|
Tarnished coaches resurface with 2nd chances
By Steve Wilstein
The Associated Press
There never was much doubt that Larry Eustachy, Mike Price and George
O'Leary would slip back into the college coaching ranks, despite their
transgressions.
The surprise comes from where they landed and how soon.
Barely 10 months after Eustachy's fall from grace at Iowa State, he popped
up at Southern Mississippi, saying he is "a recovering alcoholic" but is
ready to jump back into the high-pressure world of college basketball.
Mike Price, fired for an indiscreet visit to a strip club before he even
started at Alabama, grabbed a job several notches down in football stature
and salary at Texas-El Paso.
O'Leary, cast away from the cathedral of college football, Notre Dame, for
lying on his resume, wound up at, of all places, the University of Central
Florida — home of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
What's next? Will former Colorado and Washington football coach Rick
Neuheisel surface from ignominy to take a job at Harvard? Will Jim Harrick
and his knavish son return to some desperate school for a sequel to their
Georgia follies?
As firing offenses go, the misdeeds of Eustachy, Price and O'Leary were of a
lower order than those of some other coaches who committed various frauds in
pursuit of victories. They didn't fix grades, pay off athletes, make deals
with boosters, or hire hookers for recruiting.
What they did was undermine themselves with foolish behavior that could not,
and should not, be tolerated.
The question for any school that considered hiring them, hoping to get a
winner at a discounted price, was whether these coaches learned their
lessons well enough to avoid further embarrassments and serve as models for
their students.
Put another way, were the coaches worth the risk to the schools, and was
there a fair balance between punishment and forgiveness?
Eustachy, Price and O'Leary all suffered shame, guilt and steep financial
losses. They had to accept salaries far below the multimillion-dollar deals
they had. They are all still extraordinarily well paid compared with
professors at their schools, so no one needs to feel too sorry for them.
In Eustachy's case, he has a four-year contract at Southern Miss with
$230,000 a year guaranteed and up to about $500,000 more in incentives. If
that's a huge drop from the $1.1 million a year he was making at Iowa State,
Eustachy is grateful simply to get a second chance so soon.
"I hit rock bottom with nobody to blame but myself," Eustachy, The
Associated Press Coach of the Year in 2000, said when he was hired last
week. "You can go one way or another. ... I am a recovering alcoholic and
it's constant maintenance, it's constant work. But where I find myself now,
I've never felt better."
Southern Miss athletic director Richard Giannini said the opportunity came
at "the right time in the life of Larry Eustachy. It's the right time to
have him as our coach."
Yet any observer, especially anyone familiar with alcoholism, would have to
wonder if Eustachy has given himself the time to treat the problem and cope
with the pressures of his profession.
Giannini is not naive. He knows the power of the disease, the difficulty of
shaking it.
"I know a lot about alcoholism," Giannini said. "I've had it in my family.
I've seen it. I've experienced it. I've seen miracles happen through the
Alcoholics Anonymous program. My wife has been sober for 18 years. I saw a
miracle happen with Gayle. She's got 17 years on Larry, but I can see the
same kind of miracle happening with him.
"I sincerely believe he will be a better coach than he's ever been, and he
has been one of the very best in the country."
Giannini spoke about recoveries from alcoholism of other basketball coaches,
including Oklahoma State's Eddie Sutton, who is taking his team to the Final
Four this week.
If Eustachy can do something close to that for Southern Miss, without
relapsing along the way, Giannini feels he will be worth the risk.
For his part, Eustachy could only thank Giannini and Southern Miss fans for
believing in him and promise them he would not let them down.
In O'Leary's case, the Central Florida athletics director had been the
associate AD at Georgia Tech, knew O'Leary there, and felt that what he did
in gussying up his resume was not typical of who he was.
The irony of O'Leary landing on a campus with a high-profile sports ethics
institute was not lost on the institute's director, Richard Lapchick. But
Lapchick has been impressed so far by O'Leary's actions since being hired in
January.
|
PRIME ADVERTISING
SPACE FOR SALE!
BIG-TIME EXPOSURE AT BUDGET PRICES!
CALL 252.349.3280 FOR OUR RATE CARD. |
"Since he's been here the level of attention paid to the student athletes
and recruits has dramatically increased the academic standards for
football," Lapchick said.
|
Reach the Pirate
Nation! Call 252.349.3280. |
If O'Leary, Price and Eustachy truly did learn from their mistakes, the
schools that got them will come away with bargains.
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:40:21 AM
|
