Track coach hire is different by Harry King, Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - The six-paragraph story quoted Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long as saying the coaching search was steadily moving along and would heat up near the end of June.
Nowhere in The Morning News story was there speculation about John McDonnell’s successor. Not a name was dropped; not even some moniker gleaned from ESPN or some message board. There was no rehash of the coaches who had been mentioned for the position because there was no original list from which to work.
The truth is, the average fan is blase about the next caretaker of a program that has won 20 times more national championships than football and basketball combined.
If this was the search to replace Stan Heath or Houston Nutt, the talk shows would be buzzing with rumors, guesses and insanity, and there would be a daily story in the newspaper. Best I can tell, the recent quotes from Long were the first follow-up since McDonnell announced last month that he would retire.
During the two weeks between the resignation of Nutt and the employment of Bobby Petrino, Arkansas supposedly hired Tommy Tuberville, Tommy Bowden, Jim Grobe, Will Muschamp and some others.
Asked to name a successful track coach outside of McDonnell, I came up with “Jumbo” Elliott at Villanova and Clyde Hart at Baylor. A wizard with long-distance runners, Elliott died in 1981. Hart, who coached the winner of the 400 meters in the last three Olympics, retired almost three years ago.
Type “college track coaches best” and Wikipedia kicks out an alphabetical list of about two dozen. Many are dead.
Since the Boston Celtics are only 19 games deep in the playoffs and major league baseball has 100 games remaining in the regular season, let’s have some fun with Long’s search.
For instance, his appearance in Auburn, Ala., should have been worth a rumor or two and the blandest of remarks should have been scrutinized to the nth degree. He said he was in town to witness McDonnell’s 14th and last SEC outdoor title. Where’s the intrigue in that?
Auburn? Why that’s the home of Ralph Spry, who coaches both men and women. He’s had nine top-five finishes in the past 10 years and won a national title with the women’s team.
Hmmmm.
What about Long telling Alex Abrams that this is a difficult time to pursue a track coach “because a lot of the top coaches that aren’t at the University of Arkansas are still engaged in either conference or preparing for nationals.“
If Long had said something similar about football, there would have an intense review of every coach with a team in line for a BCS bowl game. His mere mention of the possibility of hiring an assistant prompted talk about Muschamp and Oklahoma’s Brent Venables.
In track, the current kingpin is Bob Braman, who has won two straight NCAA Outdoor titles at Florida State. Like Pete Carroll, he is untouchable, but we could speculate that Mike Holloway at Florida has grown tired of playing second-fiddle to Braman and that coaching both men and women is too much of a burden in Gainesville. Remember, this is for fun.
Back when, former Chancellor John White said Arkansas might not have hired John Pelphrey without an Atlanta search firm.
The 770 area code number for Parker Executive Search is available on the Internet. If Long made the call, the conversation would go something like this:
“I want to hire a track and field coach.“
“We’ve got a live one. He wants to hire two coaches.“
