Looking back now...Hathaway's Coaching Search

[UConnSportsGuy]

Just how bad of an AD was Jeff Hathaway? I was just thinking back on the coaching search back in 2011 and how absolutely horrible Hathaway was for us.

Look, obviously PP was a horrible hire and he has been an unmitigated disaster! Looking back now, you could not have made a worse hire for UConn. But if the selection of PP was not bad enough, let's take a look back at the other coaches who almost got hired instead of PP:

Mark Whipple -- He was reported to have gotten the job by many sources...so he was very close to getting the job. He was the QB coach for the Cleveland Browns for 2 years (did anyone do a worse job in any position in the NFL) and is now out of football entirely.

Hank Hughes -- No comment needed.

Ken O'Keefe -- In 2011, he was absolutely horrible as an OC at Iowa and Ferentz was forced to fire him by the AD (O'Keefe:Ferentz = DeLeoneasqualoni). After getting fired from Iowa, he has been the WR coach for the Dolphins (an old coach gift job like GDL almost got this year with the Giants...basically in football purgatory).

Tom Bradley -- Completely out of football since the Penn St fiasco. He will likely never be on the college football sideline again. Working a TV job the past couple of years.

KC Keeler -- Fired from his job at Delaware (a D1-AA school), where he was basically a basically a untouchable coaching God as he was an alum and former player. Since getting fired, he has not even had a sniff at a coaching job and is now a broadcaster (and a horrible one at that).

Bill McGovern -- After getting fired from Boston College, he as been the Outside LB coach for the Philadelphia Eagles (see comment on O'Keefe above about what this coaching position means).

Garrick McGee -- He is currently the head coach at UAB (hey, at least he is still in college football...unlike anyone else on this list). That is the good news. The bad news? UAB is horrible. Despite playing in Conference USA (one of the worst conferences in the land), he has a head coaching record of 4-12 (and 2 of those wins were against low level D1-AA schools). His team had the second worst record in CUSA last year. This year they have been humiliated by two BCS schools and even lost to a freaking Sun-Belt conference team in the first game of the year.


HOLY CRAP! That has to be the worst coaching search pool in the history of college athletics. It really is mind numbing to look back now and see that list. It is scary to think that Hathaway lead this AD for so long (but I guess it should be no surprise that we are in the situation we are in now).

 

[Pudge]

Congrats

This is an excellent post. Hathaway, and his Chuck Nevius reliant search, made no sense that winter. It's looking absolutely horrible now. The elevated MAC guys - who've gone on to Purdue, NC State, Illinois ? The regional New England assistants? The lower level guys?

Quinn of Buffalo ate us up. Ambrose has a rushing attack. Moorhead too

I'd place any of those 3 above Hathaway names.

 

[FDNY99]

Addazio actually kept McGovern on as LB coach...McGivern left late to go work for Kelly.

 

[WestCoastHusky]

Many of us wanted Mike Leach or Rich Rod. I do not even think Hathaway even contacted either. Sue did the right thing by getting rid of Hathaway. He was the root cause of it all.

I seriously hope Warde got more sense and hire someone decent. We might as well end this disaster right now and start the coaching search today.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[huskypantz]

Great post. I wanted Bradley, but the info we heard made it sound like he really wasn't that interested in us. My biggest fear about the last coaching search was that Neinas did go after some bigger fish such as RochRod but was quickly shot down. Then again, Hathaway was uber-budget-minded, so there is no way they would have shelled out the cash for RichRod and his staff.

I know a lot of people have mentioned Moorhead and Ambrose. I really think we need a name that can build some offseason momentum.

 

[ruskin]

guys, "the search" consisted of Larry McHugh telling Hathaway to hire P once he got it in his head it would be a great idea to bring him back. Everything else -- the 50K to Neinas, etc -- was "wallpaper".

 

[UConn76]

Great post. I think the additional issue now with seeking a new coach is our new conf affiliation. If we were looking at the guys listed above when we were in the Big East, who is going to want to look at us now. Of course $2m should be a good equalizer.

 

[noeynox]

That is a great post. I forgot how putrid that list was. Hughes would have probably been the best hire.

 

[2Infinity]

Just how bad of an AD was Jeff Hathaway? I was just thinking back on the coaching search back in 2011 and how absolutely horrible Hathaway was for us.

HOLY CRAP! That has to be the worst coaching search pool in the history of college athletics. It really is mind numbing to look back now and see that list. It is scary to think that Hathaway lead this AD for so long (but I guess it should be no surprise that we are in the situation we are in now).

