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Saturday, December 22, 2007
No holiday giving here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
After losing three of its previous four games, Georgia Tech easily handled that scrappy bunch from Centenary College on Saturday, reaffirming that it can still dominate schools with an enrollment of 910, to say nothing of teams nicknamed the Gentlemen.
Tech won, 86-41. It was a nice, stress-free way to begin a winter break, even if 86-41 was pretty much expected.
The Jackets were coming off a loss in a winnable game against Kansas. They also lost a winnable game at Indiana. But Paul Hewitt does not embrace the “good loss.”
Nor did Hewitt embrace being under .500 (4-5) through nine games for the first time in six seasons. This Tech team had exhibited enough cracks and hiccups that the coach mandated double practices during the break. He also gave his players a one-hour exam on the playbook Friday — believed to be significantly more difficult than the “Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball.”
“I think they thought I was kidding when they walked in there,” Hewitt said, “and I had all of the No. 2 pencils and the paper out.”
It has not been a good start to this season. If you live in the world of illogically high expectations, it hasn’t been Nirvana since the Jackets went to the national title game in 2004. Going to the NCAA tournament in two out of three years since should appease most, but Hewitt understands the landscape.
“Today in college sports, we just can’t win as coaches,” he said. “If we don’t go to the tournament enough but we graduate our players, we can’t win. If we go to the tournament all the time but we don’t graduate our players, then you’re prostituting the guys. So you tend to set your own expectations.
“If you look at where we were when I took over seven years ago, and if you would’ve told me we would go to four NCAAs, an NIT third round, a Final Four, I’m not going to say I would take it, but I’d be comfortable with it.”
Hewitt does not suddenly feel extraordinary pressure at Tech, nor should he. But these are uneasy times on campus. Athletics director Dan Radakovich fired the football coach, Chan Gailey. Last season, in the midst of a bad stretch of games, Hewitt admitted telling his assistants, “We’re not impressing the new guy [Radakovich].”
But the situation with Hewitt is much different than with Gailey. We saw Gailey’s best. It was generally seven wins and a second-tier bowl game. We’ve seen Hewitt’s best. It was one win short of a national championship. The football stadium has empty seats. Basketball season tickets are sold out. A football stadium obviously dwarfs a basketball arena, but that doesn’t discount that difference in perceptions about the respective directions of the programs.
A pro coach gets fired, it doesn’t quite have the impact with other pro coaches in a city as when a college coach gets fired. College coaches walk the same campus, eat in the same cafeteria, share the same support group.
It’s logical to assume Hewitt felt some of the aftershocks of Gailey’s firing in the athletics offices, but he chose his words carefully Saturday.
“We all know what we sign on for,” he said. “The day you become a coach, that takes you one step closer to being fired. You understand that. There are very few guys who leave on their own terms. Chan goes to six bowl games. He graduates his kids. But it’s just the way it is.”
The basketball team is 5-5. Such balance is not what an ACC coach strives for before even playing a conference game. But when you lose two freshmen (Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton) to the NBA, the team is going to take a hit.
So a coach doubles up on practices. And he gives them a written exam.
Hewitt said the 4-5 start “didn’t put any doubts in my mind what we can accomplish. What it does is put in your mind a little more sense of urgency that we have to get this turned quickly. We let a great opportunity get away against Kansas. We let a great opportunity get away against Indiana. But those games are lost now.”
The games are lost. The season’s not. Making it to a championship sometimes skews perspective.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Huizenga had edge in chase for Tuna
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
First thing you have to understand, if you’re getting into the sports business, is that it’s only fun and games on the field. Otherwise, it’s pure cut-throat. “Every man for theirself,” as Dizzy Dean used to say.
So, when Wayne Huizenga heard that Bill Parcells was about to get back into football, he got on the phone and talked him right out of Arthur Blank’s drawing room. You’d read the news, that Huizenga had put the Miami Dolphins on the market. Tired of losing seasons. So emotional about it that when the Dolphins won a game last week, the prying camera caught him in tears. Thus, the ecstasy of victory fresh on his plate, the news that Parcells was about to make a comeback was just the juice that Huizenga need to refuel his NFL tank. Blank opened the door, Huizenga stepped right through it.
Blank and Parcells had even reached an agreement in principle, though not a lot of principle appeared to be involved. The phone rang and the Big Tuna slipped off the hook. You understand, Huizenga is a seasoned club owner. He had a baseball team that won a World Series, and when he couldn’t get a park built with public money, he sold it. And danged if the new owner didn’t win a World Series of his own with a manager older than coal.
Huizenga has made tracks where he has been. He started off in garbage, original source of his wealth -waste management, they call it, to give it an uplifting term. Then he got into movie rentals, Blockbuster his trademark. The Marlins were sort of a recreation, then the Dolphins, and you know how these corporate execs are. They don’t like to lose. So he was selling, until he heard about Parcells. They are old pals, have homes in South Florida, play golf now and then, may even go fishing, which Huizenga was doing when he called Parcells and crashed Blank’s party.
A fellow doesn’t make a billion and a half dollars being a bad judge of people. Blank and Bernie Marcus made Home Depot a household name across the land. When they dissolved their interests, Arthur Blank bought the Falcons from the family of Rankin Smith, and great joy abounded. Rankin had operated close to the vest until finally opening the vault and bringing Dan Reeves in. They even made it to the Super Bowl.
You put their records side by side, the Smiths’ last six and Arthur’s first six, and there isn’t a lot of difference. The Smiths exited with a closing record of 40-56 their last half-dozen seasons. Blank and family opened their run with 42-52-1, with two games left on the schedule. The public ripped the Smiths apart, panned them as penurious. Blank came on like the people’s choice. He lowered some seat prices. He coached manners and tried to make the Dome seem like home. He spread money about as if it were seed. He got involved in player procurement, one (Warrick Dunn) a wise one, another (Peerless Price) a crashing blunder.
Then Blank opened the treasury to Michael Vick, and that’s when the hammer fell. The lesson Blank should have been learning, following the most successful NFL owners’ pattern, you hire and designate, then get out of the way. You never saw Clint Murchison on the sidelines in Dallas, nor Dan Rooney in Pittsburgh. You do see Jerry Jones, but there’s a mite of difference there. Jerry played football at the highest college level, and he knows the game, but you can bet that when Parcells was there, Jerry never got involved in coaching.
When Parcells took the call from Huizenga, he knew the man he was dealing with. Blank was a stranger, a rookie in a dog-eat-dog (maybe there’s a less cruel term) world. Huizenga called, it was a done deal. He and Parcells were on the same page. Sad to say, Blank is left twisting in the wind, and in the process, he has neutered his ersatz general manager, Rich McKay. He went one step too far before he had Parcells locked up. Not that McKay gave a four-star performance. Check the history of Tampa Bay and you’ll find that the Buccaneers never really got rolling until Tony Dungy moved in.
What does this make Parcells? A double-crosser? A charlatan? Hardly, more a sly businessman playing his cards deftly. You can’t blame him. With the Falcons, he’d have been dealing from the bottom of the pile. With the Dolphins, he had a framework and an owner he could be comfortable with. So, Atlanta is left with another “now what?”
Permalink | Comments (21) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
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