By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season
PHILADELPHIA -- I just talked to one of my old Cincinnati buds, a 30-something cat with some savvy takes on sports.
We both agreed that losing a good coach to a better job sucks.
"There's nothing I can do about it," said John Thompson, who's been living out in Portland for a few years now but still pays close attention to the sports scene back home.
"It makes sense for (up-and-coming coaches) to leave," John reasoned. "If you're one of those guys, you want the best ingredients to win championships. It's harder to make good runs and great teams out of consistently mediocre to moderately good recruits."
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Now close your eyes for a minute and try to imagine who Thompson could be talking about if I told you our conversation had little to do with the Cincinnati Bearcats' football squad, which just lost Brian Kelly to Notre Dame Thursday night.
"If you're one of these hyper-competitive guys, why would you settle for Xavier basketball recruits or UC football recruits if you're trying to win championships?" Thompson asked.
That's right. Thompson is a former Xavier student and lifelong Musketeers' fan. The hell that fans in Clifton think they were introduced to Thursday is something Xavier fans have lived through four times in recent years.
Four times!
Try losing Brian Kelly four times and see how that feels.
Now I'm not saying Sean Miller did for Xavier hoops what Kelly did for Cincinnati football. But he came pretty close, especially with that splendid Elite Eight run in 2008. And when he left after last season for the warmer climate, bigger stakes and fatter recruiting budget of the PAC 10 Arizona Wildcats, no one could blame him. The same could have been said about his three predecessors Thad Matta (who left for Ohio State), Skip Prosser (Wake Forest) and Pete Gillen (Virginia).
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"It's not about loyalty to your school," Thompson said. "It's about getting to the bigger conferences. And I've settled into that fact as a Xavier fan."
Thompson said the reason why he thinks Xavier, despite the departures, continues to be consistently successful over time is because the coaching jobs are pretty much kept in the family, meaning recruiting suffers little harm. Prosser was an assistant under Gillen. Miller was an assistant under Matta. And current coach Chris Mack is a former XU player -- and one-time star at local St. Xavier High School -- who was promoted from assistant.
"There's been that built-in identity as a result that, essentially, leaves the new head coach as the guy who recruited most of the kids playing for him," Thompson said.
Don't expect Cincinnati to follow that blueprint. Such a move would mean Kerry Coombs would be the next head coach, and that theory has been blown out of the Ohio River as speculation heats up over Kelly's replacement. Coombs, despite the lofty title of Associate Head Coach, has only been a head coach at the high school level, albeit a very successful one. He built a great tradition at local Colerain High School, but promoting him at UC would probably be a step backward for the Bearcats.
So the search begins for the next coach. Will UC look for someone to keep the Bearcats merely competitive before leaving after three years? Or will the school commit to the various upgrades for which its newly former coach pushed and make Clifton a destination for a new football tradition?