the consumer is how cheaply you can get the horsepower to run programs that will help you win
games. Things like Digital Video have often intimidated some people because they did not have the computer to make it work. Forget that! The horsepower is cheap and digital video options are becoming increasingly affordable.

Recruiting – Basketball coach hangs ‘em up because she can never hang up!

Call it a “Changing of the guard” or “Out with the old and in with the new” or “These times they are a changing” but college coaching is turning into a
young persons game.

The now former women’s basketball coach at Colorado, Ceal Barry, just wrapped up 22 years of coaching and penned an article in the NY Times about why she is no longer going to coach. Barry cited the “always on, Text Message, Instant Message, email, 24/7/365 world that has become recruiting in the women’s game.”

It seems Barry wishes she could coach the game and educate young women just a little more, and worry less about making sure at least one member of her staff has their computer on all night in case a “prospect” logs on and wants to chat.

At the big time programs, the assistant coaches are the ones bearing the lion’s share of running around the country, answering text messages and
basically staying in touch anytime a recruit wants to be in touch. But few programs are really big time with seemingly unlimited resources and the head coach becomes just another cog in the recruiting treadmill.

When UMass Amherst hired 35 year-old Travis Ford to revive a once proud basketball program, he stated that “UMass staff and players will be the hardest working program in the country bar none” in their efforts to bring glory back to the Central Mass campus.

I always chuckle when someone says “We work harder than anyone else” or “We will never be out worked.” Ok I guess this means that if our conference rival goes to watch a coveted recruit 10 times, then we go 11? If you send 200 letters, we will send 250. It seems to work in this day “bigger is better” and “show me the respect I deserve.”

Ford has financial incentives to work hard and win. He also knows that he will be fired if losing continues. Ford will work 18 hour days like so many other college coaches and his assistants will do the same. The players really don’t have a say in the matter – if they choose to go to UMass and play for Coach Ford, they will work as hard as he demands or not be on the team.

My question in all of this is about what is the best interest of players and  why are they making decisions to go to school based on a coach answering an IM at 2 AM? Who is guiding high school players into thinking that a school is less interested or less of a match if they do not Text Message you every day, just every other day. If you get an IM from a head coach on your birthday, does that count more than if another team’s assistant IM’d you to say the same thing? Does any of this equate to finding an athletic, academic and social match that will lead to a happy and productive four years? I really don’t think so.

Ultimately, money is the culprit. Colleges pay more for coaches and demand immediate and dramatic results. The coach knows this and attacks all aspects of the job like it was Nolan Richardson’s “40 Minutes of Hell” at Barnhill Arena. Pretty soon the non-stop coach starts winning recruits away from less hard working coaches who end up being replaced by the “new wave” of “always on” coaches. And so it goes. And there goes a great coach who still has more coaching to give to basketball. Unfortunately, basketball is taking more from her than that.