UGA basketball staff dealing with uncertainty

Athens — The tendency when a head coach gets fired is to feel bad for him or her. And certainly Georgia’s Dennis Felton is deserving of sympathy since he worked very hard at something only to lose his job.

But Felton will make $1.5 million over the next two years (not to mention the $4.3 million he banked over the last six) whether he finds another job. So he’ll be fine.

The future is more uncertain for the assistant coaches who worked for him. Pete Herrmann, Mike Jones and Desmond Oliver all operate on one-year contracts. They have no idea what they’ll be doing beyond the end of the season, which is less than a month away.

The same goes for support personnel such as program coordinator Ron Johnson and director of operations Melvin Robinson. Although they’re technically state employees, their positions are connected to the head coach. Unless the new guy decides to keep them they’re next step is unclear.

“At this time you have no idea what’s next,” said Jones, 43, who left joined Felton’s staff in May 2003. “Jobs in college basketball come open mid-April to mid-May. This situation is unusual to lose a job in the middle of the season. There are only three jobs open in country right now. So there’s nowhere to go or nothing to do until the season’s over and jobs become filled. It’s just a matter of waiting to see what opportunities are there.”

Nobody knows more about the vagabond lifestyle of college assistants than Herrmann. His coaching career has spanned four decades, starting out as a junior varsity coach in New York, rising through the ranks as a college assistant, becoming a head coach Navy and continuing on to Georgia, where he’s currently serving as interim head coach.

Herrmann has averaged little over four years per job at nine stops over 39 years. And he hopes to keep going.

“I love coaching,” said Herrmann, who turns 61 in August. “I love being in there in the afternoon and having practice every day. I enjoy my relationships with the kids and all the parents and recruiting. I want to coach, and hopefully I will continue to coach.”

Coaches realize what they’re signing up for when they get into the business. It’s a hard job with long hours, frequent travel and intense competition. Job security begins and ends in the win column.

But it’s also rewarding both financially and emotionally. Where else can one get such a daily dose of adrenaline? And, at the Division I level at least, they are well compensated. Georgia’s assistants all earn six-figure salaries with a company car and other perks.

“I’ve moved five or six times, but none of them have been in this situation,” said Jones, who coached at Howard, Furman, Richmond and West Virginia before coming to Georgia. “It’s part of the business that a lot of people go through. It’s not a big deal from the standpoint that my family understands that it’s part of coaching. Very rarely are you going to be somewhere 20 or 30 years. So it’s expected.”

It’s a little tougher for those in the background. Robinson, a Clemson alum, left his alma mater, where he was an academic adviser, to come to Georgia to handle operations. A former high school coach, his aim was to get his foot into the college coaching door.

Johnson showed up this past summer. He left a job as an athletics director and boys basketball coach at a high school in Concord, N.C., for the relative low-paying job of program coordinator. A father of four daughters ages 5 to 18, he moved into the position of third assistant when Felton was fired and Herrmann was promoted.

More than likely they’ll all end up in Detroit — résumés in hand — next month for the coaches’ convention during the Final Four. It’s always fertile ground for networking and job-hunting.

“I’ve got a lot of contacts in the country,” Herrmann said. “I think I can still help a program. … Hopefully that’ll happen. I don’t know if it’ll be possible to stay at Georgia or where I’ll be really. But I definitely want to see about continuing to coach.”

That, at least, is certain.