Great summary, but wasn't Steve Addazio an applicant as well? In hindsight, he looks like he would have been, by far, the best hire from the group. He also was the one that our most significant booster, Robert Burton, was so adamant that Hathaway seriously consider. Burton got a lot of bad press at the time, some of it deserved, but in reality, this guy was just so convinced that we were heading in the wrong direction by not only hiring Pasqualoni, but also by keeping Hathaway as our AD. He just couldn't sit back and be quiet about it. I don't know about you, but I've developed a lot more respect for Robert Burton during the last couple years. I think any search that WM does should include Mr. Burton's input. He was spot on about BOTH candidates!

 

[metsfan2323]

Mark Whipple not turning the Cleveland QB around is not evidence he would have flamed out here, he certainly would have brought Don Brown in so we would have had the solid D and he would not have brought GDL in so our line play would have likely been better.

One thing the Boneyard can be proud of is nobody here wanted P before he got the job, the general reaction in here to Dave Solomon's article announcing P as the front runner was "What the....."

The list does need to be much longer this time around, but the way this works is we might not know about a lot of the interviews.

 

[willie99]

we all know how bad his final decision was, didn't know all of his candidates sucked

Hofstra should fire him for how bad he was at UConn

 

[coachcap]

Jeff Hathaway way no judge of football coaching talent, granted. To call his a bad A.D. is shortsighted. He was a good administrator &
well liked by his peers. UConn athletics generally flourished during his regime. His shortcomings were in the areas of fundraising. He messed up this hire, but I won't cast aspersions elsewhere.

 

[jackl]

Jeff Hathaway way no judge of football coaching talent, granted. To call his a bad A.D. is shortsighted. He was a good administrator &
well liked by his peers. UConn athletics generally flourished during his regime. His shortcomings were in the areas of fundraising. He messed up this hire, but I won't cast aspersions elsewhere.

"Well liked by his peers", he probably was their biggest yes man going. How come his 2 HOF BB coaches could not work with him? How did he let the APR get out of hand for men's BB? UCONN Athletics flourished despite him.

 

[Dooley]

Great post. Sadly, if Warde isn't prepared to buy his way out of his decision of a 3rd PP year with a contract of over $2M annually, we can expect the same type of candidates in our next coach search. That's why we need to can PP and GDL right now so we can get a jump on the search and recruit our next guy. If Warde hires a search firm and wastes money to come up with a similar list, I think it will be time for us to all give up on the thought that UCONN cares about football.

 

[gars44]

I completely disagree with this. Hindsight is 20/20. Yes, PP has turned out to be a failure here, and it's time for him to go immediately. He's a combination of Spaz at BC, Krags at L'Ville, Greg Robinson at Syracuse, Dave Wannstadt at Pitt, Charlie at ND, etc., etc., etc. These things happen. Mistakes are made, they get corrected.

But looking at this from the situation as it was in the moment: Randy Edsall had pre-packed his bags and left in the middle of the night - literally. Couldn't even take the plane back to Connecticut. Done. Leaving recruits, commits, near commits, thinking about commits all wondering what they were going to do. Heart of the late recruiting season.
What did we have in the cupboard for the 2011 season? No experienced running backs on the roster, a non-scholarship, walk on quarterback, maybe one skill player on offense, Ryan. We had just had our butts handed to us in a major bowl, an embarrassment really, that prompted the football gods to decide that this type of match up was not going to recur in their lifetimes: CR would take care of that. The program was reeling - whether you can now see that or not - Randy did not leave it in good shape regardless of the poor form in which he left. And as steady as he was as a coach, he was not beloved here and few were sad to see him go. At the time, a man of Paul Pasqualoni's stature, the respect he commanded, the experience, demeanor, character - all made him seem a solid stand-in to maintain program continuity. Now it hasn't worked out - but to second guess everything Hathaway did or did not do in the frenetic days after Randy's abrupt exit - without so much as a goodbye - is completely unfair and ignores realities that Hathaway faced at the time.

 

[huskysupporter]

Great summary, but wasn't Steve Addazio an applicant as well? In hindsight, he looks like he would have been, by far, the best hire from the group. He also was the one that our most significant booster, Robert Burton, was so adamant that Hathaway seriously consider. Burton got a lot of bad press at the time, some of it deserved, but in reality, this guy was just so convinced that we were heading in the wrong direction by not only hiring Pasqualoni, but also by keeping Hathaway as our AD. He just couldn't sit back and be quiet about it. I don't know about you, but I've developed a lot more respect for Robert Burton during the last couple years. I think any search that WM does should include Mr. Burton's input. He was spot on about BOTH candidates!

He accepted the Temple job before Edsall left, I memory serves me correct. The timing was horrible, he would have been an excellent choice.

