DePaul, it’s not 1983 anymore

Wow, DePaul’s search for a basketball coach has gone so far off the rails that I half expect Tommy Lee Jones and his crew of marshalls to show up and investigate the wreckage. This thing has been going on since January (yes, it’s been that long since Jerry Wainwright got shitcanned) and it’s a day before April, yet DePaul and its faithful still pine for coaches who won’t even acknowledge the school’s existence.   This opinion piece in the Chicago Sun-Times says DePaul should shoot for Bruce Pearl:

Pearl is a strong recruiter who can give DePaul the credibility it needs to reestablish itself in the Public League — the source of its golden era under Ray Meyer.

Yup, you read that correctly, the name of Ray Meyer is being invoked….it’s been that long since this program mattered.  Here are other names from DePaul’s list of dream coaching candidates:

• Phil Jackson
• John Calipari
• A reanimated Red Auerbach
• Mike Ditka
• Gene Hackman perpetually playing his Norman Dale character from “Hoosiers”
• Dean Smith after a swim in the Fountain of Youth

Chris Myers needs a better agent

Chris Berman gets commercials for Nutrisystem and Applebee’s, while Chris Myers gets his picture on boxes of display cases made by some outfit called Home Museum Collectibles.  C’mon, Myers is an Emmy winner, he can’t get better gigs than this?:

That’s one serious picture on that box, he looks like a local TV reporter doing a live feed from in front of a burning warehouse.  Throw Myers a bone and book him for your next event, because apparently nobody else is having him.

That nutty college hoops coaching carousel

In the wake of Tony Barbee’s departure to take the Auburn job, UTEP decided to look into its not so distant past for a replacement.  Nothing wrong with that, but when the guy turns out to be Tim Floyd, it’s a bit of a head scratcher.

Floyd basically resigned from Southern Cal because he handed cash to Rodney Guillory, a handler for O.J. Mayo.  It’s a charge Floyd has denied, but when a guy quits during an investigation, I pretty much presume him to be guilty.  If the glove even sort of fits, you must not acquit.

We know for sure that Guillory provided Mayo with improper benefits.  But apparently UTEP has received assurances that Floyd will not be punished in connection with the allegations at USC.  Where did those assurances come from?  Nobody is saying for sure at this point.

Floyd, who was an assistant at UTEP under Don Haskins from 1978 to 1986, joins football coach Mike Price as the second scandal ridden dude to find an oasis in the El Paso desert.

Beyond having the same employer, it seems that the figure of $1,000 also links Floyd and Price:  that’s supposedly the amount that Tim paid to Guillory and was around the amount that a stripper charged to Mike’s credit card for room service in that Pensacola hotel room.

Man, Floyd seemingly gets off easy while a guy like Morgan State’s Todd Bozeman, who has more than paid his dues since that ugliness at Cal, still walks around with a scarlet “A” on his clipboard.  Doesn’t seem fair.

While UTEP courted controversy with its hire, St. John’s hired a guy who hasn’t coached at all in seven seasons.  Steve Lavin last patrolled a sideline in 2003, the year UCLA pink slipped him.

It’s not like Lavin has dropped the game altogether, he’s been a pretty solid analyst for ESPN during his hiatus from coaching.  But can he recruit at a program that doesn’t possess nearly the name recognition it once did?

St. John’s was scrambling at this point, they had already been spurned by Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt and Virginia Tech’s Seth Greenberg.  If the search had gone on much longer guys like Gene Keady and Lou Henson would have been brought in for interviews.

When a school looking for a coach ends up with its third or fourth choice, it’s not necessarily a great thing.  Refer to Kentucky hiring Billy Gillispie and Auburn hiring Jeff Lebo for proof of that.  I like Lavin a lot, but he’s stepping into a very tough situation he might not be equipped to handle.

One guy who had been a frontrunner for the St. John’s job was Boston College’s Al Skinner.  He’s now out of a job himself, thanks to AD Gene DeFilippo, the dude who doesn’t take kindly to his employees expressing ANY interest in other gigs.

Remember when then-BC football coach Jeff Jagodzinski interviewed with the New York Jets last year?  DeFilippo canned him over that.  Then Skinner has the nerve to seriously discuss another job as well?  If I’m Boston College women’s lacrosse coach Bowen Holden, I would say nothing but “I love me some BC!!!” whenever DeFilippo is around.

Richmond’s Chris Mooney and Harvard’s Tommy Amaker (both of whom are no strangers to controversy) have emerged as candidates for the BC job during this early speculation phase.  No word yet on whether or not the next coach will have to sign his contract in blood and have a maroon and gold eagle tattooed on his forehead.

Spring football stuff (Part 1)

* At one time Alabama fans would tell you that Star Jackson was their quarterback of the future.  But academic issues have him on the sidelines this spring.  At this point he might not even be in a position to be Greg McElroy’s backup.

* They’ve both won multiple national titles in recent years and they’re both going off the rails.  Roy Williams is kicking opposing fans out of the Dean Dome and Urban Meyer is threatening to ban the Orlando Sentinel from Florida practices.  How quickly things can turn.

* Redshirt freshman Michael Ford had a good spring game for LSU with 139 yards rushing on 19 carries and 3 catches for 34 yards.  He passes the eyeball test with a good burst and looks like he won’t shy away from running between the tackles.

Offensive coordinator Gary Crowton needs to find as many ways as possible to get the ball in Russell Shepard’s hands.  He had 117 total yards in the spring game and is shaping up to be a Percy Harvin-type hybrid player…if used correctly.

* Ron Zook is a desperate coach.  After Illinois death spiraled into a 3-9 record last season, he cleaned house on his staff.  There are six new coaches this spring, including offensive coordinator Paul Petrino, who came to Illinois from Arkansas, and defensive coordinator Vic Koenning, who came  from Kansas State.

Zook can recruit with the best of them, he just hasn’t shown the ability to consistently coach his players up.  With Juice Williams no longer around to take snaps, finding a new quarterback is priority number one.  Redshirt sophomore Jacob Charest is the only contender for the job who saw playing time last season.

* It’ll be interesting to see how Allen Bradford performs at USC now that the starting tailback job appears to be his.  He came to LA back in 2006 as the nation’s top ranked outside linebacker but has turned into a pretty damn good running back.

Will Marc Tyler push him this spring?  Even if he doesn’t, Tyler’s already gotten my attention with this assessment of USC’s psyche last season:  When we started losing a little bit, you could tell we had certain guys who were just like, ‘Man, I’m just going to worry about myself and get ready for the draft — get myself healthy.’

That wild and crazy Baylor band

Am I the only one who finds it odd that a member of the Baylor band was wearing a Jason Voorhees-like hockey mask during his school’s Elite Eight tilt against Duke?  After all, this is the school that endured having one of its basketball players kill a teammate just over six years ago:

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