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The Heights of Mistaken Identity

As a rule, people and institutions get into trouble when they start thinking they aren't what they really are. Boston College sports is no different.

A quick glance at the record book shows that in his 11 years as basketball coach at Boston College, Al Skinner's teams qualified for the NCAA tournament seven times. That's the most of any coach in the school's history. Most of the rest didn't win nearly enough to threaten that mark. The ones who did win enough either fled for greener pastures (Gary Williams) or were kicked out to greener pastures (Jim O'Brien).

Making the tourney two of every three seasons is not the mark of failure for a program that has been in the Big East and ACC So why'd BC fire Skinner? Who knows?

If there was some hidden reason, well, OK. I dunno what it could be, but I accept the possibility. But if it was because BC thinks some more hyper and hypertouted new coach can improve on Skinner's overall record, then this firing stems from a serious misunderstanding of where BC basketball stands in the sport's food chain, and just what exactly ANY college coach can do to alter the fundamental status of a school's program.

Simply put, it looks from outside as if Skinner got canned because BC was unable to get over itself. If so, shame on athletic department and the entire school. Not only would be that be unjust, it'd be grandiosity mixed with stupidity.

Basketball is the number two winter sport at Boston College, with the student body and alumni both. That is a very poor position from which to begin competition with the University of North Carolina, or, back in the Big East day, Georgetown University.

BC holds its incoming athletes to a relatively rigorous set of academic qualifications compared to many, many other big-time basketball schools. BC is a fine school, and this rigor may do it credit. But it already puts its team at a significant disadvantage, by shrinking the available talent pool. A lot. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if a kid's a McDonald's All-American AND a good student AND he wants to play ACC basketball, that kid's going to go to Duke, not BC. The idea of some one-and-done NBA star-in-waiting spending his mandatory freshman season at Boston College is beyond laughable.

In its entire HISTORY, Boston College basketball hasn't landed the blue-chippers. Its best players have been those overlooked by traditional powers, from Michael Adams (too short) to Jared Dudley (too unspectacular). Whatever his coachly faults, Skinner was adept at locating such players and getting them to come to the Heights.

To recap. The new coach is evidently expected to a consistent winner in a very tough league. Make that a big winner. Take out a Duke or UNC or Maryland every year. Make the tourney four of five years, or five of six. Recruit top-flight talent who are good students, and of course do so cleanly, and do so all the while in a community that doesn't give a damn about your team and at a school for whom said team is a diversion, not a passion.

And here's the real rub of that situation. Assume that by some miracle BC finds such a paragon, a Coach K for the 21st century. He won't get paid like a savior, or treated like a savior. That's not how BC rolls. The coach won't starve, but his peers will be wealthier. He will be respected, but he won't rule the roost. He will be judged by the standards of the best of his profession, but not given the rewards those best earn elsewhere.

BC can't have it both ways. It can't maintain a reasonably sane attitude about how college sports should be run, and then demand a level of success it takes insanity to reach. That sets up any coach for failure, and the school for even worse failure.

The odds are overwhelming that BC's next coach will fall into one of three fates. 1. He won't win. 2. He'll win, but not for long. The new guy will be making goo-goo eyes at richer programs during his introductory press conference. 3. He'll win, but in ways BC won't like, and eventually, the NCAA will like even less.

Given that almost certain future, three more years of laid-back Al Skinner (who the school will still be paying) doesn't seem that bad. BC's got's a classics department. Don't they have a copy of Aesop's Fables?

Maybe Al was basketball coach King Log. His former employers should look up what happened to the University of Frogs when it hired coach King Stork.

posted by Michael Gee @ 3:48 PM