 

[Devland]

I think one thing that had a real big influence on the hiring of PP was timing. I think because of the basketball academic situation at the time the emphasis was on hiring someone who would make sure the players graduated and kept the academic house in order. Football was secondary (the opposite of the SEC). That eliminated a lot of candidates. I was told by a friend of mine, who was a neighbor and sometimes golf partner of RE on the golf course in Glastonbury, that Edsall used to complain that he lost recruits because he couldn't get some marginal academic recruits. He told me that it was his belief that things were getting tighter and it may have influenced Randy's decision to leave. Times have changed. I think there will more of an academic/football balance tis time around.

 

[ruskin]

I completely disagree with this. Hindsight is 20/20. Yes, PP has turned out to be a failure here, and it's time for him to go immediately. He's a combination of Spaz at BC, Krags at L'Ville, Greg Robinson at Syracuse, Dave Wannstadt at Pitt, Charlie at ND, etc., etc., etc. These things happen. Mistakes are made, they get corrected.

But looking at this from the situation as it was in the moment: Randy Edsall had pre-packed his bags and left in the middle of the night - literally. Couldn't even take the plane back to Connecticut. Done. Leaving recruits, commits, near commits, thinking about commits all wondering what they were going to do. Heart of the late recruiting season.
What did we have in the cupboard for the 2011 season? No experienced running backs on the roster, a non-scholarship, walk on quarterback, maybe one skill player on offense, Ryan. We had just had our butts handed to us in a major bowl, an embarrassment really, that prompted the football gods to decide that this type of match up was not going to recur in their lifetimes: CR would take care of that. The program was reeling - whether you can now see that or not - Randy did not leave it in good shape regardless of the poor form in which he left. And as steady as he was as a coach, he was not beloved here and few were sad to see him go. At the time, a man of Paul Pasqualoni's stature, the respect he commanded, the experience, demeanor, character - all made him seem a solid stand-in to maintain program continuity. Now it hasn't worked out - but to second guess everything Hathaway did or did not do in the frenetic days after Randy's abrupt exit - without so much as a goodbye - is completely unfair and ignores realities that Hathaway faced at the time.

Oh, goody, a Hathaway defender.

Please. He rode on Perkins' coattails for EIGHT YEARS. He was a smug, pompous micromanager who looked down on staffers and Joe and Joan Six-Pack ticket holders. He was such a yes man he even looked down on Bob freaking Burton when his boss (Larry) told him who to hire. He cut fundraising/tutoring/compliance to the bare bones. It started with Nate Miles (not saying JC doesn't deserve some blame there) and then blew up in 2011 with perfect storm of Randy, APR, CR and his "mis-stating" the progress of fundraising on the hoop facility.

Hathaway thought he was bargaining from a position of strength with Edsall and RE and his agent called his bluff. Sure, the way RE left was ugly but he wasn't the only person to blame.

Hathaway is the P/GDL of athletic directors. He'll keep getting hired because he has buddies, not because of his actual job performance.

 

[gars44]

Simply talking about a decision made to hire Pasqualoni in the wake of Edsall's abrupt departure. The decision was OK at the time, looking at PP as simply a caretaker, someone to mark time. It didn't work out, and of course that's the ultimate answer. It's all clear now.

 

[CL82]

Jeff Hathaway way no judge of football coaching talent, granted. To call his a bad A.D. is shortsighted. He was a good administrator &
well liked by his peers. UConn athletics generally flourished during his regime. His shortcomings were in the areas of fundraising. He messed up this hire, but I won't cast aspersions elsewhere.

So coach you are saying that he was poor at his primary responsibilities of hiring and fundraising. I respectfully suggest that he wasn't a particularly good administrator, since he didn't replace a key position (fundraiser), didn't provide for adequate NCAA compliance staffing (also a key responsibility) and manage to alienate two of the most rabid basketball fan bases in America with his pricing and seating policies. He also had poor relationships with his two marquee coaches, his legendary men's, and his football coach, among others. But I do agree, that he didn't completely destroy the two basketball programs, so there's that. Although one can make the argument that his failure to hire NCAA compliance personal in keeping with the industry standards and abysmal football coach hiring is why we were left behind in this god awful conference. So I will suggest that calling him a bad AD isn't shortsighted, it is woeful understatement.

 

[2Infinity]

He accepted the Temple job before Edsall left, I memory serves me correct. The timing was horrible, he would have been an excellent choice.

Thanks HS, yes Addazio had accepted the Temple position about ten days or so before Edsall's announcement. However....I'm quite certain that he still entered his name into the UConn coaching derby, in spite of that. Some viewed that with "sorry...you're too late, you just took another position". Whereas others still thought he should be considered, since he seemed like the perfect fit. But just imagine how much he wanted THIS job, to take a step like that where he knew he would be criticized and second-guessed after accepting the Temple job.. Burton certainly knew what Addazio would bring to the program...and wanted him badly. I just wish Hathaway and McHugh did as well, as I don't believe he was ever seriously considered.