If you chose to live in Providence over DC you have some screws loose.
And if you choose to do it for less money then you have major screws loose.
And if you choose to do it when you are a college basketball coach with the difference between the DC area to the New England area in recruiting well then you should be committed.
Maybe Cooley is fine with being at PC and having a ceiling of a Sweet 16, but if he has big boy aspirations his love of the city of Providence should mean little in the decision making.
At some point don't we have to account for the fact that different people like different things? I only lived in Providence for 4 years but I freaking love the place and would move back there in a minute if I didn't have grown-up connections to a different city. So I can only imagine the joy Ed Cooley gets out of leading the resurgence of his hometown team. And you can live like a king in that town making what he makes.
Maybe he would be intrigued by the prospect of revitalizing a once-proud program that is now pretty moribund if they throw a pile of cash at him. Or maybe he likes being King of Rhode Island and doesn't want to deal with all the headaches that dealing with the Georgetown administration entails. It wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world to be perfectly happy where he is.
You'd have to pay me a mountain of money to choose to live in Spokane over all the places Mark Few could be but it works for him.
(And saying PC has a ceiling of the sweet sixteen is just a completely arbitrary statement - they went to the Sweet Sixteen last year and gave the eventual national champion a hell of a game. Its inconceivable that they could win
one more game than they did last year? C'mon.)